Wouldn’t the world be a cool place if everyone complained less?
That’s the mission of a guy named Will Bowen who is the Lead Minister of the One Community Spiritual Center in Kansas City, MO. He got the idea of using a purple bracelet to bring your attention to your own complaining. Every time you catch yourself complaining, you move the bracelet to the other wrist. So far nearly 6 million purple Complaint Free bracelets have been sent to people in more than 106 countries.
Complaining has to be one of the most annoying and unproductive habits that we engage in. Nobody likes a whiner!
Will is on to a great idea. Awareness is a key element in changing behaviour. You have to know how much you are complaining in order to become complaint free. By moving the bracelet from wrist to wrist, you are drawing your attention to your complaining – catching yourself in the complaining act.
Of course we all need to vent every now and then. But what usually happens is that complaining goes on and on and on and nothing actually changes.
Limit your complaining to 5 minutes max – one time per day max. Use that time to release your frustration and then move on to a concrete solution. When you get really good at recognizing that you are starting to complain, you can even go directly to the solution step.
If you have no interest being proactive about a solution to the problem you’re complaining about, then do us all a favour and stop complaining.
Oh yeah – one of the biggest complaints is about things that other people are doing. Switch it up and ask what YOU can do to improve or change the situation.
Problem solvers are so much more attractive.
Wealth is the number of things you can do without.
Dostoyevsky
Sometimes we get caught up in the collection of material possessions and lose sight of the richness in the simplest of things.
Take some time to consider what you really can’t do without. Chances are it doesn’t come from a big box store or with a fancy label.
Ask yourself what you might gain from downsizing, decluttering or simplifying. You likely are far wealthier than you think.
Leave a comment:
In what ways are you wealthy?
Never mistake motion for action.
Ernest Hemmingway
Are you constantly in motion?
Perpetually busy?
Just because you don’t have a spare minute doesn’t mean that you are engaged in purposeful activity. If you find yourself with a lack of energy or enthusiasm, take inventory of how you are spending your time.
Chances are there are lots of tasks that keep you busy but don’t help move you closer to your goals. Giving up some of your busy work makes more time and energy for activities that are fun, meaningful and satisfying.
Leave a comment:
What keeps you way too busy?
Get excited and enthusiastic about your own dream. This excitement is like a forest fire – you can smell it, taste it and see it from a mile away.
Denis Waitley
What are you excited about?
Looking for some cool and best of all – FREE – resources?
Check out this list of free personal development ebooks compiled by Peter at thechangeblog.
As he says… ”many of these ebooks require you to subscribe to regular updates or a newsletter to receive the ebook (you can always unsubscribe, right?”
Take some time to browse. The tidbit of info you’ve been looking for might just be a click away.
Here’s an interesting headline:
Recession offers potential for more work-life balance.
That’s according to a researcher at the University of Iowa based on what happened during the Depression.
His theory is that as people’s hours are cut at work during the current economic down turn, they will have more time for leisure activities.
Well sure. That makes sense. But actually creating more work-life balance?
I’m not so sure.
It’s one thing to say that when people have more time they will use it for non-work related stuff. If you have six more hours available to you because your shifts have been cut, then of course you will likely spend them with your family or on your own fitness or volunteering in your community.
It’s a completely different thing to say that people will consciously choose more work-life balance.
Life balance comes from making conscious choices about how you spend your time.
It’s about knowing your priorities and then aligning your actions with them. It relies on the same principles whether the economy is turned up, down or inside out.
I’m sure if you could add an extra 2 hours to the day – stretch it to 26 hours – you’d think that there was more potential for work-life balance. But what would likely happen is you would go back to your unbalanced ways once you got used to the extra 2 hours. Unless of course you starting making decisions about how you spend your time based on your priorities.
That’s exactly what will happen as a result of the recession too.
People are considering all kinds of life changes – simplifying things, getting back to basics, enjoying their leisure time. But they will return to old habits once the economy picks up unless there they make a concerted effort to do something different. During this recession people are reacting to the circumstances, rather than being proactive about creating the kind of life they want.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
You can take this opportunity and begin to create more life balance. You can be proactive. You can begin to do the things that will help you sustain this balance once the economy starts rockin’ and rollin’ again.
Tune in tomorrow for some tips to get you started.
Unhappiness is in not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.
Don Herold
What do you want?
Not geting what you want is often a wonderful stroke of luck.
Dalai Lama
What opportunties are you missing?
This weekend Edmonton Journal columnist Todd Babiak declared that he has been trained to be suspicious of positivity.
In these particularly gloomy doom & gloom times, it seems that positivity is in short supply if you watch TV or listen to talk radio. No wonder people seem a touch crankier than usual. Add to that last night’s switch to daylight savings time and plunging temperatures and tomorrow could quite likely be a stereotypical Monday.
I’m a big believer in choosing your attitude. I don’t find some of the current victim mentality terribly appealing. I prefer the concept of controlling what you can and letting go of the rest.
A wise guy once told me that misery doesn’t love company.
Misery loves miserable company.
Go ahead and choose positivity. Give it a concerted effort for 30 days and let me know how it goes. I’ll bet you find happiness loves happy company.
What’s your take on positivity?
I’m a big believer that you create your own reality by the thoughts and images you surround yourself with. You construct your own world view and through your thoughts and actions, you communicate it to the rest of us.
So I’m SO curious about something that I recently saw in a parking lot. Hanging from the rear view mirror of a car was a sign with a 1950’s style woman holding a tomato. And the sign said:
You say tomato and I says f#*%ck you.
Now that’s an interesting world view.
Some of you might say, Laurel lighten up. It’s meant as a joke. Yeah I get that might have been the motive. And here’s something else to consider:
How much time does someone spend in the car? How often are they looking at a sign that in essence says “It’s all about me buddy”?
No wonder we have such difficulty getting along with each other – locally and globally. How many people saw that sign and for a moment their energy shifted and they thought “yuck”. For how many people did it reinforce their own view that the world is a me-first place?
It’s often the little things that make a BIG difference.
Even the stuff we put on our bumper stickers, wear on our t-shirts and hang from our rear view mirrors. You get to communicate your world view all the time.
Let me know…
If you were going to hang a sign with your world view slogan on it, what would it say?
