COMPLAINTS
I'm not a complainer. I usually suffer stoically when I'm not feeling well or when things don't go my way. I've usually concluded that I have only myself to blame for whatever happens so who would I complain to? However, I do have a tendency to complain silently to myself, blaming myself for mistakes and problems, thinking about why I did one thing as compared to another, why I took one path instead of another, why I didn't do something which in hindsight looks better. This silent complaining has troubled me. I made a resolution to avoid it this year: "I resolve to avoid complaining, whether out loud or silently. I'm not a complainer by nature but I sometimes complain to myself. I want to avoid even thoughts of complaint."
This fault is very destructive. It causes you to focus on the past, instead of the future, it produces self-doubt instead of confidence, it drains you of energy which should be used to do things better now and in the future. You can't do anything about the past anyway. The things you did in the past are even hard to judge, because we can't see the path not taken, we don't know that the things we did, decisions we made, weren't the best. Until someone invents a time machine, we won't be able to reverse our "mistakes".
My resolution to avoid this fault has turned out to be one of the easier resolutions to keep. This is an area where truly the thought is father to the deed. Once you recognize this silent complaining as dysfunctional you avoid it almost instantly. As soon as you begin to blame yourself for something, you recognize it as unproductive and stop. Once you accept that looking to the past and thinking of changes you might have made is a fault, it stops. Then you can look forward and try to do the best you can today and tomorrow.
Of course, there's a fine line to draw here. We want to learn, we want to let experience guide us in the things we do today and tomorrow. We don't want to ignore the past and its lessons. Maybe what we need to do is apply good judgment to our decisions, learning from but not dwelling on the past, understanding that only hindsight is perfect sight and confidently moving forward the best way we can. Then we can totally and finally avoid complaining.
9-24-01