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It's time for me to make it clear what all this is all about.

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Hello! I’m Cianna Stewart, founder of the No Complaining Project. I define complaining as expressing grief, pain, or discontent without contributing to solving the problem. Many of us complain as an unconscious habit, and it’s hurting us and the people around us in more ways than we realize. My goal is to share tools and information to support you in changing your life and improving your relationships by shifting from complaining to taking action. Quitting complaining seems simple, but it goes deep, and once you stop, you’ll never want to start again. I hope you’ll join me in Going NoCo - NoCo for No Complaining. Your world will look different if you do.

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Last weekend, when I was planning out this episode, it was Memorial Day weekend and I was looking around me at all of the States that were starting to open up, and the conversations that were happening on Facebook with people getting so frustrated that so many people were outside not wearing masks. And there were all these people angry, looking at photographs of parties and people gathering.

And this was overlapping with approaching a hundred thousand deaths in the United States from COVID-19 Looking at how people were talking about everything and how I was feeling at the time and the conversations that were happening online, I decided to focus the episode on judgment and blame, and to talk about how judgment is fueled by emotions. Sometimes it's masking those emotions. It's an easier thing to feel judgment of another person than it is to actually deal with, in this case, with the fear that most people were experiencing around this pandemic and still are experiencing. A very real fear, especially as we were climbing in our numbers. Still don't have a control on this thing. And yet, there are so many people who seem to be taking it so casually. And it's easier to feel judgment. It's more comfortable. But we can't address that judgment and you can't feel peace if you don't actually deal with the underlying emotions.

So that was my plan for this episode.

And then Chris Cooper, a birder in New York city was threatened by a white woman who decided to use her whiteness as a weapon against him. And that was the next thing that everybody was talking about in social media and everywhere.

And the conversation on judgment was still relevant, but with a slightly different focus. Now adding on the fact that the judgment that is the most fierce is one that points back to some kind of failing in yourself.

There are so many people judging that white woman, Amy Cooper, who haven't dealt with their own racism, their own ways of judging and taking advantage of their privilege when did they feel threatened. Again, we're still riding a fear.   She was feeling afraid because she has stereotypes about black men that she will not acknowledge, buried in her mind. But she clearly leveraged it when she made that call and threatened him with her whiteness.

And then, and then this week kept going. Trump and Twitter got into a battle because Twitter decided to fact check him. And Facebook said that it wouldn't fact check the president

And a democratic state representative learned that a Republican colleague had tested positive for COVID-19 and the other Republicans kept it silent. And when he flew into a rage and recorded himself. And, and again, listening to that recording, I could, you know, obviously he's really, really angry. And you can also hear so much fear. And this feeling of feeling betrayed. Having done so much work, thinking of these people as his colleagues and then being betrayed by them, and having his life and so many other people's lives, put in jeopardy for partisan reasons.

And then there was more. And then... Still this week, our short week. Longest short week. Then George Floyd was killed by a cop kneeling on his neck for nine minutes while he was pleading for his life.

And, and then that anger just turns into rage. And there is so much fear. And there's so much betrayal. A new level of betrayal.

And so now it feels like the thing that I need to share with you here is that the true goal of doing all of this work is to move from complaining to taking action. To taking responsibility. Not just wringing hands and wondering why this is happening and feeling despair and giving up. It's actually to start getting out there. To get educated and teaching. To support people who are doing the work. To protest. To vote. To give money. To do what you can to make the world better.

I'm devoted to doing what I can to making this world more kind and more just. That's what the no complaining project is about. It's that complaining isn't enough. It's that you have to do something. You have to take action. You have to take responsibility. You have to own your part in everything. To recognize and to, to be an active agent in your own life, and to do what you can to shape the world into what you want it to be.

It's not time for complaining. It's time for action.

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Thank you for choosing the podcast for the No Complaining Project.

It was written, recorded, and edited by me, Cianna Stewart.

All our music is by the multi-talented Daniel Berkman. Find him on Bandcamp.

The transcript is in the show notes, and you can find more tips and links to my book at GoNoCo.com. That’s G-O-N-O-C-O.com. 

Thank you for giving the gift of No Complaining to yourself and to the people around you. 

Until next time, Go NoCo!

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