21 Day Complaint Free Challenge - Pt 2 of 3

"Don't whine. First it does nothing for the reason for your complaint. More importantly, it lets a brute know that there is a victim in the neighborhood." Maya Angelou

This is part 2 of the 3 part series on the 21 Day Complaint Free Challenge. In this post I will update all of you on the challenge and then go into what 'Complaining’ is in more detail.

This is day 7 of the event and there are now 329 people participating in what has been an incredible awareness-building week for us all. During this first week of the challenge we have all come to see how subtle the habit of complaining can be in our lives and that it isn't dependent on the words we use but can be communicated in our tone, affect and body language. So much of what is actually complaining can seem like protest, but, lacking even the smallest action is still complaining. Complaining, criticizing and blaming are very close in energy and tone and in communication all share ‘you statements.’ Self-pity, entitlement and superiority have shown themselves to be at the core of these mindless speech habits and it becomes very clear just how much when you stop complaining.

Complaining is so common in our culture that it has become a part of our conversation. Some people use it as a greeting, complaining about the weather or the traffic upon meeting another. Others use it as an ice-breaker in conversation engaging the other person in shared complaint as a form of camaraderie. Some even use it as a pull for attention unable to offer something more worthwhile to the conversation.

We move through our lives using ancient human communication patterns that were meant to broadcast warning not even aware of the effects. When we complain to another person we are not only venting our frustration, or displeasure, we are infecting that person with our negative energy. Not only that, but by focusing our attention on the source of our complaint, we are actually drawing to us more of what it is we are complaining about. Complaining doesn't help, nor does it make anything better even if it feels better to the complainer in the moment.

Complaining is also a rejection of what is. Put another way, when we complain we reject the 'now'. As T.S Eliot said "All is always now." If we are experiencing it, it is now. Otherwise we would have already experienced it or not have experienced it yet. If our soup is cold, that is our now. Accepting that but wanting hot soup moves us into action which leads to changing the next moment, but does not impact the moment before. As Eliot says "..The past is unredeemable." Complaining changes nothing but more than that, it keeps us from actually being able to change the things that need changing. When we whine, we are immobilized by our bruised egos. Entitlement to perfect service, care, attention, weather, etc. underlies the complaints we utter day in and day out.

In our relatively blessed world here in the west, it is the exception not the rule when we have something to truly complain about such as grief and profound loss. And even then, it is less of a complaint than a lament when we voice feelings from that bereft place. Only when we accept what is, the truth of our experience in this moment no matter what that experience is or how we feel about it, are we present and able to take action to change it. Brother David Steindl-Rast said it best when he said that "complaining is the little self's attempt to block change" and that it is up to us to find the 'opportunity' in the moment of wanting to complain to change the situation or change our thoughts about it.

There are things in our world that call for protest. We know what those things are because of how they call us forward for the greater good and move us to act. A complaint is not useful, it doesn't help or change anything. It is like a virus that breeds a sense of discontent in all that hear it. I read someplace: "complaints are like bad breath - you notice it coming out of another person's mouth but not your own".

Be sure to read next weeks blog when I will be posting the insights and awareness of the 21 Day Complaint Free challenge and talking more about ‘gossiping and criticizing’. You can still join, it isn’t too late many people have just joined. I will be keeping the group going until everyone has finished the 21 Days. It is a Facebook group and you find it via this link:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=119241354758253

How to make a happy brain in 5 easy steps

The key to happiness lies in that moment of connection with ones experience: if you can't meet yourself where you are, then, you will never truly 'be' happy anywhere else.

I want to thank the commenters to my last post on Happiness for their input and questions. A couple of you asked if I would go more into the ‘how’ of tip #3 and I have decided to do that here. To save you from reading back, here is what I wrote:

3. Stop focusing on what you don’t have or what you don’t want. Most of the world decides on what they want to have, do and/or feel whether more money, a better job, less weight, healing from an illness, and then they focus on its opposite. Someone who wants more money thinks and complains about being in debt. Someone who wants to lose weight thinks and complains about being fat. And so it goes. Our brains only know what we tell them and they are very compliant. If you want to be a fat person, complain about not being able to stick to a diet and your brain will help you out. Taking what you believe as real, it will produce the depressive neurochemistry to support the feeling of ‘I can’t’ and’ what’s the point’, and you won’t be able to make the changes necessary to have the physical body you say you want to have.

