2020 eh?

I wonder what the history books will write about this year?

For me it will go down as the year I had to be extra resilient to fight off the forces of negativity.

With less than ideal things happening in the world, this has seen a general increase in moaning across the global population.

Despite trying to keep positive, make the best of things, and look forward, I have felt dragged down by the complaining of others.

This makes me want to complain more.

So I wanted to do something special, a challenge to help radically alter your mindset, the ‘No Complaining Challenge.’

The purpose of this exercise is to get you better at dealing with how you react to situations, so you become a more pragmatic and positive person.

Interested?  Read on…

No complaining for 3 weeks?

I actually don’t think complaining once in a while is a bad thing as long as it’s controlled and done occasionally as I detail in my post I tried to stop complaining for 21 days, here’s what happened…

But the purpose of the challenge is to make a deliberate effort not to complain about what happens in your life.

This has a multitude of benefits:

Stop being a victim…

When you complain about something you are essentially making yourself a victim – accepting whatever has happened to you, you have no control over.

Even in situations like the coronavirus lockdown or rising tensions around racism, you may feel powerless because these are situations totally out of our control.

But, what you are totally in control of is how you choose to react to a situation – you have the option to not let something consume you – focus on solutions rather than complaints!

Half-empty…

A person who complains a lot is seen as a half-empty person.  A mentality which means the individual tends to see the negative in any situation.

They love a good old moan!  As a consequence, the people around them see them as a negative energy drainer with nothing nice to say about anything.

I think we’ve all encountered scenarios where something happens.  Perhaps we are okay with the situation, maybe we have no opinion or don’t care.

Then we bump into the half-empty complainer who has lots to say on the topic and suddenly we feel terrible.

Don’t be a half-empty person.

Gratitude…

When you complain too much you stop recognising the good things going on in your life.  You become too focused on what is going wrong and what you don’t have.

This is actually disrespectful to all those good people in your life who you take for granted.

Instead of looking for things to complain about, look for the things you are grateful for.

Flip the script

Your life doesn’t have to be like this.  Flip the script, choose not to complain and you’ll start to recognise:

• What you can control and what you can’t.
• That YOU are ultimately responsible for your life, no one else.
• Sources of what makes you complain the most
• The positive things around you.
• Everything to be grateful for.

This will have many benefits – your subconscious will alter so your default response to a difficult situation isn’t complaining about it and you’ll become a more desirable person to be around.

Take the no complaining challenge

I challenge you to try not to complain for the next 3 weeks and see what happens.

Everytime you fail (and you will) make a note of what the trigger is and set a plan of action in place avoid falling into this trap.

When you do this you’re going to fail, fail, fail again.  But when you do, at least you know not to complain about it…

<<Next post in the No Complaining Challenge 2020 Series Why Be Negative?>>

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