The thing though is that in adult world, things don’t go away. Your parent isn’t going to come along behind you and fix you meal you don’t fix, or go to your job on day you don’t feel like getting up, or put oil in your car. The necessary things that don’t get done just won’t get done, and then you have newer and usually bigger problems. You eat junk food and gain weight. You lose your job. Instead of needing to put oil in your car, you need a new engine.

No one’s ever told me, “Gosh, I live to change dirty diapers. I can’t wait to do it every day. In fact I think I’ll put off potty-training this kid for another 6 months I enjoy it so much. And, hey, bring your kid over here too.”

And what good does sympathy do? No one likes to do something like that. Are you kidding? So you could talk about this, or you could do what needs doing and use that time to go do something you DO like doing. And keep respect of your friends.

The whining and complaining don’t change anything except you. It drags you down, it drags out chore (which usually could be accomplished in time you took complaining about it), it drags others down and trust me, won’t make you popular, except with other complainers, and then you WILL be living in your own little hell.

The payoff is emotional connection – sharing with other people. That being case, why not turn it around? Allow yourself to complain AFTER task is done. Call me after you’ve scraped barnacles off boat for another year, and I’ll agree it was awful. But I’ll also respect you, and think “what a guy!” And you’ll feel good about yourself as well.

Not whining is like forgiving someone who’s done you wrong. You do it for yourself – for you, and only you. If you’re a whiner, you won’t respect yourself. How could you? You listen to whining and negative thoughts all day long and watch your problems get worse because of your neglect. You listen to someone (you) who thinks they are hopeless and helpless, put upon, and incapable of handling things.

You will also greatly magnify complexity of task, and reinforce how awful it is. How long can 15 minutes of this or that be? But if you focus on it, you’re also practicing how “awful” it is, reinforcing feeling negative about it, and then you’ll have to make it come true, because we listen to ourselves! Get it done – cheerfully, quickly and well – and you’ll feel super about yourself. For precisely same reason – it WAS difficult. But you did it!