Let me first give the disclaimer. Although I am a mental health professional I am not a scientist and don’t want to present myself as one. My explanation is that of an educated lay person and nothing more.

How we think determines how we see things, how we relate to our surroundings and how we then feel. We can’t choose what comes our way in life but we can choose what we do with it. We can choose to interpret it from a place of good intent or ill intent; good natured or malicious; friendly or unfriendly, etc. When we choose to negatively interpret what goes on in our day to day world, a cascade of depressive neurochemicals gets released from the neural networks that control them in our brains and we immediately take the position of the victim in our life’s play, and proceed to embody those characteristics and feelings. Poor us, bad them, life sucks, and ultimately project all of that back out into our world.

When we choose to interpret these daily experiences in a positive or even just neutral way, we get the release of safe and happy neurochemicals from the neural networks that control them, and we stay out of victim mode. Our world seems inviting and positive in its regard for us and we end up feeling good. We then project those feelings back into our world and we get to have the experience others as pleasant, cooperative and holding us in positive regard.

What happens in the brain is the same for each case. The brain responds to our interpretation of our experience and produces hormones and neurochemicals to help us deal with that perceived environment. Positive interpretation = happy, safe, connected chemicals and hormones, negative interpretation = unhappy, anxious, and/or depressive chemicals and hormones. This cycle of perception directly influences the size and thus chemical dominance of those particular neural networks based on activation. The more the negative or positive feeling networks are activated the bigger they get and others get smaller to make room in the brain through a process called pruning. We eventually become addicted to the neurochemistry of our biggest neural networks and start to behave in ways that will trigger their cascade without even knowing we are doing it. The good news is that we can become just as addicted to the chemistry of feeling good as we are to feeling bad.

How to create a happiness generating brain in 5 easy steps:

1. Accept responsibility and reclaim your power to change. Read the above a dozen times and remind yourself that YOU have the power to change the size and quality of your neural networks by how you interpret your experience. None of us controls what happens to us, but we all have dominion over how we interpret and respond to it.

2. Focus on the positive and ignore the negative. A good way to see this effort is like strengthening a weak muscle. You have to target that muscle and work it to build its strength and let the overdeveloped ones weaken for balance. Focus on thoughts, feelings and images that automatically generate a positive feeling in you and then amplify those feelings by adding to them. Let the negative thoughts just go, don’t give what you don’t want or don’t have attention. Focusing on them doesn’t make them better anyway and you will be working against yourself.

3. Stop complaining! Our brains at their most basic levels only register ‘ok’ or ‘not ok’ from our reactions. When we complain, we are not ok and our brains tell our bodies to get ready to fight, run or freeze by triggering stress hormones. Not good when you want to feel happy. So, when your chicken comes out underdone, send it back with clear request to fix the problem. Do NOT complain to your dinner mate and the waiter and the chef and the woman sitting at the next table and then go home and post it on Facebook. Complaining doesn’t do anything; it isn’t an action towards any positive solution. It just increases the negativity inside of you, in your relationships and in the world.

4. Practice the art of appreciation. Seeing the world through eyes of appreciation is probably the fastest way to change your brain into a happiness-seeking organ. A good exercise for this in the beginning is to use the time in your car as ‘appreciation school’. As you drive look at the world around you with the intention of finding things to appreciate. This is a wonderful time of year for this because spring is upon us and there are flowers and trees in bloom everywhere. Build on the feeling of appreciation by going from object to object until you really start to feel uplifted and energized. This is a lot better than Prozac and you can’t lift your mood in minutes. Do this every time you are in your car and you will see the difference is just days.

5. Be silly on purpose. Shake up your habitual tendencies by wearing socks that don’t match, your shirt inside out or a clown nose to work, or in public. Don’t explain anything or make the excuse that you read it on some therapist’s blog, simply allow your experience to be whatever it is and see if you don’t end up laughing along and having a surprisingly fun day. This is a positive surprise to your old ways and really gets the positive chemistry pumping.

Negative thinking is a habit. When we have the tendency to stroll down that path to sit by our ‘little river of misery’ as Marianne Williamson so wonderfully put it, it is going to take some time and practice to change it. Make a decision, stop complaining, cultivate appreciation and have some fun at it!