Wellness Wednesdays with Diana: Your Weekly Dose of Happiness, Nutrition, and Fitness Tips
A Complaint Free Day
Over the past four months, I barely let a day go by without uttering variations of “it’s so cold” and “I hate this weather.” Social media platforms provide us with a number of ways to voice our complaints. Whether it’s a text to my best friend or a meme on Instagram, I found a medium to voice my disapproval of something I have absolutely no control over.
I try to monitor my negative thoughts, and I try to make note of the highlights of my day, but what I never considered was completely eliminating complaints from my daily conversations. While I try to uphold a positive attitude, I still find myself implicitly—through sarcasm, for instance—or explicitly making three or four comments that are nothing but sugar-coated, disguised complaints.
“My food took forever to get here.”
“This weather just quite simply sucks.”
One of my professors challenged us to four days of abstaining from complaints. I’m inviting you to join me on this challenge. The rules are, of course, that you have to start over whenever you slip up and complain. With inclement weather approaching, at least for us East Coast folks, the temptation is great. You take your pick: the complaint about the walk to class in the morning or how the snow storm delayed your flight. Or did it cancel your bus ticket? What about your warm latte which turned into an iced coffee by the time you got home?
There’s so many opportunities to complain over the next couple of days, but I think we can keep each other accountable. I’m not asking for much, considering the Huffington Post recently published an article about a guy who went twenty-one days without complaining! Another woman reported that she gave up complaining for Lent. If they can do it, so can we.
What’s the incentive? HuffPost’s Tim Ferriss swears this no-complaint experiment made him a better problem solver.
“My lazier thinking evolved from counterproductive commiserating to reflexive systems thinking.”
Others said it made them focus on seeking solutions and suggestions instead of just voicing concerns in a helpless, I’ve-given-up voice. My professor said it made her more mindful of her thoughts which in turn gave her more control of her emotions.
While I’d love to complain to you about what happened on my walk home when I forgot my umbrella earlier today, I can’t because my complaint-free vow starts today.
I hope you’re with me on this challenge. If you manage to make it through these four days without complaining and feel like you’ve learned nothing, then come see me. We can complain to each other about it, but I doubt that will be the case!
Diana Gonimah is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania from Cairo, Egypt. She is a writer, Features Editor, and Recruiting Chair at the UPenn chapter of Her Campus. She’s passionate about psychology, journalism, creative writing, and helping people in any capacity. Check our website every Wednesday for Diana’s column!