Everyone has them. You cannot go a single day in your life without hearing a complaint. Even if you took yourself to a remote island resort, you wouldn’t be able to do it. Within a few hours, you’d overhear the staff at the resort complaining about each other or the way their boss treats them or worse you’d be complaining that the cocktail you just received by sitting on your ass doesn’t have enough ice in it.
It’s utterly ridiculous that we can live in a world where complaints are so prevalent and if you’ve been paying attention this far, you would have noticed that this entire sentence I just wrote is a complaint. It is almost virtually impossible to go an entire day without a complaint. The struggle for me lies between the razor-thin margin of what’s actually a complaint versus what is something you genuinely believe sucks and needs improvement.
If you’re striving toward excellence and you’re a practitioner of getting shit done, I think the difference between the two involves two areas of focus – frequency and the time spent dwelling. If you focus on the frequency of complaints you’ll naturally be able to catch yourself and assess whether you’re just complaining or you’re striving towards excellence. It is ok to demand better and you should. It’s not ok to complain about every little thing you see and deal with on a daily basis. Everything does not suck (although sometimes it can definitely feel like it) and you can shift your focus on being grateful for the imperfections in front of you.
The other area to focus on is the time you spend dwelling on it. I am guilty of struggling with this, as much as the next person. For whatever reason sometimes it’s just as challenging to walk away from a complaint as it to not voice one in the first place.
Letting it consume you is where the toxicity comes in but even managing that takes practice. It’s like watching a car wreck in slow motion with you behind the wheel. You can see yourself, you have the awareness of the impact of the complaints on your entire psyche and yet you cannot let it go. It becomes consuming and the self-talk inside your head just does not work sometimes. The downside is unlimited. It takes away your energy, your time, and your motivation for the rest of the day if you let it. Luckily, we can change our state of mind at any point we wish.
We can choose to shift the frame we see this certain situation before us. People often will say – just let it go but you know in your head it’s easier said than done and you’re left wondering why is this so hard to let go? It’s hard because some deep-rooted need is being impacted by this situation. Something is eating at you because internally is just doesn’t sit well. You have to decide in that moment whether it’s worth your time to explore it or not. Most of the time it’s not. It’s your call.