Stop Being a Complainer
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Summary
If you ve ever wanted to complain less, my guest today has some advice on how to break the complaining habit and embrace a more positive and proactive life. His name is Will Bowen, and he s the founder of the Complaint-Free Movement and the author of A Complaint Free World. Today on the show, Will first defines what constitutes a complaint, then shares the 5 main reasons people offer complaints, so you can learn to recognize what triggers yours. Will also explains how to deal with being on the receiving end of each type of complaint so you don t have to listen to the complaining of others.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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My flight was awful. The restaurant service was terrible. The traffic was horrible. My boss is
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the worst. Our culture is the stupidest. Whenever we get together with other people, we hear lots
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of complaints and plenty come out of our own mouths. All this complaining may be ubiquitous,
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but it's not entirely innocuous. Complaining puts us in a negative mood, hurts our health,
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and damages our relationships. If you've ever wanted to complain less, my guest today has some
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advice on how to break the complaining habit and embrace a more positive and proactive life.
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His name is Will Bowen, and he's the founder of the Complaint-Free Movement and the author of
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A Complaint-Free World. Today on the show, Will first defines what constitutes a complaint. He
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then shares the five main reasons people offer complaints, so you can learn to recognize what
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triggers yours. Will also explains how to deal with being on the receiving end of each type of
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complaint, so you don't have to listen to the complaining of others. After the show's over,
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check out our show notes at awim.is slash stop complaining.
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All right. Well, Will, you wrote a book and you're the founder of the Complaint-Free Movement.
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What's the story behind that and how did it originate?
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I was actually teaching a class in Kansas City, Missouri on prosperity in 2006, and it was based
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on Edwin Gaines' book, The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity. So she recommends that people go 21
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days in a row without complaining because if you want to attract things to you, you can't be positive
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and grateful at the same time you're complaining. So she threw out this idea that people should go 21
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days in a row without complaining. What I added to it was a mindfulness tool to keep you on track.
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I handed out 250 of these little purple bracelets, like the Livestrong bracelets, and I encourage
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people to put them on their wrist and every time they caught themselves complaining, switch the
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bracelet to the other wrist. Because your goal is to go 21 days in a row, you're on day one.
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If you complain, you switch the bracelet to the other wrist, you're back on day one. If you're on
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day six, you're back on day one. Anyway, I handed out 250 of these, and this was pre-smartphones,
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pre-social media. I mean, you had to pick up the phone to call somebody pretty much or send them an
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email. And just people telling people, this exploded underneath me. I had no idea this was going to take
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off. And within 30 days, we had requests for 9,000 bracelets. And now we're at 15 million, over 15
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million around the world, encouraging people to take this challenge. Put a bracelet on your wrist, and every
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time you catch yourself complaining, switch it to the other wrist and start over. And it's one thing to do
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something like that, but it's another for people to actually complete it. And we have had thousands of
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people in every country on every continent go 21 days in a row without complaining with some pretty
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amazing results. Well, you talk about all the benefits people experience when they stop complaining
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that you've seen both in people you've observed firsthand when they took the no complaint challenge,
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and then also from the research you've looked at. And what you found is that when you stop
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complaining, it has all these benefits. You start seeing the world in a more positive light,
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your mood improves, your health can improve, and it can also help your relationships, improve your
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relationships. And I hope we can talk about that more here in a bit. So if you want to get these
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benefits from stopping your complaining, I think it'll be helpful to know what a complaint is so you
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can recognize it. So how do you define a complaint? The dictionary defines complain as to express
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grief, grief, pain, or discontent, to express it. So by its definition, it must be expressed. A lot of
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people, because I do 40 speaking events a year, I invariably get somebody who says they're going to
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change their bracelet with every negative thought. Well, that's a great idea, but we think on average
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45,000 thoughts a day, most of them are negative because of humans' negativity bias.
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So the better thing to do is to catch the thoughts as they come out of your mouth to
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try and replace them with something positive. So the dictionary defines complain is to express
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grief, pain, or discontent. My definition of complain is an energetic statement that focuses on
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what is missing and what you're lacking, rather than what is present and what you're grateful for.
