Some people just love to complain. You know them or maybe you are one of them. In a recent article in the New York Times Opinion section, Samantha Irby claimed, “To complain is to truly be alive.” For her, complaining is comforting, “a hot bath” for her feelings.
The problem is that while complaining might (and I say might because the research does not support this, as I will explain) make us feel better, it certainly doesn’t make the people around us feel better. I first remember observing this phenomenon in college. Sitting in the common room with my dorm-mates, the conversation would inevitably turn to complaining – too much work, unfair professor, stupid boyfriend, unsympathetic parents. Instead of getting validation for her woes, the complainer would typically hear, “You think that’s bad! Here’s my story…” I called it one-downmanship (the opposite of one-upmanship), and it drove me nuts. At some point, I’d just take myself back to my room. However hard my work was, it wasn’t as hard as everyone else’s, if I believed them!
It turns out that was probably a smart thing to do, as Dr. Travis Bradberry explains in a recent blog published on Medium.com, negativity rewires our brain to be more prone to negativity. As he says, “Repeated complaining rewires your brain to make future complaining more likely. Over time, you find it’s easier to be negative than to be positive, regardless of what’s happening around you. Complaining becomes your default behavior, which changes how people perceive you.”
Bradberry recommends nurturing gratitude instead of complaining. That damps down the cortisol response that make us anxious. There is good research that cultivating gratitude is a healthy practice.
That doesn’t mean that we should completely give up complaining. But before we do, we should ask an important question, “What good will it do?”
Let’s face it. Most of our complaining results in nothing more than reinforcing our negativity and nothing changes. But complaining (not whining, complaining) can be an effective way to point out something that does need changing.
Here’s an example of a brilliantly effective complaint. A colleague of mine lived around the corner from a bank. The sidewalks around the bank were constantly full of litter, weeds were growing the cracks… it was unsightly. My colleague didn’t like it and decided to complain. He walked into the bank and asked for the manager. He explained that he was sure she actually cared about how people thought of the bank and wanted it to be a welcoming place. He explained how the trash outside the bank affected neighbors and potential customers. The manager’s first reaction was to blame in on the landlord. The bank didn’t actually own the building and technically it was the landlord’s job to clean the area around the building. But the landlord wasn’t there every day and it wasn’t affecting his business. A week later, the trash was gone and the sidewalks around the bank were spotless. My colleague sent flowers to the manager to thank her.
We can learn some important lessons from this about what I like to call the fine art of complaining.
I think I’ll put a new sign on my office door, “This is not the complaint department. Positive ideas welcome.”
#complaining #gratitude #brain
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