Dealing with Complaining

Remove from your life anyone who brings out the complainer or gossip in you.

Complainers are as bad for your health as smokers, so treat them the same way. Avoid their toxic emissions.

Oh God, the complainers… I hate complainers. Just kidding and also making a point. My mother-in-law used to say “I don’t like her, she complains and complains and complains… all the time. Drives me mad.” She never got the irony.

We all complain, but left unobserved complaining can become your sole topic of conversation. Catch yourself. Change the narrative.

It is almost impossible to be around complainers and not become one of them. If you can be around them and not join in, they will target you and you will become the subject of their complaining as well… as soon as your back is turned. You will sense it and then you will have thoughts of complaint about them. It is a toxic downward spiral. It is contagion. Imaginary mask and gloves on. Avoid contamination.

In the front of our brains we have a group of neurons called Mirror Neurons. They are what allow us to observe and learn without having to experience the same event. For instance we can watch someone put their hand on a hot stove, observe the reaction, and know not to put our own hand there. The same mirror neurons connect us instantaneously to whatever we are observing. So, we can be in a group of gossipers or complainers and our brains will quickly start to mimic what we are seeing and hearing so that we quickly fit in to the group. It is an ancient survival process. It is not our fault, but we have to break the connection.

If you find yourself cornered by a group of gossipers or you get stuck in a meeting room with a bunch of complaining peers, or at home around the dinner table friends are all bitching about the political situation, get up, excuse yourself and go sit on the toilet for 5 minutes. Better still, if you can do it without drawing attention to yourself, go outside and breathe in some fresh air. The crucial thing is to break the connection between the sensory input and your mirror neurons.

Eventually, you may decide it is too much like hard work to keep excusing yourself, and you will choose to remove certain negative people from your circle of influence. Good for you.

Next whenever someone complains about something respond to them with; “So, what are YOU going to do about it?”

It is a powerful shut down like lowering control rods in a reactor core.

Try it.

Watch the responses.

Below is a dated video clip (2009) but I include it because the presenter eloquently explains how mitrror neurons work. This links back to the topic of reclaiming the individual, but it also helps understand the toxic impact of complaining and how easily contagious it becomes. For wizards/alchemists it has to be understood and then avoided just like second-hand smoke.

In the VLS group (for more information contact support@trevorgblake.com) we have a monthly teaching session in which I take these activities and apply them to the world of innovation and entrepreneurship. These topics are planned out 12 months in advance and selected guests are invited to contribute and be interviewed. One such topic is the Essential Art of Imitation for Success with Balance. If you are VLS member please check the archive of replays where you will also find the associated slide deck and links to pertinent videos.

Think about the day you have had so far.

How many times did someone complain about something to you directly, or within your hearing? It may have been a trivial matter like the weather, or something significant they saw in the newspaper such as the state of the economy. How often did you automatically join in? Did you start a chat by having a little moan about something?

Think about all of your Twitter posts, texts, and emails, and which of them were critical of a thing or person.

Although the criticisms may be slight, they accumulate in the course of a day into an avalanche of negativity. It is scary when you stop to think about it, and realize how many of the words being mapped out are negative. Whether verbal, written, or electronic, it is the same in impact. Many people revel in gossip. It bonds them quickly, and is the easiest way to make allies. Contagious as it is, we can slip into the habit innocently. It holds groups together like glue, and you cannot reinvent yourself as part of a group.

The aim is for you to again become an individual.

Gossip is toxic to our mentality. Every time we allow a complaint into our brains, it triggers a negative thought that has no choice but to return to us more of what is being complained about. If someone bemoans the economy, and you think ‘I agree with that,’ then events will transpire in your life that give you even more reason to moan about it. . . even though you did not initiate the topic and were thinking of something completely different before. Another good exercise is to sit with friends or family, and listen to their comments as you all watch a soap opera or reality TV show. Almost everything is negative, because the shows are designed and written to trigger that reaction.

I did this with two relatives once and counted over a hundred negative statements from them in less than a half hour. Every criticism is a form of being against. As painful as it is to consider, whatever someone is against comes back like a boomerang to the thrower.

Of course, if you say something positive, that shows up in your life also, but the challenge is that nothing unites people more than a common dislike. Positive people are a rarity, and unfortunately most walk a solo path. If you got to the end of your days, then added up the beneficial versus harmful thoughts, and came out fifty-one percent to forty-nine percent in favor of beneficial, you would have lived a grand adventure. Most people, however, would be over eighty percent negative, and their lives a reflection of that.

If you doubt it, spend a day and a night keeping score. Make a note of every positive comment you hear and every negative one.

It will shock you.

This is a national and cultural disease in the western world. We are a society of complainers. I am not complaining about it. I am just stating a fact.

As was recently commented on this subject in the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Our complaining begins to curdle, to turn back on itself, poison the heart, turns us nasty and low. It shifts from merely being a national mood or general temperament into a way of being; a wiring, deep, and harmful, and permanent.”

That writer was onto something, because whatever we allow into our minds begins to rewire our neural network. A recent study published in Behavioral Brain research, September 2011 by the Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University, in Germany, measured the neural effect of negative and positive words verses neutral words. This functional MRI study showed positive vs. negative words led to increased activation in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, which is associated with risk, fear, and decision-making processes, while negative vs. positive words induced increased activation of the insula, which is thought to impact perception, motor control, self-awareness, cognitive functioning, and interpersonal experience.In business I am always looking for the “so what,” aspect to anything.

Don’t give me facts and features, tell me the benefit, is the mantra of any successful sales consultation. With these sort of studies, I am often left with a “so what” feeling, like a great film without a conclusion. What does it really mean? In his book on neuro-plasticity The Brain that Changes Itself, Norman Doidge M.D. states plainly that the brain has the capacity to rewire itself and/or form new neural pathways—if we do the work.

Just like exercise, the work requires repetition and activity to reinforce new learning. Most people discover that the biggest source of complaint is them. Did you?

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