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Well, some people might hear this idea of no complaint challenge and they think, well,
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if you don't complain, how do you tell someone that they did something wrong or you're missing
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something on your plate that you ordered at a restaurant? How do you bring that up so you can
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correct the mistake if you can't complain? It is not complaining to speak directly and only to the
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person who can resolve your issue. If I have a problem with anything and I speak directly to the
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person who can resolve it, that's not complaining. Let me give you a quote from Eckhart Tolle that
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explains it really well. This is from A New Earth. He says, complaining is not to be confused
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with informing someone of a mistake or a deficiency so that it can be put right. And he goes on to say,
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and to refrain from complaining doesn't necessarily mean putting up with bad quality or behavior. He
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says, there's no ego in telling the waiter your soup is cold and needs to be heated up. If you stick to
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the facts, which are always neutral, how dare you serve me cold soup? That's complaining. So complaining
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always has this, how dare you do this to me, the center of the universe. There is a sense of
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entitlement. It's an interesting thing that in all of my research, and I've literally read everything I
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find on the subject, the more people have, the more money they make, the more privilege they have,
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the more they complain, not the less. Because their expectations become so high, they become very
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entitled. Okay. So you distinguish a complaint from just passing along information to correct the defect
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by a complaint has like a negative emotion or energy tied with it. Yeah. Like recently, I ordered a
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$200 ninja coffee maker from Amazon. But what showed up, what I realized was somebody had bought
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a nice ninja coffee machine from Amazon, then packaged up their old Mr. Coffee machine, sent it
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back to Amazon. Amazon didn't check. This was a few years ago, so it wasn't actually recently. But anyway,
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and they sent it to me. So when I reached out to Amazon and said, hey, you sent me the wrong
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coffee maker. This is probably what happened. That's not a complaint. I call that a request for
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accountability. In any interaction, there is an expectation of some reciprocity, this money for
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getting this, this behavior for achieving this, whatever. And so as long as you are reaching out
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directly and only to the person who can resolve your issue, it's not complaining. It's a request for
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accountability. So you mentioned that you've done a lot of research on complaining, and particularly
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why we complain. And you found that there are basically five reasons why we complain. And they
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all have to do with status, trying to get our social needs met. And basically, we complain to feel good
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by increasing social status. And you've got an acronym for these five reasons we complain. And that
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acronym is GRIPE. So let's start with the G. What does the G stand for in GRIPE?
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Well, before I answer that, let me acknowledge that the five reasons is the result of my good friend,
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Dr. Robin Kowalski at Clemson University. I bill myself as the world authority on complaining,
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but this simply because of all the studying I do. But she does the research. And she came up with
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five reasons that people complain, but I found them to be a bit academic. So with her kind permission,
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I relabeled each one. And so the G stands for get attention. We have a human need to connect with other
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people. When I speak at conferences, one of the things I'll throw out is, as you walked from your
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hotel room, came in here and had a seat, did someone acknowledge you? Did they look you in the
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eyes and give you a half smile as you passed them? Did they say hello in the elevator? And the answer
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is always yes, because human beings live in a social culture. And so we have this need to be acknowledged
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by others. We don't have a need to acknowledge others. We have a need to be acknowledged. The only
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reason we acknowledge others is to get acknowledgement in return. So complaining is simply a way of trying
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to make a connection. It's simply a way of, I want to talk to you, but I don't know how. So the easiest
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thing to do is to bitch about how the Miami Heat did on Tuesday and see if you're a sports fan, then we
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have a connection. Or this time of year, I live in South Florida, the weather is the favorite target
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because it rains almost every day. And last night we had such a thunderstorm that literally woke me up.
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And so people get together and they go, oh gosh, the weather is so terrible. And that is a complaint.
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Now to say we had quite a thunderstorm last night, that's not a complaint. That's a statement of fact.
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But they get in with this energy, which is actually an invitation to the other person to respond in
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kind, which develops that connection, gets people talking. Yeah. It's a socially acceptable way to
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get attention. Like one way you could get attention would be like, hey, I had the best vacation in the
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world. My kids are awesome. And I just got a raise. If you told that to people, they'd be like, oh,
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how to kind of encourage resentment and envy. But you can complain about, well, this bad thing
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happened to me and you're going to get attention, but you won't get the resentment possibly.
