Breaking the nasty cycle of complaining
Complaining is negative. Negativity is addictive and contagious, and an office full of negative Nellies is an office where productivity is low. How can you keep negative complainers at bay in the business place? Start with yourself.
When traffic is slow, someone takes your parking space, and your shoes hurt your feet, we tend to surrender without even giving the rest of the day a chance. Try a positive spin. Traffic was bad, someone took my parking spot, and my shoes hurt my feet. From down here, the only place to go is up.
The key is that you are in charge. You can’t wait for a good day to happen to you; you have to make a good day happen.
3 methods to stop yourself from complaining
Try the following three methods of encouraging yourself to stop complaining.
- Stay away from the complainers. Your constant complainers are usually your gossipers and your all together negative crowd. This is school playground 101. If you run with the negative crowd, people will begin to associate you with that crowd. You’ll begin to feel like people are judging you, so you may as well give them something to judge. It’s how tweenagers get clicky, it’s how teenagers go Goth, and it’s how young adults start smoking and drinking. Get out of the crowd.
- Remember to empathize. If your complaints tend to be about co-workers, putting yourself in the place of the offender can be enlightening. You’ll often find that you don’t know the person well enough to do such a role reversal, in which case, your judgment is totally out of line. Remember all the parables about glass houses, walking in others’ shoes, and throwing the first stone. There’s a reason these stories have stuck around. Don’t be that reason.
- Keep a gratitude journal. While negativity is addictive, so is positivity. At the beginning of the work day or at the end, write down five things you are grateful for. You may have to dig at first, but you will soon find yourself seeing the good in the very situations that would have previously sent you over the edge.
In sticking with paraphrasing quotes on life lessons, all journeys being with the first step; be the change you want to see; peace is rarely denied to the peaceful.
