How To Stop Complaining and Live Gratefully

How to Stop Complaining and Live Gratefully

One choice that can change our lives.

“When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation, or accept it. All else is madness.”
— Eckhart Tolle
Today we will learn how to stop complaining and make the choice of being grateful instead.
Let’s begin by understanding why we complain. According to Dr. Guy Winch, writer of ‘The Squeaky Wheel: Complaining the Right Way to Get Results, Improve Your Relationships, and Enhance Self-Esteem’ – “We complain when we feel there is a significant gap between an expectation and reality.”
The root of complaining is wanting the truth to be something different. And, that is not wrong by any means. When there is a need for change in policies, in behaviors, in relationships, in the status quo, we must speak up and take action. This is imperative for our society.
However, when we complain, our cause might not need change and there is rarely any action. It’s just a waste of energy.
Some complaining might lead to bonding as we share mutual dissatisfaction with another person and vent our feeling together, but that too must be controlled and not form the foundation of a friendship.
I’m glad that you want to work on this because it’s going to bring such an important change in your personality making room for joy and peace.
Let’s now learn about the 5 main pillars of how to stop complaining:
Gratitude
Acceptance
Action
Mortality
Humility
1. Gratitude
Gratitude is, in practice, the antonym of complaining. It is a transition where we choose to look at what we can appreciate and feel blessed for instead of what is wrong. It is a simple life-altering choice.
While working on The Attitude of Gratitude Course, I thought over the topic ‘how to stop complaining’ deeply. Let me share an excerpt from the lesson Overcoming Obstacles where I talk about this:
“One obstacle that we often face – is that we complain or have difficulty removing our focus from whatever is wrong instead of the many things that are going okay.
This stems from negativity bias which not only registers negativity more but also makes us dwell upon it. One thing that the realization of this makes me think about is that I’ve called my brain’s bluff, now that I know what it is doing. It isn’t controlling me as dominantly now.
And, another helpful way is to understand why this exists. Let’s go back to our origins. The negativity bias back then helped us survive. Being on the lookout for all potential dangers was what was most important.
However now, we need to let our brain know that it’s okay. To know that life is an experience constituted by countless others and whenever something wrong happens there’s some good apart from it too.”
When we shift our focus from what we want or what could be and choose to appreciate what we have, gratitude walks in smiling. Remember that we wanted many of the things that we have now.
We have all been blessed with so much. We need to open up our eyes to that. There will always be something more, something else. So, we must cherish what is.
😇