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Yeah. And we'll get into that. People complaining to brag or inspire envy. It is socially acceptable,
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as you say, to complain. It is common. It is expected. The analogy is when I was a boy,
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I'm 63. When I was a boy, I would go to my pediatrician and he would always have a cigarette
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hanging out of his mouth. So would my mother. And I had asthma and they couldn't understand why I had
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asthma. It's because everybody had asthma, but it was activated by all the people smoking and blowing
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smoke in my face. We are surrounded by complaints in the same way that we were surrounded in the 60s
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by cigarette smoke. It was just common. You didn't even notice it. Nowadays, if you're a non-smoker
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like me, if I get on an elevator with somebody who smokes, I'm like, oh, God, that is repellent,
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that smell. So complaining is the same way. We're not truly aware of how much we do it and it gets
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a social benefit. Ergo, it's a go-to move. So how should people deal with someone who complains
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to get attention? Verbal jujitsu. What you want to do is when you walk up to that person,
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you want to realize all they want to do is connect with you. And they don't know how,
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so their default method is complaining. So you say some version of, you know, what is going well with
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anything? I know that sounds a little stilted. So, you know, what are you grateful for? What are you
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happy about? Et cetera. As you said, it's not okay for me to tell you what I'm grateful for and what
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I'm happy about, then I'm bragging. Not cool. But if I ask you what's going well, what are you grateful
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for? What are you happy with? Or as the clerk in my grandfather's store used to always say,
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what's the good word? If you proactively let people like that know that they can share good
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things with you, you know, oh, I saw a double rainbow this morning. Oh, I've discovered a
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great new restaurant. Or have you seen the last episode of Succession? I think they nailed the
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landing. They get to know that they can have that interaction with you by simply asking them for
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something positive rather than something negative. And I want to draw a quick distinction.
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We tend to use positive meaning Pollyannish. It's not what it means. Positive means what is present.
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Negative means what is missing. Complaining is always about what's missing. So we want to ask
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them about something that is present that they're happy for. I like that idea. Okay. So the G in gripe
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is for get attention. Now we got R and R is for remove responsibility. How does that work?
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Complaining removes responsibility. First of all, I'm going to send you kudos. I've done,
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I was telling my girlfriend this morning, I've done probably two or 3,000 of these interviews.
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And the way you prepared for this was accepted. I mean, I'm talking on a microphone you sent me.
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Yes. However, if let's say I didn't want to do this, I wanted to go out for breakfast,
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I could say, well, now he sent me a microphone that he wants me to use and I got to plug that in
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and I got to do this. And I would start building a case around the real issue is, let's say I didn't
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want to do this podcast, which I definitely did. But if I didn't, I could complain about the
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circumstances and we'll always find them, no matter how silly they are. I could say,
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I don't want to plug in that stupid microphone. What if it doesn't work with my system? Blah,
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blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't matter. Your mind takes the circumstances
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surrounding something you've been asked to do. And kids are great at this. And then we complain
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about the circumstances as a way of wanting to be let off the hook. In other words, I could say,
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send you an email and say, hey, Brett, I'm sorry. I just don't think I can do this because I don't
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have time to plug in the mic. Whatever. And so we complain about the circumstances because you never
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want to go to a person and say, hey, Brett, you know that interview you asked me to do two months
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ago. And I said, yes, I don't want to do it. We don't want to do that. So we complain to remove
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ourselves from responsibility, which allows us to save face. Again, remember, complaining is always
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about increasing or at least maintaining our social status. So it's my attempt to get out of it
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without making myself to blame, but the circumstances. I like to say that in this case,
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people rationalize. And by that, I mean, they tell you rational lies until you let them off the
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hook. So that's complaining to be removed from responsibility. And how should you approach
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someone who's complaining to remove responsibility? If someone is complaining to be removed from
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responsibility, what you want to do is keep them on the hook, but you don't do that by trying to solve
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their problems. You do it by putting it back in their lap. So let's say I said,
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Brett, I don't have time to hook up this new microphone. So I can't do the interview.
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The response is, well, if it were possible, how might you do it? Stole this from Tony Robbins.
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It's brilliant. It works. I use it all the time. Because the thing is, if you would have told me how to
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set up the microphone, I would have probably come up with something else if I didn't want to do the
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interview. The complaining to remove responsibility is endless. People have got tons of things to
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complain about. So we don't want to deal with the issue. We want to say, if it were possible,
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how might you do it? The implication being, who does it? You, not me. So there you go. People complain
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to remove from responsibility. You keep them on the hook by saying, if it were possible,
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how might you do it? Well, so we mentioned earlier that we complain to get attention because it's a
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socially acceptable way to get attention that doesn't inspire envy. But you also say that
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sometimes we can complain to inspire envy in others. So how can complaining help us inspire envy in
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others? This to me is one of the most complex and interesting aspects of it. And this is one of the
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things that I just continue to marvel at and anything I can find on the subject I read.
