Learning from Complaining

There are only two things you can do for yourself. One is conception, and the other is conviction. All the work of creation rests with another than you. For no man is responsible for anything in this life except his thought and his belief.
Andersen, Uell S..

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “complain” as “to express grief, pain, or discontent.”...By its very definition, a complaint is spoken.
Bowen, Will.

Switching Wrists

Well I am now wearing the elastic I had placed on my left wrist yesterday, on my right.  :) All good.  I love this exercise because it gets me examining my internal and external behaviours. I was actually quite surprised to discover that I do pretty good in the "outward complaining" department.  I caught myself three times and though  others said "no" when I sought to validate my complaining by asking "Was that  a complaint?"; and though they may not obviously express grief, pain or discontent ...I recorded these three things as complaints because of the negativity factor.  Three complaints in 24 hours is pretty good, don't you think? And yes I am recording my complaints so I can better understand them and restructure those mental formations in my mind that are less than positive.

First Two Complaints Based On Assumption and Bias

The first two came during a certain intense frustration last evening looking for an individual who was scheduled to go into rehab today after a year long wait to get in.  He went on  a seven day pre-rehab binge and we couldn't find him anywhere. This individual will literally die if he does not recover.  And though that sounds like a negative statement and a complaint in itself, I can assure you it is a simple fact.

So while we were looking all over the area for him, I could feel familiar frustration, fear and worry...anger and resentment brewing to the surface but I was very "cool" about the whole thing.  That is until my suspicious, past conditioned  and assuming mind stepped up to question the behaviour of one of his friends who went out of his way to help us find him.  I questioned out loud , "I wonder what his real motivation for helping us was? Was there something in that apartment he didn't want us to see?"  I "assumed" he too was an addict, and as an "addict" he would want all addicts to stay addicts and his motive for getting into the car with us had to be for some other reason then helping us get his friend into recovery. The words that came out of my mouth, helped me to see what kinds of seeds were growing from my store consciousness.

Shortly after that, as we were reviewing the days events to determine the possible where abouts of this individual we were looking for, D. mentioned a few things this individual had said to him.  I found myself calmly shaking my head saying, "You know we cannot believe a word he says when he is using like this."

Man...how negative is that...to dismiss the core goodness of  human beings to their exterior conditions? To stigmatize and stereotype a group of individuals, who are inflicted in this way, as selfish and uncaring and always lying. Yes desperation for a certain survival leads some  individuals who are severely addicted to do some dishonest and less than ethical things....but to "absolute" everything is unfair.  

Recognizing that I did that ( whether there was an ulterior motive for helping or not; whether he lied or not) really knocked some sense into me about a conditioned belief/ seed/ prompter within my mind. I do not want to water that seed any more.  I am not going to beat myself up for it, either.  I am just going to observe it, and learn from it.  Hopefully, I will be more compassionate and grateful as I look at individuals who suffer from such life threatening and desperation inducing conditions with less prejudice and assumption in the future.

The third complaint came this morning when I, because of a hot humid environment, and extra hot flashes as well as post crisis anxiety...slept less than well, (what I just wrote was a complaint, wasn't it?) received a call at 7a m ( after I just fell asleep again) from my daughter who was looking for money for gas.  Now there is a lot of extras around this request that I will not get into but I will just say...that in my blurry eyed and grumpy state I was not nice.  I said nothing except, "Ohhhh A." followed by a big pathetic sigh.  And I believe I hung up without saying  the usual "goodbye and, love you".

Needless to say my elastic has a new home and I begin again lol.

It is all good.  It may take me a while to get my 21 days of complaint free living in, to break the habit of complaining once and for all, but I am determined to.  In the process , I get to learn so much more about my mind.  How cool is that?


All is well.

Andersen, Uell S.. Three Magic Words . BN Publishing. Kindle Edition.


Bowen, Will. A Complaint Free World: How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted (p. 28). Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony. Kindle Edition.