Stop Whining and Start Shining!

At work we are doing “A Complaint-Free World”.  It is an idea created by Will Bowen where you wear a purple rubber bracelet on your wrist and try not to say anything negative for 21 days.  When you find yourself complaining, gossiping, or saying anything else that is negative, you have to switch the bracelet to your other wrist and start the 21 days over from the beginning.  The reasoning behind the 21 days is that they say it takes 21 days to form a habit. 

Luckily I had already started trying to train myself to replace negative words with more positive ones.  When our daughter was about three or four years old, our cable box was acting up and I thought it would be funny to say “Stupid tv!” in a silly way.  She thought it was hilarious.  The rest of the day whenever something was not up to our standards we would say “Stupid crayon!” or “Stupid rug!”, etc.  You can probably see where this is going—silly me for not being able to foresee what happened next.  The next day she was home with my husband and he scolded her for something.  Yep, you guessed it—she said “Stupid Daddy!”  I realized I had created a problem.

My husband and I decided to start using the word “silly” instead of “stupid” or “dumb”.  It started out as just a different word to use so that we could hide what we really meant and so we wouldn’t say anything we didn’t want her to repeat.  But it became something even better.  Saying “silly” instead of “stupid” injects some humor into the situation, and it doesn’t seem as irritating anymore.  When I’m driving and someone zooms around me, just to get right in front of me behind the slow people I was patiently driving behind, I get irritated.  But when I say “Silly person!” it helps me to laugh about it and think how they are probably embarrassed that they ended up right in front of me when they probably thought they were going to get miles ahead.

Now that I’m trying to be complaint-free, not just around my kids, I need to think of some other tricks to train myself to speak more positively.  Here are some ideas I have come up with for positive versions of negative words:

Negative               Positive

Problem                Challenge

Ugly                      Interesting

Annoying                Persistent

Crazy                     Unique

Duh                       Silly me; silly you!

Too much               Lots

Can’t                     I’ll try

If you catch yourself complaining about something, stop and think “what can I do to make this situation better?”  Complaining doesn’t get you anywhere, but fixing the situation will take away your reason to complain.  Even if it’s a situation that is bigger than you or a thousand people can fix, there is always something you can do to work toward making it better. 

If you are cold put on a sweater, adjust the thermostat, do jumping jacks, get your heater fixed, buy a warmer coat, write an e-mail to facilities or your landlord, or move to a warmer climate. 

If there is a person you dislike, you can avoid them, kill treat them with kindness, try to find out why they are unhappy and figure out how you can be supportive, write a letter to their boss or your congressperson suggesting alternative methods of practice, or vote for their opponent.

There is always something you can do, even if it’s small.  If you get a lot of people doing small things, you can make a big change.

As the Complaint Free World dvd title says, stop whining and start shining!