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We complain as a socially acceptable way to brag. As we've talked earlier, if I told you,
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you know, how gorgeous my car is, how wonderful my boat is, how beautiful my home is, how beautiful my
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girlfriend is, how perfect my children are, it draws into, it's an invidious comparison in your mind.
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You begin to make a negative comparison in your own mind as a result of that to yourself. And so
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what I can do instead is say things like, if somebody wanted to brag they owned a Tesla, they would say,
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you know, the worst part about a Tesla is finding a place to plug it in.
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The worst thing about having a beautiful girlfriend is that it takes her an extra 20
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minutes to get ready anytime you want to go anywhere. The worst part about having lots of
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money is figuring out where to invest it. What have I done? I have just bragged to you,
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but I've made it a negative. My favorite story is about my buddy, Brian, who is, yeah, I would say
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of all my friends, he's by far, he has the most money. And he bought a million dollar boat for his
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home in Lake of the Ozarks. And the interesting thing is that we were at a coffee shop and he noticed
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some friends walking in and as the friends were passing our table, he said very loudly to me,
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you know, well, if you spend a million dollars on a boat, you think it would come with a better
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trailer. So he said it loudly enough in the presence of our other friends to inform them that he had
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spent a million dollars on a boat, but they literally walked over to ask about it. So he had just bragged
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and, and the way we tend to do this, I mean, what I'm giving you is some sort of a, as you know,
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from reading the book is a overly simplified version of this, but people complain to make
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themselves look better than other people. They complain about the boss at work. My boss is an
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idiot. The implication being that if I ran this place, things would go smoothly. We complain about
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other people. The most interesting aspect of this, and this I realized sitting in a tiny little airport
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somewhere out in the Midwest, some woman was complaining to another woman whom she just met
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about the town that we're flying out of. And it was a town, not a city. And the woman was saying she
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had lived there for 25 years and it was the worst place in the world to live. And she talked about the
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corrupt government, the inadequate policing, the crime, the pollution. Now, mind you, she had just
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said she'd lived there for 25 years, right? So why would she go into why her hometown sucks?
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It's because we can inspire envy by having it the best or the worst. And people complain,
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it's still bragging. It's two sides of the same coin. We're going to take a quick break for your
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words from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So what do you do when you see someone
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complaining to inspire envy? They're doing the humble brag type thing.
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Yeah. What you want to do is you want to compliment the opposite, I call it. So in other words, if
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someone at work, you're getting ready to have a meeting and everybody's there except one person
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who's may or may not be chronically late. And somebody says, let's say his name is Tom. He says,
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you know, we could start this meeting, but Julie's late as usual. And everybody laughs, you know,
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but the point I always make is that Tom is not telling you Julie is late. Tom is telling you he's
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on time. So people complain about the way other people drive. They complain about anything and
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everything is a way of trying to make themselves look better. So you want to compliment the opposite
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by saying, you know what I love about you, Tom? You're always on time. If someone complains about
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the way someone dresses, you know, what I love about you or like about you is you always dress
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so stylishly complaining about another driver. It's great that you are a safe and courteous driver.
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And if you do that, the person no longer feels the need to use that particular complaint to
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inspire envy or brag, humble brag. Yeah. Another reason people complain is power. How can complaints
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give us power? This is probably the most diverse reason that people complain. And I loved the stuff
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that Robin wrote about this. Most of her stuff is available on Google Scholar. Anyway, people complain
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for power because it's the animal mind, the reptilian brain that we have, which I believe we have a divine
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brain and we have a reptilian brain. We have a divine nature and an ego, however you want to put it.
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The fearful side of us knows that the more people we get on our side in any given circumstances,
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the more power we have because people represent power. So all social media is based on complaining
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for power. Politics is, of course, based on complaining for power. If you don't have a complaint,
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you don't have a campaign. In my speeches, I always do this little shtick where I go,
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all right, imagine I'm running for Senate here in Florida and this is my commercial.
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Hi, I'm Will Bowen and I'm running for Senate in the great state of Florida. And I want you to know
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that I think everybody in Washington is doing a great job. And I want you to elect me and send me
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there so we can keep everything exactly the way it is. Vote will for status quo.
