Little Miss Sunshine

Recently the Sisterhood accepted a challenge to go 24 hours without complaining. Sounds simple enough, right? But I discovered that it’s more difficult than you would think. If I’m being honest I was successful for about three hours before the first complaint rolled off my tongue. Determined to do better, I would regroup and start over more than once throughout the day. So on the surface, this day looked like an abject failure, but in fact I did learn some things about myself.

Rise and Shine

I am an early riser and appreciate time alone to prepare for the day ahead. My routine involves some meditation and journaling along with a good cup of coffee and perhaps a bit of scrolling to catch up on the news of the day. Given that my husband is usually fast asleep at this point I thought this would be the easy part of the day to avoid complaining since I was by myself.🤣 And it was, although I did realize that in my journaling I do a fair bit of complaining. But that doesn’t really count does it? And better to do it on paper than out in the world. That’s what I told my self anyway…

I’m Talking To You

Once my husband arose the challenge really began. I was hyper aware of what I was saying to him and thinking a lot more before I spoke. This held me in good stead and was made somewhat easier because of the fact that my husband is one of the most positive people you would ever meet and truly lives by the golden rule “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” I commented on what a beautiful day it was and chatted with him about what we were both doing that day. So far so good. That is until I discovered a newspaper that he had been reading the night before left under our bed. Again… I complained to him about this before I even realized what I was doing. This was all of 10 am😬 and it looked like it was going to be a long day ahead.

Daily Activities

Next it was off to exercise class and then some grocery shopping. My exercise class instructor is a very lively, positive and energetic person. She works us hard so I thought I wouldn’t have the time or energy to complain, although I did catch myself a couple of times when she had us doing squats and lunges. I wanted to complain sooo badly, but I refrained. A small victory, but victory nonetheless.

After class some of us go for coffee and I’ve enjoyed these times getting to know my fellow participants. But on this day, with my focus on trying not complain, I noticed that quite a bit of the conversation revolved around complaints. I wish I could say that with my heightened awareness about complaining I refrained, but there may have been just a teensy slip when someone mentioned how fast food prices were rising.

On to grocery shopping. As I cruised the aisles and checked items off my shopping list I was left with a couple of things that were out of stock. When the checkout clerk asked me if I found everything I was looking for, without thinking I said no and complained to her about the missing items. So back to square one again.

Live and Learn

At this point, with my day more than half over and several fails under my belt, I decided to end the challenge knowing that I had learned some useful things:

Firstly, the obvious lesson was that I was unaware how much I complain. It turned out to be a lot more than I realized and I guess that is the point of this challenge. The good news is, since doing this challenge, I am trying hard to find more of the positive in a any given situation and not engage in complaining. Results so far are mixed.

Secondly, negativity bias is alive and well in my brain. My focus tends to go to right to the things that are negative while overlooking things that are positive. I’m told this is a holdover in our brains from prehistoric times when focusing on the negatives could mean the difference between being eaten by a predator or surviving to live another day. In our modern world when we don’t have to worry about day-to-day survival, I assume that this natural focus on the negative makes it easier to complain. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.😂

And lastly, this challenge reminded me that I grew up with a great role model for always finding the positive in life – our mom Betty. I can’t think of a time when I ever heard her really complain about anything. This memory gives me great motivation for doing better in my life. And I know for sure Betty Would Love That!