Full Transcripts
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we are going to talk about how complaining is draining. If you think about it, complaining doesn’t really resolve anything. Especially if the person or thing that you’re complaining about is not around to hear your criticism.
I do complain from time to time, but what I like to do is think about how I can change the situation. I have the US Health Care System, the Education System, the laws, and other things, but what I did is moved to another country to not deal with these things. It’s best to take action.
If you’re around your friends and you spend the entire three hours just complaining, then did you really have a good time with your friends. If you’re like me, then no. I had to remove a friend from my life because he was always complaining about something and there was someone who always did him wrong. He just held on to grudges.
So that is one of the first things we can do, and that is just let go of the issue. If you can’t change the issue right away, then focus your energy on something more productive. I didn’t think things were fair at my last company, and I saw that I couldn’t change things, so I left and started my own thing. It was a lot of work and not as stable as my last job, but I love what I do now.
Plus it feels so much better focusing my time and energy on something that is way more productive than on something toxic. I feel that there is comfort in complaining because it gives people sympathy. They want the person that they are talking to give them pity and this is not good for anyone. That pity is going to give someone zero growth as a person. It’s just draining all the energy.
The second thing we can do is start taking action by coming up with solutions and then presenting those solutions to the issue. We can complain all day how someone is not doing something we want them to do, but if that person is not aware that they are doing something wrong, then they are going to continue to do what’s natural to them.
Also, you want to use tact, when you’re addressing something, you don’t want to be a jerk about it. Being a jerk is going to be the quickest way that people continue to their habits, just to spite you. It’s best to lead with honey and not vinegar. There are times when it’s okay to lead with vinegar, but give people the benefit of the doubt.
The worst part about complaining is that nothing is being done to change the situation and those feelings of injustice and unfairness are going to continue to be there. So bravery and courage is necessary to address the issue along with street smarts. But once you address the issue, things are going to be a lot better for you and for society.
And that’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, complaining is draining, so don’t do it. If you have trouble with not complaining, the best thing to do is get a rubber band, wrap it around your wrist, and then every time you complain, you snap the rubber band against your skin. The idea is that after a while, you’re going to stop complaining because you will want to avoid the pain. Plus it’s a good metaphor that every time you complain, the main person that you’re hurting is yourself. It’s best just to let go of the problem or to figure out some way to address the problem correctly. Don’t find problems, make solutions to those problems by taking ownership of them. And complaining is not taking ownership. Do this and your life will have less stress in it.
If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
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