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And then, of course, I say, do you think I'm getting elected? And everybody says, no, of course not.
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You've got to enrage to engage. And the worst thing in a political thing is having people who are not
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engaged. And so lastly, that plays into the media. All moves is based on what is wrong and what is
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missing. So people complain for power. They complain to get other people on their side because most
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people are neutral about most issues. And so people will come up to you to complain to get you on their
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side. And the way this often happens, and I see this here where I live, I live in a complex in Key
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Largo, Florida. One of my neighbors will come up and complain to me about one of the other neighbors.
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Why? They're trying to build a base of power. They get me on their side.
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Here's what you want to say. If you've got two people complaining to try and get you on their side
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to purchase your alliance, your power for the price of a complaint, you say, it sounds like the two
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of you have a lot to talk about, which is a way of saying you have a lot to talk about, not me.
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And you just keep saying that. It sounds like the two of you have a lot to talk about.
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And you just refuse to engage. It's a way of letting people know, as my mother used to say,
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and I told the story in the book, you know, I would go to my mother trying to get her on my side
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against one of my two or both of my two brothers. Then she would say, sweetie, I'm Switzerland.
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You know, I'm neutral. So this is a good way of letting people know you're neutral.
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Okay. Another reason we complain is to excuse poor performance. What does that look like? And
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what do you do when you encounter someone complaining to excuse poor performance?
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The E in gripe, excuse poor performance, is the past tense of the R in gripe,
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which is remove responsibility. In remove responsibility, I might say,
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Hey, Brett, I'd like you to do something for me. Hey, Brett, we just met. Would you go pick
00:27:08.880
up my dry cleaning or whatever? Take, drive me to the airport. You would complain even before you've
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given it a try. Here are the reasons why I can't do it. But you're complaining about the circumstances.
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Remove responsibility is usually like, Hey, well, I would love to do that. But now excuse poor
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performance is the past tense. You've tried something, you didn't do a good job, but you
00:27:35.380
don't want to look me in the eye and say, Hey, well, I kind of gave half, you know, gave this my
00:27:40.760
try. So I blame the circumstances. It's the traffic, it's the weather, it's the slow person here,
00:27:47.320
it's the toll booth, it's the whatever. And the challenge is, if let's say, I don't know,
00:27:54.380
I asked you to go do something and you came back and had done it wrong. And I ask you, you know,
00:28:00.180
why you did it wrong. What people do is they complain about the circumstances to be let off
00:28:06.560
the hook. And they don't want you to blame them. And if you blame them, they get defensive. So it's
00:28:14.160
a lose, lose situation. What you need to do is to release this time's performance and to begin to
00:28:21.880
ask them to think about the hypothetical. So here's your question. How do you plan to improve
00:28:28.140
next time? How do you plan to improve next time? Because no one is defensive about next time.
00:28:37.700
And so they will say things like, Oh, well, next time I'll allow an extra 10 minutes in case the
00:28:44.360
bridge is up when I'm traveling across in Miami, or I will plan for this circumstance, or I'll
00:28:51.860
address this beforehand. You're getting, you can't go back and change what they just did wrong.
00:28:59.500
And if you ask them about why did you do this? Why didn't you plan for this? Why didn't you think
00:29:03.940
about this? They'll just defend it and they won't improve next time. So you want to get them to think
00:29:10.020
possibility. So you say, how do you plan to improve next time? So something you talk about in the book
00:29:16.420
is that complaining can hurt our relationships. How does complaining negatively impact relationships?
00:29:24.100
The greatest gift you can give other people is the gift of your own happiness.
00:29:30.820
Most people come home and dump on their family every bad thing that happened during their day.
00:29:39.280
And when people bring home negative energy, we take it in. We're all energetic beings,
00:29:45.260
some people more than others. And so again, it is not complaining to say, I struggled with this today.
00:29:54.020
You can even talk about this person was rude to me, but if you are, how dare this happen to me,
00:30:01.040
then you are using your family members or your people in your lives. You're using their ears as
00:30:09.300
relationships. I've got a new version of my book that's coming out next year. It'll be the third
00:30:14.340
edition. And I just finished it. And a study that was not in, I don't think was in the version you read.
00:30:20.980
They studied a group of high school girls that got together every day for lunch to complain.
