Challenge: go 21 days without complaining

Hello friends,

These days I went to a bookstore with my daughter and looking at the new books, I found one about an American pastor who had the following challenge with his faithful. He asked them to spend 21 days without complaining about anything, not about anyone, not about themselves, not about life, not about the past, not about what could happen. I ended up not buying the book because I already have more books than I will be able to read in the next few years, but I would like to share the central idea of ​​it with you. What if we went 21 days without complaining?

why stop complaining

Complaining can turn into an addiction, a pernicious habit that makes us not able to see things straight. According to experts, complaining comes from complaine, from Latin. The prefix re + clamar means to cry again, again, with repetition. Clamar has the following meanings: 1. Shout, scream, utter in loud voices, 2. Protest, vociferate, 3. Pray, beg, 4. Demand, complain. And why can all these acts and gestures be bad?

The complaint we are talking about here is not in the sense of asking for one’s own rights – as is the case with the Reclame Aqui website – but rather the useless act of saying what someone should have done and didn’t do, what should have happened and didn’t. happened, what the person himself failed to do and could not have left and so on… in verbal behavior (talking) or covert verbal behavior (thinking) that will not lead anyone anywhere.

If we listen to a person complain for a few minutes, we will soon get tired of complaining. But what if we look inside and see that we ourselves do this all the time? That we waste endless minutes, hours, days, weeks complaining?

The question of whether complaining will be useful or useless is quite simple: will the fact that you complain – to yourself or to someone else – change anything for the better?

For example, if you go to a restaurant and don’t get exactly what you asked for, you can complain and ask for the service to be done correctly. Will this complaint change anything? Likely yes.

Another example, is complaining about what a friend or partner, son or daughter, did 5 years ago going to change anything? Will you make the past different? Will it make the person you’re complaining about better? Probably not.

Note that most complaints are of the following type. Is it worth complaining that it’s raining? Is it worth complaining about politicians in Brasilia and not remembering who you voted for? Is it worth complaining about what can’t be changed?

Challenge to go days without complaining

The title of this text says that we can do a challenge, like a joke or game, in which we must spend 21 days without complaining. Of course, the ideal would be to go through life without this type of behavior, which, as we have seen, can be completely stupid and useless. But we can be more practical and do it calmly and with a step-by-step:

1) Start noticing what and who you complain about? Is it your father? Your mother? Another relative? Is it your boyfriend or girlfriend, wife or husband? When do you complain the most? By trying to go at least one day without complaining, you will notice that the moment you complain, you will already realize it. Then make the assessment of whether it is a useful complaint (which serves an end and can change a situation for the better or is completely meaningless). Stop complaining for a day.

2) Note that by stopping complaining you will have more time to spend on what really matters. In behaviors and attitudes that depend on you and only you. It’s no use complaining about someone who is late or if something doesn’t go exactly as you had planned in your head… Realize that complaining is just endless blah-blah-blah, words thrown in the wind…

3) After a few days without complaining, you will notice how much better you feel. Just like, when we stop watching the bloody newspapers that only talk about death, murder, theft, theft, robbery, we feel better, stopping complaining also disconnects us from what is negative, what is not right, what we don’t like… really a relief, like taking a weight off your back or taking off a tight shoe

4) If you manage to go a few days without complaining, try to expand your vision of what you can and cannot change. This text, The Pursuit of Happiness, talks about this. By being able to see clearly that some things just don’t depend on us to be different (and that complaining won’t change an inch either), we can direct our efforts to what really matters.

5) Comment! It will be a pleasure to know what you thought of the text!

Related