You Have To Give Up Complaining!

"The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it."

- Lou Holtz

On the 1st of September, I did some reflecting about my 2022 personal goals. "Transformation" is one of my words for the year because my goal is to change for the better and as Jim Rohn said, "Work harder on yourself than you do on your job." But eight months later, I simply felt that I have not made much progress and I wasn't being overly critical of myself. Over the last months despite knowing that complaining is not the answer, I still found myself stuck in this cycle of unending whining. So I went back to work on my mindset and picked up "The Success Principles" by Jack Canfield, one of my favorite self-help books, because I understand that I must daily work on myself harder than on my life to see effective transformation occuring. Here is an enlightening passage from the first chapter of the book "Take 100% Responsability For Your Life", dig in.

Let’s take a moment to really look at complaining. In order to complain about something or someone, you have to believe that something better exists. You have to have a reference point of something you prefer that you are not willing to take responsibility for creating. Let’s look at that more closely.

If you didn’t believe there was something better possible—more money, a bigger house, a more fulfilling job, more fun, a more loving partner—you couldn’t complain. So, you have this image of something better and you know you would prefer it, but you are unwilling to take the risks required to create it. Complaining is an ineffective response to an event that does not produce a better outcome.

Think about this . . . people only complain about things they can do something about. We don’t complain about the things we have no power over. Have you ever heard anyone complain about gravity? No, never. Have you ever seen an elderly person all bent over with age walking slowly down the street with the aid of a walker complaining about gravity? Of course not. But why not? If it weren’t for gravity, people wouldn’t fall down the stairs, planes wouldn’t fall out of the sky, and we wouldn’t break any dishes. But nobody complains about it. And the reason is because gravity just exists. There is nothing anyone can do about gravity, so we just accept it. We know that complaining will not change it, so we don’t complain about it. In fact, because it just is, we use gravity to our advantage. We build aqueducts down mountainsides to carry water to us, and we use drains to take away our waste.

Even more interesting is that we choose to play with gravity, to have fun with it. Almost every sport we play uses gravity. We ski, skydive, high-jump, throw the discus and the javelin, and play basketball, baseball, and golf—all of which require gravity.

The circumstances you complain about are all situations you can change—but you have chosen not to. You can get a better job, find a more loving partner, make more money, move to where the jobs are, live in a nicer house, and eat healthier food. But all of these things would require you to change.

This passage sums up our options in any given scenario: we can either complain about it or take action to address it. After reading this paragraph again, I took a pause to process what was being said. The fact of life is that our energy must be focused solely on either one of these activities, and based on the choice we make the outcome will follow suit. I was aware of this, but when I diverted my attention from working on myself daily and instead gazed at everything I despised in my current situation all I could see were unending difficulties.

Our time on earth is limited and will come to an end. It is a when, not an if, that's for certain. Now the question is "what you want to do with your time that is left?" Because our time is finite there is every reason to take action now. Every now and then, take a time to picture the life you want and use this vision as your compass and base all of your choices and decisions on it. Simply take it one step at a time, like you would with anything else.

The Godfather of habit building William James wrote: "To change one's life, start immediately, do it flamboyantly, no exceptions."

Yours Truly

The Queen Of Africa