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Coach Paradise: How to Move Beyond Gripe Sessions

Dear Coach Paradise,
I have a cousin who complains all the time. I don't think that she realizes that she does it, or how negative it sounds — but I do know that it is driving me crazy. I don't know if she is doing it more, or if I am just noticing it more, but whenever I see her number in my caller ID I hesitate before I pick up. I am also more and more aware of how I complain about stuff, and when I hear her, I think how I must sound to my friends and family. Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with her and complainers in general? Sometimes it really does feel good just to have a gripe session, but mostly it doesn't.
Complaining in Paradise
Dear Complaining,
I have family and friends like your cousin. Don't we all? I feel badly for them, but shy away from being the recipient of all that negative energy. The fact that you are looking for suggestions lets me know that you want to "be there" for your cousin, but in a new way.
"Complaining is like bad breath — you notice it when it comes out of someone else's mouth but not out of your own." This and other wakeup calls are contained in Will Bowen's book A Complaint Free World. He is a unity minister and author who came up with a practical tool to help people focus on what's going right in their lives rather than on what's wrong. He passed out purple rubber bracelets (like the yellow "Live Strong" ones) and suggested that when people heard themselves complaining, they move the bracelet from one arm to the other. He started a kind of movement and asked people to try to go 21 days without complaining. It apparently takes the most dedicated people four to eight months to reach this goal.
I found this really fascinating, so I welcome your question and am grateful to your cousin, the complainers in my life and to my own griping tendencies for providing the motivation to try and stop complaining. My new motto is "compliment instead of complaint." Perhaps you can see your cousin as your wakeup call, and if you begin pausing whenever you feel a complaint welling up or when you hear yourself griping, you will become an inspiration. It may be no fun to complain to you anymore because misery loves company, as we all know.
It is a mind-expanding experience to notice your complaints and to shift your attention to solutions and how you would like things to be. Not complaining doesn't mean that there are not things that bother us, or that we don't like. It means that our focus is on thinking proactive, positive thoughts. When we think different thoughts, we tend to feel differently (better), and then we tend to act in ways that are more helpful and effective.
Thoughts, feelings, action is the way things go, so becoming a non-complainer has profound implications.
When you look beyond the problem to the solution, you are looking beyond the complaint to doing something. Complaining keeps people stuck, helps avoid responsibility, passes the buck, justifies inaction, keeps our expectations at a low ebb and in general creates the kind of world we are complaining about.
You may or may not want to pass this on to your cousin. I hope that it provides lots of food for thought and serves to help in creating a complaint-free world, which is really all any of us are after.
To your fabulous, complaint-free week!
Coach Paradise
Editor's note: Coach Paradise (AKA Anne Nayer), Professional Life Coach, is a member of the International Coaching Federation, an MSW clinical social worker-psychotherapist and a medical case manager with 30 years experience working with people of all shapes, sizes and challenges. For further information about her services, call 774-4355, visit her website or email her.

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