I recently heard a podcast with Gregg Krech, who does the thirtythousanddays.org website (which is generally how many days there are in an average lifetime. Yoiks! When you count it that way…) He brings up the idea of a complaint-based life, which struck me as a pretty sad label for one’s life. But how many of us can say that we don’t complain on a daily basis.
If we complain a lot, we can be sure that we do not experience gratitude. We expect things to go our way. We expect things to fall into place for us. We expect no obstacles as we’re dashing off to our next appointment. But when life throws something at us, when something causes us to have to change, we complain. We throw tantrums. Somebody may try to get us to look on the bright side and tell us that maybe this change will benefit us in the future. But who cares! It’s creating a huge inconvenience right now!
Our inner world (the way we see and understand the world around us) determines whether we have a complaint-based life or one that’s filled with gratitude and appreciation. So many of us can’t see the world outside of ourselves, outside of our own lives. When we focus entirely on ourselves, we’re bound to be frustrated because it’s too easy to focus more on our problems than anything else. That feeds to complaining machine.
Shifting our intentional focus on the world around us makes us more able to appreciate what we have. When help solve a problem for someone less fortunate than us, it shifts our focus away from our problems and causes us to think of the world outside of ourselves. When we have a more global view – when our world is bigger – we can see more beauty, more possibility, more inspiration. Also, it’s been proven that longevity is greatly impacted by how we respond to adversity. So we need to start practicing the ability to see the positive potential in each of our circumstances rather than throwing tantrums and getting frustrated, especially if we want to live a long and happy life.
So let’s take a look at our daily lives. Are we complaining more than we’re grateful? Are we talking more than we’re listening? Are we thinking about how others have acted towards us instead of how we have acted towards others? Spend some time being mindful of these things and begin to make it a daily practice. It’s entirely possible to shift from a complaint-based life to one of great appreciation and happiness by just spending more time being aware of the world outside of you.