Aug 5, 2011
The Mayan calendar predicts that 2012 will be the end of the world. Since I am firmly of the ‘hour-and-day-is-not-known’ club, I do not believe it. But, I would like to see 2011 be the end of complaining as a national pastime.
As is true with most good ideas, the idea of putting the kibosh on complaining is not an original one. Motivational authors Will Bowen and Jon Gibson are the most recent writers to publish books on the topic. They both provide convincing reasons for eradicating complaining from our lives and the workplace. Since 2006, Bowen’s group has distributed millions of purple bracelets to remind people not to kvetch.
Bowen and Gibson’s books are good resources, but that is not what motivates me to call for 2012 to be a year without complaint. The idea was inspired by the corrosive, juvenile debate visited upon us by our Congress and President over the budget. When Washington becomes a playground full of whining children threatening to take their balls home, it is obvious that it’s time to change our national attitude. Like it or not, our elected officials are mirrors of us, the electorate.
I have been wracking my brain to think of what may have been the “complaint heard around the world” that changed our national character from “can do” to “why me”. How did we shift from fighters to complainers? What has happened to us as a nation? Did things get too easy? When did being negative become so popular?
Really, I cannot reconcile the character of my father, who just turned 83, with the character of our current representatives or my own for that matter. A lot has been written about the integrity of my father’s generation who were formed by the Great Depression and World War II. Maybe much of it is romanticized, but I truly cannot picture my father as a complainer. He is so rarely negative.
Somehow the difficult realities of the world around us have shifted from being challenges to be overcome to being the basis for complaining and blaming others. In a roughly a half-century, we have gone from a confident people, inspired to ask what we can do for our nation, to a complaining people, bellyaching about what our nation asks of us or does not do for us.
In his video on ending complaining, Bowen suggests that it takes 21 days to change a habit. I am concerned that complaining is so engrained in us that it will take a lot more than three weeks to break this bad habit. That is why I am suggesting we start preparing now for a New Year’s resolution to not complain in 2012.
With the admonition “Physician, cure thyself” ringing in my ears, I humbly offer this simple idea on how we can make the hard trek back to being positive. We need to be more overtly appreciative of the good things that we have and keep the bad things in perspective.
This idea may sound a bit trite, but I am inspired by my oldest son to believe it will work. Before leaving him at West Point for his plebe summer, knowing that he would have some tough days, I encouraged him to wake up each day with this positive thought: My education is paid for; I will have a job when I graduate and my job will make a difference. As for the really tough moments, I encouraged him to keep in mind that no matter what was expected by his superiors, no one could add an hour to a day or a day to a year.
Judging from the upbeat mood of his letters, the advice emphasizing the positive and keeping the negatives in perspective seems to be working—and he is a teenager in boot camp.
I am sufficiently convinced by my son’s success to take my own advice. Right after I finish this, I am going to come up with my positive thought for tomorrow. How about you?