[TRANSCRIPT]

Hey, everyone. Cianna Stewart here with the No Complaining podcast. I'm recording this on December 29th of 2020. We are finally getting close to the end of this year and I don't know about you, but for me it can't come soon enough. 

Of course, cause it's December 29th, we are actually rolling into New Year’s, and traditionally this has been a day for a lot of people to take up the No Complaining pledge and to try to corral how they speak and how they think and reshape things for the better.

And I just want to offer that this has been a year of so many restrictions and so much  disruption to whatever any of us had planned. And it's really hard right now to predict the future. Also there's enough struggle going on right now that it starts to feel a little unreasonable to talk about doing another restriction. And so, for the first time, I'm going to recommend that maybe the No Complaining pledge is not the right thing to do this year. And instead to think about things that will help to make you feel grounded, to feel expansive and to generally feel better.

Of course, I do think that taking the no complaining pledge ultimately does do all of those things, but I wanted to give you something that's a little bit more concrete and also more directly focused on helping you feel grounded and expansive and feeling better.  

And the thing that I've found that can do that the most easily is to really engage in a gratitude practice. Now, I'm sure that many of you already have a practice in some way, but if it's not formalized, I would recommend making it more formal and more regular. And the twist that I'm going to put on it right now is to also make it more focused - and I'll go into that a little bit more in just a moment. 

Ultimately, for a formal and regular gratitude practice, I would recommend writing between one and three gratitudes a day. Writing down into a journal or a Google doc or pieces of paper that you put into the same jar, something that is special and consistent, something that if you ever wanted to go back to it, you could, but more than anything, it's something that will help to trigger you to go into that mental space when you take up the pen and the journal, or you open that doc, or you pull that, that jar out and you look at it. There’s something about the ritualizing of it that can help to get you into that head space. And so I'm also recommending that you write or type. 

I'm very fond of the physical act of writing. There is something about committing to words, the gratitude that you have in your head, which makes it much more of a commitment and helps you to get clarity on it because you actually have to write it down in some way. And typing is also great for many, many people. And it also reinforces that whatever it is that you're focusing on.

So there's a clarity that comes by forcing yourself to put it down into words.  And also, if you get into writing it with a pen or a pencil on paper, in a journal somewhere, there's something in the physical act of writing that helps to encode it more deeply into your mind and into your heart and your memory so that it has a more lasting effect. That said, sometimes it's easiest to make sure that you always have access to it. And for many of us, we live on our phones or on our computers. And so don't beat yourself up about the technique as much as find whichever way works for you and just do it consistently, find something that you can do easily and consistently. 

So I said to write down one to three gratitudes a day, and that range is really based on whether or not you're going to do a general gratitude practice or a focused gratitude practice.

I recommend using a "write down three things every day" approach when you're doing a much more general gratitude practice. It'll make you reach a little bit harder beyond the most obvious thing right in front of you, and that practice of pulling a little bit harder is actually very, very useful.

You can do that, you know, writing three things down in the morning as a way of setting your intentions for the day and getting you into that head space to start your day well. Or you can do it at the end of the day as a way to reflect back on what happened during the day and to help you ease into sleep. Either, either one is fine.

And I find that the start or end of the day is usually a more controlled time for many of us. But if you have to do it in the middle of the day, um, again, setting a time that works for you and finding a way for it to be consistent is the most important thing, is to make sure that it's something that you can maintain by building it in as a habit.

Now, if you want to supercharge it and go a little NoCo style on this, I suggest choosing a singular focus for your gratitude practice and to focus on what it is that you most complain about. So, whether it's you're complaining about your job or a spouse or a partner or your kids or the government or maybe your body, your health — whatever it is that you find yourself consistently complaining about, do a targeted gratitude practice, forcing yourself to write down one thing a day that you appreciate, and that you're grateful for about that specific thing. Now don't get snarky. Get real. And it's a way of expanding your attention beyond only the things that you are consistently complaining about. And sometimes it can simply be, you know, a much more surface thing at the beginning, especially if you're just at the beginning of doing this practice about your complaining target, but invite yourself to commit to doing this every day for 30 days, as a minimum. And if it still hasn't shifted, you can continue it after that. Ideally you actually do it all year long and get to the end of the year with an entire record of 365 things that you appreciate about whatever it is. Especially if it's something like your spouse or your kids or something that is really, really important to you, but is still something that's actually very frustrating to you at the same time.

So that would be my invitation for your supercharged approach to a non-resolution, a NoCo focused thing that isn't so restrictive. 

I hope that this helps you. And I hope that 2021 is a good year for all of you, for all of us. And I just want to say thank you very much for your attention over the amount of time that you've been here as part of our little NOCO family.

I am very, very grateful for you.

And I thank you for. Taking on this NoCo journey for yourself and for everyone in your life. And for inviting me in and allowing me to support you. Thank you very much. 

Happy New Year.