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Day 207: Appreciate, don’t complain

Posted on February 26, 2019

There are so many things that are wonderful going on in your life. All you have to do is look. Often, people are taught that looking at the problems in their lives is the preferred way to be. Not because it feels good, not because it helps them, but because that’s what other people model to them. So they learn to do this.

The problem with this behavior is that focusing on problems only tends to preserve them. Focusing on what makes you unsatisfied tends to amplify that experience. In other words, it tends to bring you more to be unsatisfied about. Many people tolerate this because it seems to be “just the way it is.” It may be normal, but it is not necessary. It is also not usually fun.

I stand corrected. It may seem fun, because of the agreement and support given by other people about this behavior. Complaining about problems can become a sort of social currency. After all, “Misery loves company.”

But at the end of the day, misery is still misery. Living in perpetual dissatisfaction is a choice that no one is required to make.

Instead of choosing to focus on dissatisfaction, people have the option to appreciate what is going well in their lives. They have the option to appreciate the people around them, to praise instead of blame, to accept instead of criticize, to lift up instead of complain about. This always feels better for the person doing it. You would think that this would be enough justification, that feeling good would be the outcome people are most interested in.

It is not that there is anything wrong with spending one’s time complaining, blaming, and criticizing. We all have choice. It’s just that one doesn’t have to live that way. It limits one’s ability to be truly joyous. It keeps one stuck in a limited pattern of thought and behaviors. It tends to perpetuate suffering.

Your true nature is expansive and unlimited, and I believe complaining and blaming thwarts the expression of that. It casts a shadow around the limitless of being alive and puts a negative pallor on it.

Again, there is nothing wrong with this, but it reduces the amount of joy a person experiences. It tends to perpetuate unsatisfying conditions.

I realize that complaining can be a hard pattern to change. It is like anything wortwhile: there is a price to be paid to get a different result. The price is that you must change your thoughts patterns. Many people do not want to have to do this. The consequences of a life of complaining do not yet seem so horrendous as to stop them from doing it. Many people seem willing to tolerate a life of complaining.

I am not judging this. Every person has free will. But again, there are many other possible experiences that are possible once a person lifts themselves up higher than being a complainer 🙂 In fact, as I said, I do not think it is any body’s true nature to be this way.

I just think it’s a wide-spread habit. And like all habits, it can be unlearned, and replaced with a different habit.


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