No Complaints
“Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier.” –Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
Nobody likes a whiner. Consider this…most, if not all, of the situations in your life you have had the privilege of creating. Your environs–home and work, the relationships in your life, and even the nature of those relationships are the direct or indirect results of your choices. You’re the chooser.
It’s a powerful thing to look around your life and acknowledge that you chose it.
At the very least, we choose our response to our situations…if not the situations themselves. Whining for sympathy begins to ring hollow. Yet consider the frequency of people complaining about their jobs, families, pets…you name it, there’s a t-shirt somewhere lamenting it.
In fact, this victim thinking is so rampant that the words “I have to” are part of the common parlance. It’s not, “I get to pick up my kids”; it’s “I have to pick up my kids”.
Why bother with these semantics? Two reasons, first negativity breeds negativity. Our thinking colors how we perceive everything we do. We may come to resent the very thing we have previously chosen–not because it has changed, but rather, because our thinking around it has changed.
Second, we lose sight of our infinite power in choice. Acknowledging our power is scary. It means we have no one else to blame. But, it is likewise awesome. We choose our life.
Today, instead of being a helpless victim of my circumstances, I am the grateful benefactor of my choices. And even that is my choice.
