by Will Bowen, and decided that I wanted to do the 21 day "complaint free challenge" the author talks about in the book. The idea is that you try to go 21 days in a row with complaining, criticizing or gossiping, if you do any of these things you begin again your 21 days. You wear a bracelet that you switch to the other wrist each time you have to start over, to help you remember your goal. Mr. Bowen says that the average time for someone to successfully complete the 21 consecutive days is about 4 months.I have been attempting to reach the 21 days since February 14th. So far the longest I've gone without starting over is 7 days. This is harder than it looks! I thought it would be a piece of cake. I've spent many years paying attention to my thoughts, and so I imagined that just monitoring what I actually said aloud would be much easier than it has turned out to be.
This has been a great exercise in awareness. What I've learned is that I use complaining as a way to engage with others (the author talks about this in his second book, Complaint Free Relationships: How to Positively Transform Your Personal, Work, and Love Relationships
). It's amazing to realize how often we interject complaints into our conversations in order to connect with others. I've found that I do it with my hairdresser, my acupuncturist and my friends. Sometimes it is initiated by me, and sometimes I join in with complaints from others just to be sociable.On the surface these seem like innocuous interactions: complaining about politicians, criticizing "others" we don't know personally who don't share our views, and other interactions that aren't directly hurtful to another person. However...they are hurtful to us. Engaging in conversations that focus on the negative leads our thoughts to be of the negative - what is wrong in the world - rather than what is right.
The 21 day challenge has been eye-opening for me in just how insidious this negative perspective is in our culture - and in myself. I'm continuing to work hard at making it 21 days without complaining, criticizing or gossiping. I invite you to join me!
