Our love story with complaining
"Today is awful, isn't it?"
At the school gate mums greet each other like this while waiting for their children in a grey and damp Thursday afternoon.
And whilst talking about the weather is one of the British's preferred ways to break the ice in conversations, all humans like to complain on a regular basis. When you ask "How are you?" to someone, how many times do they say "I'm great!" and how many "Not too bad" - meaning the baseline is bad, but today is a notch above that?
It's ingrained in our nature, and the reason we use these expressions in social situations is mostly due to habit.
The bad news is that this can influence the way we truly feel.
But the good news is that, like with any other habit, you can change the way you use your language, which in turn can change your mood and the way you see your life, and perhaps even influence others to do the same.
Just by paying attention to the way we automatically behave and speak in social situations, and plan in advance how we reply to questions, we can change the way we feel too.
A university lecturer once asked me how I was and I replied "Not too bad". She scalded me for the unimaginative reply and told me to inject some life and enthusiasm into my language.
Since then, I started really paying attention to the automatic way I reply to people, and I committed to banning complaints of any sort: about the government, the state of the roads, the dysfunctional public health service, the weather... Can you do the same?
Think about it:
Martin Luther King Jr never said, "I have a complaint".
(quote by M. B. Beckwith, American Author and Pastor)
This article was originally written for the Green Gorilla weekly newsletter. If you liked it, subscribe to receive more articles like this and learn how to communicate sustainability better, how to be more productive without selling your soul to the work devil, and how to make an impact in the world. Here is the link: https://newsletter.thegreengorilla.co.uk/