I was listening to 10% Happier this morning and had one of those moments where a short story/concept reverberated around in my head and I’ve been thinking about it the rest of the day.
Dan Harris had on Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, who I had never heard of (he’s apparently quite famous, esp in the UK; I ordered his book while listening). He was talking about his latest book about habit change, and mentioned something about expecting things to go wrong being a very helpful mindset.
The idea is not to expect chaos and wallow in a negative outlook, but to go about your day assuming that some things will be hard, some things won’t go according to plan, and that’s all just part of life. He went on to note that one way of gauging your own tendency to think this way is to assess how much you complain. If you complain, it’s typically because you expected things to go one way and you’re mad that they didn’t.
Uh, I definitely complain.
I wouldn’t say I complain all the time. But I do complain and I often complain about the same things. My complaining triggers mostly center around the fact that I am a very impatient person. (NOT saying this is good, and not saying I don’t try to work on it, but on a spectrum from impatient to patient, I am definitely on the impatient side.)
IF I happen to have extra time, I CAN be patient. If I feel pressed for time (and often that’s the reality) I struggle. So I tend to complain about:
- family members not being ready to leave on time — this is in general, but in the morning, there is like a 15 min difference in when I arrive at work leaving the house 7:30 vs 7:35. We refer to this as MULTIPLIER PERIOD and I tend to LOSE IT when we are in it and someone suddenly declares they are missing some key item.
- patients not being roomed in time — basically I want them IN the room so I can spend focused time in the encounter without feeling rushed!
- messages sent synchronously that could have/should have been asynchronous (though I try to complain in a very constructive and polite way – how would someone know you prefer it sent a different way if you don’t tell them?)
- when I ask a kid to do things repeatedly (like, shower) and there is no response/action taken in a time frame I feel is reasonable
- I complain about the heat while running! RIGHT after listening to this I was doing a tempo run and thinking man this would be easier if it were 10 degrees cooler. But truthfully there’s no reason to complain just because the weather makes it harder. The purpose of a workout IS to work hard. In fact, maybe the heat was improving the training effect I was getting. Or, I could have adjusted my expectations on pace.
- PMS! I totally complain about feeling garbage-y around my period. Sometimes that complaining seems to sort of help because it reminds me that my thought processes are probably being hormonal triggered and that I should not trust them. But maybe I could acknowledge this without it being a complaint? To be honest in many ways I AM glad I still get cycles (and therefore still get PMS). I won’t miss PMS when it’s gone someday but I will probably miss making my own hormones!
I am sure I complain about other things too but really these are the my biggest triggers.
I would like to complain less.
Maybe I need to work on reframing some of this time-based angst, in particular. Maybe I need to expect the world to move at a less . . . specific pace? It’s hard though because I find myself having to fight to get enough time to do the things I want to do. That makes it hard to relax about time, I think. But I was just struck by the whole concept.
17 Comments
I read a few of Chatterjee’s books a few years ago and really liked his perspectives.
I definitely tend to complain about the same things over and over (the mess on my floors, the mess on my kids’ bedroom floors, the wet sock prints on the floors). Can you tell floors drive me to distraction. My big complaint is the colour of our floors – blonde laminate for all our main level that shows EVERYTHING. Water spots. Hair. Dust. Ugh. Drives me crazy. And then the previous owners chose white tiles for the floor and painted the old 1970’s tile on the walls white. I love white, but it is THE WORST for floors. It shows everything.
Trust me, I complain about more than floors, but that is a go-to for me!
I hear you on the floors. We stupidly got a white moroccan star tile, and it looks so grubby, so quickly. And I am the only one who ever seems to notice it.
You could adjust your behavior or mindset on a few of these which might relieve aggravation and reduce your desire to complain. For instance, I have almost no control (beyond hovering obtrusively) regarding whether the OR nurse will set up quickly or slowly, so I choose to distract myself while waiting with other tasks, and if a surgeon bitches at me about it, I direct *them* to go hover obtrusively. Applied to your situation, can you choose to let it go when a nurse rooms a patient late? Presumably it doesn’t happen because they are slacking off…
Or with showers, you could just let your kids not shower and then let them deal with the consequences? It makes my husband crazy when he asks my daughter to do things and she “forgets” too, and then I am called upon to be the bad guy which I don’t love.
I think it is quite reasonable to complain when you don’t feel good so I think you should cut yourself some slack on the PMS one… and I think this applies to your running too. We work out because it feels good, and when the weather is crap it just doesn’t feel as good. You absolutely don’t have to guilt yourself over not feeling grateful enough about these things!
And finally, complaining is also one way people bond with one another — just a basic form of communication. You’re under no obligation to be positive 100% of the time, and indeed, I would find you boring and tiresome if you were. I personally think your ratio of complaining to positivity is overall net positive! 🙂
Great advice and thoughts on the rooming etc! And I’m glad my ratio comes off decently on the blog. I can’t tell if it’s the same or not IRL!!!
I think it is fine to expect some things to happen on a specific schedule. Some things can’t be helped but sometimes people just don’t value your time. Making you late to work because someone couldn’t set things out in an orderly way earlier is something that should be noted and asked to change! I am not sure that this counts as complaining vs asking to be treated respectfully.
That is also true! It’s not even always the same kid, but the odds are high that someone is struggling on any given morning …
Right, so — if the odds are high that someone will lose something at a crucial point in the morning, I think the next step is to both anticipate that that will happen (and start the process earlier / allow more time), *and* to adjust your expectations that this should never happen or that it’s somehow a failure if it does. It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong or that the lateness could have been avoided if *you* had done something different. (Can you tell that I live this every day? lol. It’s been a process to figure out how to balance understanding the realities and limitations of being human with the expectation that 5 of us need to get out of the house at a certain time every morning …)
This is good food for thought. Like Laura says above, I’m not sure getting upset because other family members make you late is complaining, per se; however, I think it would become complaining if you spend a lot of energy griping about it to other people instead of 1. looking for solutions and 2. learning how to set things aside. If you have to sit in extra traffic in the morning, yeah that’s annoying, but you can also let that go once you get to work and revisit the issue with the slow culprit later on.
