[TRANSCRIPT]

Hi, welcome to the No Complaining Project podcast, where we talk about all things related to Going NoCo - NoCo for "no complaining" - in order to improve our relationships and to be kinder to others around us. And to generally just be more connected with folks in the world, you can always find more on this topic at my website, gonoco.com. That's G O N O C o.com and I'm Cianna Stewart. And I'm glad that you're here.

Today I want to tell you why I even latched on to complaining in the first place. I mean, out of all the possible things to choose to focus on in order to become a better and happier person, what was it about complaining that really took hold of me and made such a big difference?
First, a little bit about me. I don't know about you, but I'm someone who can very easily be distracted. I identify as a lifelong learner, and that usually means that I sign up for so many things that I can even lose track of all of the classes and books and things that I've signed up for. And when it came to self-improvement, it was definitely the same kind of thing where I was reading all these different suggestions on how to set goals, how to be more intentional, how to improve your life. And there were just so many that I would end up forgetting what it was that I had even planned to do. And then in the end I would end up not really doing much of anything. That was really, really frustrating for me.

And then add to that, that there's social media, there's everything interesting that streaming, plus I have piles of books just everywhere and every intention of reading them. And that's just a lot. It's so easy for me to forget what it is that I had planned to do. And I've actually had to create artificial systems to force me to check in and it usually involves somebody else who's far more organized and on it than I am, who actually helps me remember that this was what I intended to do.

But the thing about complaining is that it actually came up all the time. Like, every day, I would hear somebody complaining... multiple times a day... around the office at home with my friends, you know, even in comedy movies, television, all of the environment everywhere around me, it felt like people were complaining.

And once I started to pay attention to it, it really started to bother me. It coming up around me all the time, it started to feel like I was being reminded of my intentions without even really trying. I didn't even have to really seek it out. And that helped me to, I don't know, stay on task and to actually deepen my understanding and relationship and aversion to complaints.

And through all of this one particular kind became the most useful, and that's what I ended up calling "micro complaints." And this started by noticing other people and they would do things that were really not a big deal. And they were just part of normal conversation. But they all felt like complaints to me. Like sitting around at the office at lunchtime and we would order food and then people would be joking or complaining about the packaging of all of the deliveries.

I would go out somewhere with friends and then somebody would say, "Oh, this room is cold," and then they would not put on their jacket, or they would just basically not do anything about it. Or people complaining about how the news is so negative and it sets them on edge every morning, and it's really hard to take. And just being so aggravated by it, but then continuing to watch the news every morning and not turning it off. Or even just people complaining about the weather. Like, what are you supposed to do about that? You can't do anything.

So all of these are not major deals. They're really incidental, smaller things that were just happening in the moment. They're not life-changing, hugely emotionally wraught complaints. But they were daily and they do stack up. And they're the kind that you hear all the time.

And the kicker is in almost all of these situations - or in all of the situations that I was just describing - people were doing absolutely nothing to change the situation. They weren't fixing anything. And even beyond that, they weren't even expecting change. So saying these things was just really being negative for its own sake. And that just really started to grate on me.

It would actually make it hard for me to stay in conversations. Because one of the things I noticed is that often when a conversation would start from this place - would start with a negative comment or would start just griping about something - then others would often pile in and add their own thing, or it would just set the tenor for the room.

And that would just be the tone, at least for a while of the conversation. It would actually have to take a lot of extra work to put it into a positive or even neutral  - much less an excited and, you know, gratifying, nourishing - way of talking to each other, that would just take so much work and people generally wouldn't do it.

And so when these conversations would go on for awhile, I ended up just mostly having to drop out. And then I'll admit, it's not like I was being a saint in all of this. I would start to catch myself doing it. I would join in the conversation. "This is the way that the conversation is going. I'm going to be part of it. I want to be part of the group." Or also is just triggering my own bad behaviors that I was trying to change.

And so I would just join in and then I would hear myself joining in and then I really couldn't stand it, hearing my own voice saying these things would actually remind me of the pledge. Even hearing other people say these things and feeling my own negative reaction to it would remind me of my pledge to Go NoCo, would remind me that I wanted to be different, that I wanted to have different kinds of conversations, that I wanted to be more intentional in the way that I spoke, that I wanted to be more connected with others, as opposed to just knocking things down. It reminded me of how I wanted to be in the world and what kind of change I wanted to make inside of myself. And so micro complaints became like a kind of a gateway trigger. A little reminder of how I wanted to speak, how I wanted to relate. It reminded me of the fact that I could make choices about my speech, that I even had choices that complaining was a habit and that I wanted to break that habit. And even being around a lot of people who had that habit, sometimes I just couldn't. I had to separate myself from them and other times I would stay, but I would be very conscious of my own habitual responses and then learn how to manage that so that I could be more intentional in my speech. So ultimately, one of the reasons that complaining became the thing that triggered all of the other hugely impactful life changes for me is simply because they were so common.

And as soon as I started really hearing complaints and responding to them in this way and thinking of them as reminders during the day, then it really helped to keep me on task. And even my highly distractable self couldn't avoid paying attention to this. So it was really useful. And I guess in that way, one of my gratitudes is that people do complain all the time and it was useful for me to hear that.
But ultimately of course, I think it would be so much better if we didn't complain all the time. If we spent our time. Connected to each other, appreciating each other, being kind to each other and also making the kinds of changes that we want to see in the world instead of just complaining about them and doing nothing about it.

So that's it for today. I hope it was helpful. You can always find more at the website, gonoco.com. That's G O N O C O.com. And I hope that you pop on over there sometime and drop me a line and tell me wh...