And the “Complainy Pants of the Year” Award Goes To…

The Desert of Arizona
Clear 31 Degrees – 8:43 a.m.

Let the truth be known: I’m a recovering “Complainy Pants of the Year” Award recipient.

In fact, I think the majority of my mental focus was set squarely in the complaint department well into my 20s. I complained about money, about my job, about the boss, about almost anything! It was far more entertaining than real work and boy did it fire me UP!

These days, I don’t spend any time around complainers. If complaining is all you have to say, you’re certainly free to say it. I just won’t be around.

You could say I made a remarkable recovery from my complaining addiction.

How did I do it? I’ll tell you the secret.

The steps to recovery are simple. There’s only one!

  1. Stop complaining.

Once you do that, you open up an empty space–a vacuum of sorts.

Then you get to move on to phase II and choose what to fill that space with.

At the beginning of recovery, the best you might be able to fill that space with is a deep breath. If that’s the best you got, go for it. It’s a start.

Seriously, there is a solution to get on the road to recovery.

Complaining about anything in your life is only possible if you have not yet taken full responsibility for everything in your life.

When you take responsibility for everything in your sphere, you really can’t complain. Otherwise, you just look stupid. So the habit dies pretty quickly at that point for lack of fuel.

I don’t think the secret to life is figuring out how to have things go your way. That’s a neurotic form of control that usually turns out with you being miserable.

The secret to life seems to be to allow life to move through you without resistance.

Complaining is the exact opposite of that.