...and get over it.

A slight departure from our regularly scheduled programming.

After stumbling upon the blog of Tim Ferriss one day a few weeks ago, I quickly found a Friday morning evaporate in front of my eyes. His stuff was downright interesting. I polished off article after article like a frat boy does crappy light beer. Chock-full of challenges, his site provides insight and tips for enhancing, improving, and liberating your life.

Some articles include why gluten is bad for you and how to eliminate it from your diet (to be tried), how to go on a media fast (will definitely be tried), and how to gain 30lbs of muscle in 30 days (would love to be tried, but color me skeptical).

However, one of the articles that struck me concerned itself with complaints. In the post, Ferriss provides a link to a Website called A Complaint Free World. Between his article and this site, I learned quite a bit, including one very startling statistic: around 40% of all conversations revolve around complaining.

Let me restate that: nearly half of all spoken interactions are predicated upon whining, nagging, and, for lack of a better word, bitching.

I didn't believe it until I started monitoring it in my day to day interactions. Shit, son, it be true. From the mundane ("It's so God-dammed hot!") to the more intense ("My car got broken into! Fuck this."), everyone complained around me.

And I came to a sad realization--I was very much a member of this un-illustrious club.

No matter the topic, I found ways to complain about it. Traffic? Yup. The Weather? Yup yup. The annoying person in front of me at the grocery store? Triple yup.

Now, I understand complaining is inherent to the human condition; we all have a need to distinguish ourselves, and trying to show that you were handed a raw deal confers its benefits. Not only does it garner pity--it creates room for excuse.

For me, I'd had enough of this so I decided to bite: I'd undertake the 3 week no-complaint challenge. I subscribed to Ferriss' version of the challenge, not the Website's. The Website's seemed to stringent (gossiping and pointing out the complaining of others qualified as a violation under its rule-set), whereas Tim's was more practical.

His went so -- you could complain if and 0nly if you provided a solution to the complaint. If you complained and didn't go about finding a way to remedy the problem, you'd be penalized, and have to start all over. Both sites recommended wearing something on your wrist to serve as a reminder. When you did slip you'd swap the bracelet. The goal's to go 21 days without complaining. Easy to understand, difficult to do.

Now, this isn't to be cute or funny. It's supposed to counter-act negative thinking that plagues us all. Complaining gets you nowhere. That's no way to go about things.

I've been doing it for three weeks now. And the longest I've gone without complaining? Two whole days. I refuse to cheat, so if I suspect I complained, if I have even a shred of doubt, I count it as a complaint and move the band to my other wrist. It has been a very incremental and slow process.

And while success has assuredly been mixed, methinks it's working. My thinking is shifting. The desired effect (to promote positive and pro-active thinking) is happening. The stuff that I can't control I let slide. Nothing I can do about that stuff--why complain? And the thingsI can do something about I take steps to remedy.

It's simple and beautiful. Wanna join me? Let me know.

(Editor's Note: Turns out this has everything to do with basketball. When this was written last week, I failed to realized that the NBA had drafted new rules regulating complaining during games. Players who whine and complain excessively will be handed technicals like they are beads at Mardi Gras. Dwight Howard should probably give this no complaint thing a try.)