Then live by them:

I wanted a relationship. I went on a date with a man who had what I thought to be an unhealthy relationship with his mother. Sitting across table from him I thought, “I can fix him and show him what it’s like to be free!” As soon as that thought entered my mind, voice of reason within me asked, “Do you WANT to?” My answer was “No!” and I ended evening.

Upon hiring me, a client had identified three focus areas for his business. During a following session, he excitedly told me about a new business opportunity that could make him lots of money. I asked him to share his three focus areas with me again and then asked where this opportunity fit within them. When he admitted that it didn’t, I asked him which of those three areas he was willing to give up for this new one. “None” he replied. His decision to pass on that opportunity was not because he couldn’t do it, but because he didn’t want to give up other things that were more important to him.

Sitting in a committee meeting for a volunteer organization I belong to, I became frustrated at size of group, irrelevance of discussion to half participants, and organizational confusion. My first thought was, “I can fix it!” Then I thought about what it would take to do that. Did I care enough to make room for that project in my life? Was I willing to give up any other activities to make it happen? Did I really want that commitment? The old me would have said, “I’ll do it. Somehow I’ll make it all work.” The new me simply said, “No.”

Flooded with relief, I politely excused myself from meeting to tackle what was really important to me that day. I pointed my car toward dog park and spent next hour playing Frisbee with my puppy. Ah, life on my terms.

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!