I Hate It When People Complain!

You are reading this article becaue the title is a complaint. I think that we all appear so much more negative than we actually are. I’ve noticed that the majority of our conversations are composed of complaints.

Take a moment to reflect on your typical conversations with friends. Right now it is 10 am. I’ve had about four or five conversations that I can think of so far today. Three of which were started with negative statements. My roommate woke up and said, “It is way too early!” I walked into class, sat down, turned to my friend and sparked conversation with, “The weather is really crappy.” While eating breakfast with a friend, he started complaining about how bland his cereal was and how weak his feeble skim milk was. Life must be brutal!

If I were to take a guess, I would say that 75% of our conversations are negative. That is because so many people feel awkward by silence and need something to say. Negative conversation starters are more conducive to maintaining conversation. If there is a silence before class, someone is more likely to say, “that test was pretty tough!(regardless if the test was hard or not)” than “I think I did well on that test.” The first example brings up controversy-which leads to conversation. Someone might respond to the latter with something like, “yes, it sure was easy.” End of conversation. Or possibly, by saying that you did well on the test, you seem cocky, so you complain about it instead. This makes you feel and appear humble. It also starts conversation. Someone else might complain about how difficult the test was, and then you have a whole conversation full of meaningless and false statements. I guess that’s what conversations are mainly comprised of.

People feel uncomfortable with silence, so they consciously or unconsciously say something that sparks conversation. And a negative statement is much more likely to do so than something positive. I don’t believe that this is a problem, just something I noticed. People seem to say very negative things, but don’t seem very negative.

What would happen if we were all honest? I don’t know; I can’t imagine such a world.

Then, what would happen if we all stretched the truth? We would have the world that we live in.

What if we just complained all of the time? We would still have the world that we live in.

Haven’t you noticed that I’ve spent a lot this blog complaining about how often people complain? Kind of Ironic. But someone has to do it!

So clean up your act world! Start conversations with positive statements. Say things like, “nice outifit today,” or “I really enjoy this class.” This is twofold; when someone says something positive. Have a conversation with them. Give them positive reinforcement for their rare, nice comment. Even if the world is not actually positive, it would not appear quite so negative.