3 tips for complaining less
A study has shown that 80% of our daily thoughts are rather negative. Can you believe it? That means that more than 3 out of 4 thoughts reflect dissatisfaction, unhappiness, annoyance or hostile behavior. This personally horrified me. I really don’t want that. So here we go, let’s try to fight back and find some tricks to lighten that load.
Well, I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know how the researchers came up with these numbers but it says that we formulate about 60,000 thoughts a day, 95% of which are the same as the day before and 80% are negative. I’m not going to question the numbers but the orders of magnitude speak for themselves. We tend to be negative and repeat this pattern every day. Enough is enough!
To improve the situation in the medium term, it seems to be mathematical. If we produce more positive thoughts, we will reproduce these thoughts every day in the 95% of identical thoughts. This has a practical side. All that’s left is to produce those positive thoughts.
More positive thoughts on day 1 = more positive thoughts on day 2
1. Become aware of your thoughts
As we saw in another article, it is essential to be aware of the thoughts that go through our brain. We will always think and we will not be able to stop all negative thoughts, it would not be healthy, but we must know how to listen to them. We often let ourselves be eaten by our negative emotions without being aware of it.
For this, several strategies are possible.
- Analyze your thoughts. You can try, when you have a negative thought or feeling, to analyze it quickly. What is the object? Why do you have this thought? Is it necessary or is it just the consequence of a bad habit? Can it be replaced by another, more neutral thought?
- Practice meditation. I am not yet very diligent in this exercise, but as soon as I do a little session, I feel that I am more relaxed. For those who have never tried it, the first steps of meditation are to do breathing exercises in order to anchor yourself in the present moment and let your thoughts pass without acting on them. There is no judgment towards them, they pass and do not affect you. Even if you don’t intend to do it every day, try it, you will be surprised by the result after a 5 minutes session. Multiple applications exist for this, personally I use “Simple Habits”.
2. Compensate for the negative with the positive
You understood it, we can’t eliminate the negative from our lives, it is also part of our balance. But we can reduce it by accumulating positive thoughts. Optimistic people like me will find it difficult to stay focused on what is wrong when there is something positive around them. For pessimists, you will have a little more work to do but I am sure it will be easier than you think.
So it’s time to think about yourself and what makes you happier. Try to multiply the small actions that boost your happiness like listening to your favorite music, looking at some pictures that make you smile, having a drink with friends, lounging in a nice hot bath, …
Especially on the first days, be drunk with positivity. You’ll see, it’s exhilarating. It feels great and the good news is that if you do it for a few days, your thoughts from the day before will also be positive. Like we said, it’s mathematical!
3. Be kind to yourself
Many of our negative thoughts are due to a lack of kindness towards others and especially towards ourselves.
How many times a day do you tell yourself that you wish you were more like this or like that? When you walk down the street, do you compare yourself to the people around you? Are you gratuitously critical of them? In your work, do you ever feel negative about the attitude of a colleague or a person you have to work with?
These are all harmless little thoughts individually. But when you add them up, that’s when it becomes problematic. They are overall negative and weigh on your mind.
In general, try to be more forgiving of yourself first. Don’t be too critical of yourself. It is often harder on yourself than on others. Focus on your own kindness, and kindness to others will follow very naturally.
To do this, practice positive affirmation exercises. I discovered this concept in the book “Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod. It consists of repeating positive sentences regularly (at least once a day). The exercise seems surprising at first, but the objective is to get your brain used to hearing these phrases so that it internalizes them and then pushes you to think them without thinking. You will see, it is very effective. And it is essential that these are positive affirmations to counter all the negative affirmations that you have already anchored in yourself. By dint of telling yourself that you are not physically perfect, that you do not have the capacity to do this or that, you have internalized it very well. Try to do the same with positive affirmations. Here are some examples:
- I am worth being loved
- I am competent and a real asset to my work
- My body corresponds to the lifestyle I have chosen
It’s up to you!