Complaining drives me nuts, honestly, because it often comes from people who expect change in their lives but do nothing to make those changes happen, or people who expect reality to conform to their expectations and don’t develop the capacity to roll with the punches or be flexible when things don’t happen the way they think they’re supposed to. Life is complicated and not perfect. I think it’s great to stay aware of how often we fall into complaining and to figure out how we can break the habit. It keeps us stuck in a mindset that’s both negative and passive.
I feel like I was way more inpatient in my 30s or even early 40s than now. All the triggers for inpatient behaviors you describe above I have. Somehow in recent years, I complain less and hurry/rush less to people around me (by my own standard, they may still feel I am demanding). The change came from the realization of time passing too fast, especially around kids, and aging parents and relatives. If I pause, I wonder what am I rushing for? isn’t the whole point to spend quality time with them and live this life fully than the next destination/thing? that’s my biggest mindset change that changed my behavior. The second biggest one is the realization that not everyone but myself need to keep up with my pace. who am I to say I have the “right” way? If I’m rushing myself to finish something, I am fully responsible for that and I do it, but I try to avoid rushing others to do things when there’s not really deadline/consequence other than my standards.
Ooh I like that!! I just find that equanimity hard when their pace directly impacts mine. Working on it tho!
even with this jet lag thing.. I’m mildly annoyed as it’s not improving (which I know is normal) but I try to do what I can to normalize myself anyway, and find things I enjoy doing while awake. It shall pass in a week or two.
A differentiate between complaining and being frustrated. Some of what you describe above, especially as it relates to the kids, is something I would more so describe as voicing your frustration. I know that’s a new wants to view, but there’s things that frustrate me that I can’t really change, like how awful our mornings tend to be since our youngest is not a morning person. We’ve tried so many different things and he’s just not influenceable!! You do not strike me as a complaining person though! Your family might feel differently, but you don’t show up as someone who complains on your blog. The thing I complain about the most is probably some coworkers that drive me absolutely crazy. I limit my interaction with them to reduce the amount of complaining and venting I do. Complaining can be kind of therapeutic and clarifying because if you were complaining about something a lot, something maybe needs to change or you need to accept it’s not going to change and stop complaining or complain less? So complaining can kind of serve a purpose! My retired coworker absolutely loves it when I call him to vent or complain about something that happens at work. It was kind of a form of bonding for us when weworked together. We’d often go for a walk to get a coffee and complain about something that was happening at work and then that would help us sort of release the frustration and get back to enjoying our jobs!
My husband and I first got to know each other when we were both invited to a group hike up a mountain and got so caught up in our conversation we broke off from the rest of the group. The hike is about 17 miles roundtrip with significant elevation gain. Years later I found out that a family friend of his always gave the advice to hike that same mountain with someone before deciding to marry them, “to see if they’re a complainer, because no one wants to spend their life with a complainer.” By the time we were thinking of getting married, we didn’t bother following that advice, but the story always makes me chuckle because I did in fact complain quite a bit when we first did the hike (mostly about being cold!) and he decided to stick around anyways. Makes me feel good that he knew what he was in for as I continue to complain to this day. 😂
OMG I LOVE THIS!!!
You Might love Chattergee’s podcast!
It’s funny, I’m intensely critical and pretty impatient but am not a massive complainer. I worry I’m probably silently seething and giving myself an ulcer. I find people’s complaining about routine things really boring (on par with talking about diets) and complaining about things you aren’t going to change really frustrating so try not to subject people to it when I can avoid it. I do find the drama over getting ready in the am (it’s the same thing, every day, why are you surprised when I’m telling you to brush your teeth?) intensely frustrating but we walk to school and I think I’d find it more stressful if I had the time sensitivitiy you do. I’m on public transport a lot / fly a lot and am unphased in the face of delays/cancelled flights/busy services, b/c I do it all the time, and moaning doesn’t make the plane fly faster.
I’m also quite bolshie in the face of things that other (British) people would quietly grumble about. I’ll go into the school office to moan about the parents who have parked unsafely or tell off the parents myself, tell someone to turn down their music on the bus, move someone along who is stood blocking everyone in the shop. I’ll lead a litter pick instead of just grumbling about playground litter. Sometimes other parents moan to me, knowing that I’m likely to actually do something about it. Rude emails from students drive me MAD so I’ve started to gently call them out “In a professional context, your email needs a subject, a salutation, and if you’re asking for something, you should definitely say please and thank you! Why don’t you redraft this and get back to me?” It’s probably not helping my teaching evals but hopefully helps them navigate the world a bit more ably.
Academia is in crisis at the moment and I find the handwringing really difficult to deal with, there’s nothing we can do beyond teach our classes, do our research, etc. And no amount of hallway vent sessions will change that. So I’m trying to tune it out as much as possible.
Well… I live with some complainers (ahem) so I try not to add to the noise. There are definitely things I’m not happy about, but I try to keep them to myself, OR do something about them. Complaining without action drives me crazy (in other people- I’m sure I do it myself as well, although I try to be aware of it.)
I do agree with one of the earlier commenters- sometimes complaining is a way of creating bonds with other people, so it’s not always a bad thing. I also think you do a good job of highlighting the positives and occasional negatives on your blog- no one wants to read upbeat, cheery posts ALL the time!