So you might know I have committed to doing a blog post every day in January and in fact to run every day in January too…
This post was written at JFK airport on Wednesday and was meant to be published as Thursdays blog post. Unfortunately it has been delayed a bit and strangely I found myself complaining about my commitment because I hadn’t had enough time to post this blog post about complaining. I believe that’s what they call meta!
Had I not been complaining this would have been posted by now… anyway here it is…
Complaining is Draining
How often do you complain?
And for that matter how often are you complained to?
The other day on on of my runs I heard a great podcast by James Altucher where he and his wife, Claudia spoke about a book they wrote together:
The Power of No…
It was I think my favourite Altucher podcast so far… Probably because he and his wife seem to have some really good chemistry.
One of the lines that I managed to remember listening to a podcast being sped up to 1.6 times the normal speed was this idea that Complaining is Draining…
It’s probably memorable partly because it is poetic… but also because from my experience it happens to be true.
And I suspect that if you asked yourself whether how often complaining made you feel better the answer would be rarely to never.
Claudia mentioned this idea of going on a complaining diet where you could not complain for seven days and went on to say that she had never managed to do it!
I am currently in the middle of a very long flight back from Peru to England. My flight entailed a really long layover in JFK and also has meant going through 4 additional airports in addition to Trujillo where I left from and London which is where I am travelling to.
I noticed myself complaining several times along the way.
The first time was on arriving in Dallas where I discovered that my baggage which had been checked in as a priority baggage to make my connection flight easier to get was in fact on of the last off the plane.
I found myself muttering in complaint to myself and then to someone from the airport…
And the fact was that there was little anyone could really do and despite my very flash orange priority card for getting through customs again and passport control I would just have to wait!
Then when I finally got my baggage and had sprinted off through the terminal, causing a few of my fellow passengers to complain in turn at this heavy lunatic charging down at them en route to my next flight…
I was then held up again going through the X Ray Machines but on I ran!
And finally on getting to my gate I discovered that I was a couple of minutes too late and they had already booked me on a different flight.
This time to La Guardia which is an hour or so away from JFK where I needed to be for my connecting flight to London.
Still rather than complain vociferously I managed to restrain my cool, knowing it wasn’t really anyone’s fault and happily they agreed to provide me with a car and driver to get me between airports.
I am pretty sure that in the past I would have had a temper tantrum… and in fact I did have a minor temper tantrum again when I discoverd that the metro ticket I had been sold to get me on the Air Train was the wrong one… I put it down to the fact I was just exhausted…
Anyway I can tell you that complaining is definitely draining and I am pushing myself on to Claudia’s No Complaining diet!
How often do you find yourself complaining? You should stop.
Let me know your most embarrassing complaining moment in the comments
