A Man Reborn

So I was thinking about the whole 21 days thing and how well it worked out for me.  Of the habits I changed, the most interesting one was the 21 day no complaining experiment.  I loved this change and the results it brought me and I’m going to stick with it for life.

Now, I’m definitely not much of a complainer – I see it as pointless wheel spinning and a waste of energy.  I was reading old articles on The Four Hour Workweek blog and came across this:

Real Mind Control: The 21-Day No-Complaint Experiment

Using a physical reminder (bracelet, elastic, etc.) – don’t complain about anything for 21 days without coming up with a solution.  Anyway – I’ve written about it here before – so I won’t get into the details.  So I got a blue elastic, slapped it on my wrist and went on my merry no complaining way.

I put extra effort into being aware of my thoughts and my reactions and when my instinct was to react negatively to something I forced myself to stop and think it through.  I probably picked the worst possible time to try this – as it was right in the heart of all the craziness at work – but at the same time, that probably made it the best time.  With that said – there were a LOT of opportunities to complain – I was in a high-stress situation and was working pretty intense hours.  At the same time I was making sure I was on top of my best man duties for my buddies wedding.

The thing I found amazing about the entire experience was that when I look back at it, I can’t really remember feeling stressed or feeling any negativity about it.  It was hard work and long hours and the hardest I’ve worked on something in a while – but my no complaining mindset kept me focused on all the good things that could potentially come out of the project.  I really think that the mindset spread into the rest of my life because even with the crazy hours, I had a super fun month filled with a lot of good times and a lot of good things happened to me – an almost eerie amount of things actually.

What I really like about it is that it’s not just blind optimism.  You don’t just have this attitude that everything is going to be awesome and then expect it to happen.  The habit requires you to think about a situation you felt negatively about enough to complain and then forces you to come up with steps to resolve it.  So rather than just building negative emotion, you channel that energy into actually resolving the problem.  Logically, it’s the best way to approach negativity I think – is there ever any benefit to just venting over taking action?

Anyway – I’m going to pick a few things that I want to change each month – will set aside 21 days of the month to do the change and the rest of the month to think about how it went / what I’m going to do next.  There’s always going to be some habit of mine I can improve or change for the better, so I’m sure I’ll never run out of things to try.  I’ll be thinking about what I want to change this month – I have a feeling getting more sleep will be one of them!