00:30:25.260
And the girls complained about everything, anything, everything, their friends, the homework,
00:30:33.080
the weather, their parents. And what they discovered was that on one day, the girl who was kind of the
00:30:40.220
ringleader of complaining, which there usually is, was absent. And so the girls still complained,
00:30:47.940
but they complained about her and how negative she was and how much she complained. So even complainers
00:30:53.840
don't like complaining. So complaining is destructive to our relationships in that it
00:30:59.580
causes us to diminish the positivity, the good feelings, the good vibes in the relationship,
00:31:06.980
but it also causes us to look for more to complain about. If I complain to one of my neighbors about one
00:31:14.480
of the other neighbors and we establish what I consider to be a good connection, we get attention from each
00:31:22.320
other. Then I'm going to be watching that third neighbor a whole lot more as a way of giving me fodder for
00:31:30.120
when I'm with the first neighbor to complain about. So it actually then lowers my experience and my
00:31:36.960
expectation from that, that other person. So complaining is, is bad for relationships in that it lowers the
00:31:43.560
energy in the relationship and it causes us to look for more to complain about.
00:31:47.840
Maybe that's another reason people complain is for camaraderie. I mean, you can build a relationship
00:31:52.460
just around complaining. I'm thinking, you know, maybe guys in the military and more complaining
00:31:57.120
about the food and being in the trench and sort of like, oh, we're going to complain about this thing
00:32:01.900
that we're sharing together. But you say, well, even though you might have a sense of camaraderie,
00:32:08.960
You know what, man, you just put that brilliantly. You really synopsized it really well.
00:32:13.420
As you were saying that, I even thought, no, not some relationships. I would say most relationships
00:32:19.540
begin in complaining and stay that way. That's why, to me, I've always found it fascinating
00:32:27.340
that someone will look for a job, find a job, dress up for a job, interview for a job,
00:32:36.100
tell their people they're so excited they got the job, and then spend the rest of their tenure
00:32:41.100
bitching about the job. And it's done for those reasons. Get attention, remove responsibility,
00:32:48.080
brag. If I was the boss, everything would be good. But it also builds that connection at work.
00:32:55.120
There's a famous Friends episode about that, is that, you know, once Chandler moved into management,
00:33:00.900
he was no longer invited to lunch because everybody got together at lunch and complained about the boss.
00:33:06.260
I feel like, you know, complaining can build camaraderie, but it's not the strongest source
00:33:11.940
of it because it carries so many downsides. Like, everything starts to take a negative tent,
00:33:17.040
which can hurt the group's morale. And then it just can keep people from actually being proactive
00:33:21.780
and fixing problems because they just get so much pleasure from grousing about something,
00:33:27.040
but they never do anything about it. And there's also, you know, besides being, you know,
00:33:31.640
complaining having downsides for a group, it has downsides for individuals too. You start,
00:33:36.700
you start seeing everything with a negative bent, it hurts your health, it hurts your mood,
00:33:41.620
it hurts your relationships. So let's say someone wants to make a change, right? Maybe they think
00:33:46.820
they complain too much and they want to, they want to see how life would be different if they
00:33:51.320
stop complaining so often. So what can they do to break the complaining habit? The best way to do
00:33:57.560
this is to take the complaint-free challenge. Put a bracelet on your wrist. Every time you catch
00:34:01.980
yourself complaining, move it to the other wrist. I'm not getting rich on this, but it's a way of
00:34:07.980
having a little bit of skin in the game. Because the thing is, the average person complains 15 to 30
00:34:13.420
times every day. They have no awareness they're doing it. My little joke is that complaining is like
00:34:19.080
bad breath. You notice it when it comes out of somebody else's mouth, but not when it comes out of
00:34:24.120
your own. You've got to first become aware of it. And this being a mindfulness tool, it has, I would,
00:34:32.640
I will put it out there that no one has a greater success with helping people eliminate complaining
00:34:38.940
than this 21-day challenge. And I know that from the thousands of emails I've gotten from all over
00:34:46.680
the world. So a lot of people might discover once they stop complaining, they might not have much to
00:34:51.160
talk about. Most of what they talk about is complaining. I mean, the number of times when I
00:34:54.780
get together with friends, usually the conversation talks about, well, here's this crummy thing that
00:34:58.940
happened. So what do you talk about instead when you're not complaining?
