Week three

Alright, I will have to admit that I haven't gotten better at recording my complaint record. I thought about lying, but it's just not worth it. Plus I can't lie about anything.

The biggest impact I've noticed is the perspective I've gained from really thinking about whether or not something is worth complaining about. I've also noticed that it really is necessary to complain in a constructive manner at times. Like, if something just isn't going well, or if it's not going the way I expected, it helps to talk to a friend or family member about it just to see what kind of advice they can offer. And sometimes it helps just to talk about it aloud to think of changes that can be made for improvement.

So, back to perspective. I knew this was going to be a big benefit of reduced complaining at the beginning of this project. So far, it has worked out - even when little annoying things happen that I might typically complain about in a social manner, I stop and really think about whether or not that little thing is going to negatively impact my day as a whole. Usually I know it's not going to, and it will be something I forget about pretty quickly. So why bother even bringing it up to somebody? This makes me think of the quote "Little people talk about other people. Average people talk about things. Great people talk about ideas." (author unknown, of course) Maybe when I'm tempted to talk about a little thing like that in a social situation, I will talk about ideas instead! That would make my conversations much more interesting. :) Overall, I love the perspective-taking that I'm doing with this project because it really makes me stop and think "is this really that bad?" I've always believed that people always want what they don't have. For instance, I hear people in school say that they can't wait to graduate and get a job. I also hear people who work full-time say that they wish they were back in school. While I can see the benefits to both of these situations, my goal is going to be "to be happy with what I have RIGHT NOW." Reducing the amount of complaining I do is allowing me to take the perspective required to really accomplish this goal and, so far, it's going great!

Week two

So, I don't have quite as much to say this week, as promised. It has been extremely difficult for me to keep track of my complaint-stopping abilities. In fact, I haven't actually made any written tallies of when I've been able to stop myself, even though I know I have. It is difficult to pull out my planner and mark it down every time I stop myself from complaining, but I'm just going to have to start doing it since I haven't been able to figure out any other way to keep track. It's just too hard to see if I'm reaching my goal without having the numbers right in front of me. I know I have slipped a few times, which is to be expected since I'm basically counting every negative thing that comes out of my mouth as a complaint. I am going to have to consciously think before I speak if I want to stop myself every time. As Nicole mentioned on my last post, complaining really is used frequently in social communication. I am noticing this so much more since I've started this project. There are many times where I've wanted to open up a new conversation with a small complaint (this is where it's difficult for me to state something I'm grateful for in place of the complaint - it seems out of place to START a conversation that way!). I think the purpose of this is just to initiate conversation by saying something that someone else can probably relate to.

Alright, I apologize for this being somewhat of an empty post, but I will try and work on keeping track over the next week, so I have more concrete data to work with.

Week one

The fall semester of my second and final year of grad school has just begun. Everyone in my program is required to take a Counseling seminar that meets a couple times during the semester and discusses the counseling side of speech-language pathology. We had our first meeting two weeks ago and were each assigned the task of planning a Personal Change project. Our professor explained that it does not have to be school-related and some examples she gave were "drinking 8 glasses of water a day" or "exercising 3 times a week." Once we come up with a change that we are personally invested in, we are required to journal about it once a week and participate in two online discussions twice during the semester with the rest of the class.

I have decided that my personal change is going to be made in the realm of verbal complaining. I can not take full credit for this idea, as I first heard of it from here. Since I heard about that 21-day challenge a few years ago, I've been wanting to try it out myself, or at least a variation of it. Since I'm required to do this personal change project for more than a 21-day period, I've decided to make my goal "to stop myself from complaining verbally at least 2 times per day." Ultimately, I would like to stop myself from complaining EVERY time I have the urge, but I want to be realistic and understand that sometimes it helps to vent to someone you can trust about something that is bothering you. My professor replied to my personal change idea with the information that, when you take away a behavior, you have to replace it with something else. She gave me the idea of, instead, stating something that I'm grateful for. I am still struggling with how to do this without feeling like it is too contrived. I wouldn't mind thinking to myself something I'm grateful for, but saying it out loud and out of place (to my conversational partners) still seems difficult, thought I admittedly haven't tried it yet.

I will briefly discuss how this project has been going during the past week. One of the first few days of this project, I had a very difficult night at work. It was extremely challenging for me to bite my tongue so that I wouldn't complain. That night really got me thinking about the specifics of complaining and what actually counts or what is just a discussion or statement. For example, if I have to get up at 5:30 AM the next day and I simply say to someone "I have to get up at 5:30 AM tomorrow" it doesn't SEEM like a complaint since it is just a statement, but the listener will undoubtedly reply with a sympathetic statement, as if it were something I was complaining about. For this project, I will treat statements like this as complaints since it is obviously a negative thought. Using the same example, instead of making that statement, I will say something like "I can't wait to see my middle schoolers tomorrow." This works better because it is positive and pretty much always true! Which makes me think that sometimes I might complain just to make conversation...which is ridiculous! On other days this week, there were whole days where I didn't have the urge to complain at all. As the semester gets busier, and friends are complaining about the amount of work we have, stopping myself from participating in the negativity will be a lot more challenging!