Still Complaint Free (Mostly)
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010Last week, Tim and I made a pact to have a complaint free week. We only had a couple slips, and we caught ourselves immediately. I think that’s pretty good.
Being complaint free felt so good that we’ve extended the one week to forever. No complaining, period.
That’s the goal, anyway.
There’s a bit of a learning curve.
We’re learning that instead of complaining (as in looking at something from a negative perspective), we can look at something we don’t like and discuss it from one or two perspectives: from a what is perspective that’s judgment neutral or from a this is what I want instead perspective.
For example, Tim’s computer is old, and he has to reformat the hard drive from time to time. It’s almost time to do it again. His computer is moving slowly, and he has a lot of work to do. The other day, Tim said, “When I’m done with this project, I need to make time to reformat the hard drive again.” His tone was matter of fact. He wasn’t complaining. It was just stating what is and moving on.
I said, “Okay. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we got an influx of cash and could buy a new computer before you need to reformat the old one?”
The old, complaining me would have said, “What? Again? I sure wish we had the money to update our computers. I hate wasting time with reformatting.”
I’m learning.
Law of Attraction Brings More Complaint Free Help
A couple days after I posted that Tim and I had made our complaint free pact, my friend, Kathy, told me she happened to be reading Complaint Free Relationships by Will Bowen. (Isn’t this law of attraction evidence great? She just happened to be reading about being complaint free when Tim and I made our pact???) On Friday, Kathy loaned me the book and I read it the next evening.
This book is Bowen’s follow-up to A Complaint Free World. I haven’t read that one, but Complaint Free Relationships has great advice for becoming and remaining complaint free. Bowen’s advice is essentially what Tim and I have discovered on our own: you can still state your preferences without complaining. Just because you’re complaint free doesn’t mean you have to eat soup with a fly in it or be okay with your spouse leaving his socks all over the house (in our house, this isn’t a problem: socks on the floor are collected by our helpful pup, Ducky).
You can state what you want without the negative tone. And this is what Abraham-Hicks’ the “vortex” is all about. So it’s no wonder that having a complaint free week has put me in the vortex more than I’ve been in a very long time.
Complaint Free Benefits
Being complaint free has other pay-offs too:
1. It improves the quality of your conversations. When you are consciously staying in a positive place, you don’t hook into other people’s complaints, and you naturally lead the conversation into more enjoyable topics.
2. It uplifts the people around you. If you announce that you’re complaint free, people make an effort not to complain (yes, even my mother has done this). And if they do complain, and you say nothing, they run out of steam and say, “Oh, that’s right. You’re not complaining.”
3. It brings more positive aspects into your awareness. When you’re not muddying up your thoughts with observations of what’s wrong, you have more room in your head for thinking of things you want and noticing things that are right about what’s around you.
Of course, being complaint free is about more than not TALKING about negative things. It’s about not THINKING about them either.
I discovered Sunday evening that I have a little work to do on that front.
Using Pictures To Stay Complaint Free
Tim had made me a promise last week that he didn’t keep. I value people who keep promises, and I told him that I needed him to follow through on what he promised. I told him he had a choice: he could not make the promise in the first place or make the promise then keep it.
I thought I was being complaint free because my tone was level and I was consciously stating what I wanted. But inside, I could feel the anger building. Tim has a pattern of not following through, and he’s done some things that have betrayed my trust. As I spoke, I noticed that though my words were neutral, my thoughts weren’t. I was activating all the old frustration and rage.
Okay. Quick mental shift. I tried to find a thought about Tim keeping his promises that felt good, and I wasn’t able to do so. Too much hurt on that one to move up the emotional scale that fast.
In Complaint Free Relationships, Bowen talks about the inner pictures we have of the people we relate with. When the pictures are positive, we feel great about them. When they’re negative, we feel negative.
So I shifted my attention to what I love about Tim. I put new pictures about him in my head. Instead of the “Tim doesn’t follow through” pictures, I pulled up pictures of Tim loving me, of Tim caring for our dog, of Tim listening to me and being supportive. And I did this out loud. I started listing his great qualities.
Of course, he liked that because he was feeling bad about breaking his promise. And I immediately felt my energy shift. I could see his shift too.
When you’re going to be complaint free, it has to start in your thoughts before it moves to your mouth.
So I’m going to keep practicing complaint free living. It feels pretty darn good.
Have you made your complaint free pact yet?
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