00:35:02.760
Well, and that's the thing. You just nailed something really important. Not only will you
00:35:07.780
get with your friends and someone will throw out a complaint, complaining always goes in degrees of
00:35:13.780
higher severity. Therefore, to keep the conversation up, it is incumbent on someone to out-complain
00:35:20.260
the first person. So it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse. So what you do is you have
00:35:28.260
things that you want to talk about that are good when you get with people. So for example, if I was to
00:35:38.500
meet up with somebody in Miami today, I would say, did you see that beautiful rainbow? Wasn't it great
00:35:48.140
that the heat crushed it on Tuesday night, which I didn't follow the game, but think in advance what
00:35:54.600
is going to elicit positive responses from the particular group you're going to be with and
00:36:02.520
assume the role of throwing out those positive things and know that there's going to be people
00:36:10.120
who will then complain about it and who will default. You know, if you throw it out, didn't
00:36:17.120
the heat do great? And somebody would say, yeah, but whatever player couldn't seem to get the lid off
00:36:23.820
the bucket. And then you turn around and say, yeah, but he had seven assists or 19 assists or whatever
00:36:30.360
it was. Make it your job to play verbal jujitsu in the conversation. Don't tell people to stop
00:36:38.120
complaining. Don't really engage the whole thing. Just see what you can. I used to, when I lived in
00:36:44.640
Seattle, there was a woman and her friend and the three of us will go out to lunch. These were the most
00:36:49.640
positive people I ever met. And I find it interesting, successful. And I think there's a correlation there.
00:36:56.660
But one time we had a, just a crappy waiter at a restaurant, nice, nice place, expensive.
00:37:03.860
And they said, let's see how long it takes us to get the server in a good mood. And they took it as
00:37:11.420
their job to ask questions and compliment the person. So it can be done. We don't do it. It's not our
00:37:19.360
default setting. We're afraid of coming off silly, stupid, and Pollyannish. That's why like in an
00:37:26.120
elevator, you can say, isn't it a beautiful morning, but somebody might complain, but you can
00:37:33.160
compliment somebody on an accessory. Those are nice shoes. Where'd you get those cool headphones?
00:37:38.880
You just want to be responsible for putting out the good stuff and usually follow it with a question
00:37:44.780
to elicit a positive response. I'm curious, do you have any exceptions to this no complaining ethos? So
00:37:50.880
we define a complaint as expressing discontent with something, right? So there's a negative
00:37:56.200
emotional charge to it. Are there times when that's okay?
00:38:00.340
Yes, of course. I mean, Miami traffic will cause you to say, son of a, or whatever,
00:38:08.680
because people will just about clip your bumpers, slam their brakes. You got people in
00:38:13.460
Lamborghinis doing 125 miles an hour, pretending it's grand theft auto. Now is my turning to my
00:38:21.900
girlfriend and saying, that guy's an idiot. Can you believe that? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:38:26.780
It's not going to improve the driving and it's also over. However, I see it's an occasional
00:38:36.580
expletive. And in the new version of my book, I write a lot about cursing because I find it
00:38:41.880
fascinating. If I stomp you on the foot, you're going to curse. If you bump your head, you're
00:38:48.080
going to curse. I see that kind of complaining as more of an expletive. However, if you're doing it
00:38:54.960
to get your social needs met, no, it's bad itself. It's destructive. And it is ultimately something
00:39:01.680
you can weed from your life so long as you're not mentally lazy.
00:39:08.320
Well, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book in
00:39:11.780
your work? Go to acomplaintfreeworld.org. That'll take you to a landing page where you can get a
00:39:17.880
bracelet, or I think we have an option for 20 bracelets. If you want more, you can go to
00:39:23.600
willbowenvideo.com. And so you can, again, get a lot of the information you drew out of me today,
00:39:30.300
but in a speech format that's easy to watch and follow. And of course, as a speaker, my website is
00:39:37.280
willbowen.com. So start at acomplaintfreeworld.org. And be sure and put the A in there,
00:39:44.580
acomplaintfreeworld.org. Or if you want to find more about me, willbowen.com.
00:39:51.060
Fantastic. Well, Will Bowen, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:39:56.540
My guest today was Will Bowen. He's the author of the book, A Complaint-Free World. It's available on
00:40:00.540
amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at his website,
00:40:04.340
willbowen.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash stop complaining,
00:40:09.280
where you can find links to resources when we delve deeper into this topic.
00:40:19.240
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at
00:40:23.700
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00:40:27.820
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00:40:55.940
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00:41:00.120
this is Brett McKay. Remind you to not listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.