#147: Breaking Down the Habit of Complaints - Episode 1
Sep 25, 2023
Thor Challgren
Ready to break free from the endless loop of complaints? Join me in this first episode of a four part-series on complaining.
In this episode, I explore why complaining rarely solves problems. The key takeaway: redirecting your energy toward proactive solutions can change your life.
Inspired by Dr. James Mellon's "Mental Muscle: 16 Weeks of Spiritual Boot Camp," I'll explore the foundation of complaining and how it reflects our unconscious mind.
When are you most likely to complain?
What situations or relationships trigger your complaints?
And most importantly, what can you do about it?
I'll delve into these questions and more, using insights from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture to guide our thoughts.
By the end of our discussion, I hope to inspire you to invest your energy into solving problems rather than complaining about them, and in doing so, achieve greater happiness and fulfillment in your life.
As always, thanks for listening!
You can find Dr. James Mellon's book, "Mental Muscle", here on Amazon: https://a.co/d/2Eo6s4y
Ready to break free from the endless loop of complaints? Join me in this first episode of a four part-series on complaining.
In this episode, I explore why complaining rarely solves problems. The key takeaway: redirecting your energy toward proactive solutions can change your life.
Inspired by Dr. James Mellon's "Mental Muscle: 16 Weeks of Spiritual Boot Camp," I'll explore the foundation of complaining and how it reflects our unconscious mind.
When are you most likely to complain?
What situations or relationships trigger your complaints?
And most importantly, what can you do about it?
I'll delve into these questions and more, using insights from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture to guide our thoughts.
By the end of our discussion, I hope to inspire you to invest your energy into solving problems rather than complaining about them, and in doing so, achieve greater happiness and fulfillment in your life.
As always, thanks for listening!
You can find Dr. James Mellon's book, "Mental Muscle", here on Amazon: https://a.co/d/2Eo6s4y
What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it, don't complain. Those are the words of Maya Angelou and named Notre Dame football coach. Lou Holtz said never tell your problems to anyone. 20% don't care and the other 80% are glad you have them. I'm not sure if other people are glad that you have them, but it is worth considering. Do we complain too much? This week I start a new series on complaining. Hi, I'm Thor Challgren. Welcome to every day and you thought where I share a new thought, a new perspective. And this week I'm talking all about complaining Because I just finished the second week of a 16 week program.
Thor Challgren:
This comes from mental muscle. This is a program 16 weeks of spiritual boot camp. I'm doing it live with Dr James Mellon, but his book is available on Amazon. Put the link in the show description below. And I have to tell you this is such a great lesson for me because this is actually the second take of me recording this episode, because I did the entire first take and I want to edit it and discovered hey, where's the sound? Apparently, for some reason, I had no sound on that take. So in that moment I had a choice Was I can gonna complain about it or was I going to do something about it and in this case I could change it. I can go back and record it again. So I'm going to trust that there is a reason why I am now re recording this episode again, but that's not why I'm here. But I just think it was super interesting and funny to me that that actually happened on the episode where I was introducing the idea of no complaining. I'm sharing this because I've done this journey. Now I've done mental muscle, the live program. Probably this is at least my fifth time, and each time I do it I learn a new distinction. So I'm gonna share this week my thoughts on this idea of complaining. It is also interesting that doctor James has put complaining and no complaining as sort of the very beginning foundation of a sixteen week program, because it is foundational in the way that we decide to use our mind.
Thor Challgren:
When we are complaining, often we're unconscious, we're not thinking about things or we're playing the role of a victim, and so this idea of spending an entire week of looking at do you complain about things and if so, what is that say what are the belief systems behind that? So that's really why you're doing this. Again, I highly recommend looking at the book. There's a lot more where he talks about it. But what I'm gonna do is share my own experiences and apparently my podcast episode experiences in complaining and, for the record, I did not complain, I didn't even swear I did, I was just like okay, I don't have any audio, what am I gonna do about it? And that's the place that I hope that you get you.
Thor Challgren:
But for right now, the first thing you can do between now and 24 hours from now is look at your own life and examine, be mindful of the times when you may be complained. What you're looking for are the circumstances. Why do you complain? When are you most likely to complain, and about what Is it about? Situations? Is it about relationships? Is it about your schedule, your time? Whatever it is? Notice, pay attention to why you are complaining. And then tomorrow we're going to get into definitions of what complaining is and I'm going to share my own personal definition in one way that I think about how to avoid complaining, how to change it, how to fix it.
Thor Challgren:
I want to close this episode with a quote from Randy Pausch. You may know him from the last lecture. He was a university professor who knew that he had a limited amount of time left in his life and he wanted to pass down his knowledge, his wisdom, to his family. So he gave this lecture called the last lecture. You can look it up and here's what he said. I think this is just beautiful, brilliant thoughts, he said, "If you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you'd be surprised at how well things can work out. Complaining does not work as a strategy. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals and it won't make us any happier. That's the show for today. I hope you enjoy this. If you're watching on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe to the show. If you're listening to the podcast, please subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app. As always, thanks for watching. As always, thanks for listening.