Complaint Free World – Episode 403

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:02] Hello, partners. Today we’re going to be talking about a complaint-free world. And all I have to say is, yes, please sign me up. So full credit to Will Bowen, who came up with this idea. And the story line goes, if people are not aware of it, that he was a pastor in a small church and got tired of all the complaining, decided to try to live his life complaint-free for 21 days to build a habit, took him about 60 days to do it. All during the time, he was talking with his congregation about this. And so it got out in the town. People became aware of it. It started to make a real difference in their lives. He got on Oprah and the rest is history. So what can you do with that? Well, whenever I heard this, it’s

[00:49] been at least 10 years ago. I just adopted it immediately. It made so much sense. And one of the most important messages that I like about it is that you can still verbalize things that you have issues with, in other words, complaints, because they’re not considered a complaint if you share them with somebody that can do something about it. And all other forms of complaining needs to be completely removed from your mouth, from your thought, from your writings, from your email, and again, from your mouth. Because of course, when we speak things out into the world, it affects so many people, like whoever’s in earshot, plus ourselves, plus whoever it is that we’re actually talking to. So just a real quick example, if I had a complaint

[01:47] about the way our podcast was looking, and I talked to Spencer and said, This is something that bothers me. That’s not a complaint, because Spencer can actually do something about it. But if I have that same complaint, and I share it with my husband, Todd, or my sister Tammy, who also does a podcast with me for advisors, neither of them can do anything about it. And so it’s a pointless exercise, but it’s worse than pointless, because it bums me out, it bums whoever the person is that I’m complaining to out. And neither one of us can do anything about it. So it just goes in this yucky circle of muck and makes no progress. And in fact, has a negative impact, because it makes people frustrated, etc, etc. So Wilbo, and he has a book out there,

[02:30] Complaint Free World. He’s on the speaking tour. So if you go to his website, you’re going to see all that. And, you know, I have no comment, and I haven’t heard him speak, like forever. But I’m just so grateful that he came up with the concept. And I think it’s a really critical one for our children. Because it’s super easy, doesn’t matter how old our children are. But literally, as soon as they start to talk, all the way until they’re out of our house, complaining has become a very common American pastime. And it’s not a good thing. Now, Spencer, I’ve seen your family in operation. Do you guys live by this complete Complaint Free World? Were you aware of it at all? I’m curious. You know, we really try. One thing that we say is we try and not play

[03:20] the victim card. And I say try because we’re not perfect. And so complaints can even happen in our world in our house, with the tone that we’re talking to someone like, and so we we stop and we say, Oh, hold on. Hold on. Like, where are you playing victim card right now? And and a kid, you know, it depends on their age, the younger they are, the harder it is for them to see it. And then the older kids they can sit there and they go, Yeah, I was sorry. What an amazing thing to share with your family, because you’re right, we all fall prey to it. I do too. I just this morning, I caught myself with a tone of voice with one of our team members that I’m disgusted at myself for letting past my lips. And yet we

[04:09] are human. It does happen. And so there’s just so many cool ways that if you help everybody in your community, whether it’s your own direct family or if you’re living with extended family, I know we had a bunch of family in our house because of all the freezing weather, your teammates, your close people at work, you know, your workout buddies, whoever it is, this space is something that can be fun to work on. And when it’s tackled that way, it’s not a I told you so environment, talk about tone of voice, right? It’s more of a, hey, this is important to me. I love hanging out with you guys. But this is something that I’d like to work on. Will you help me work on it? And then you all as a community, a little

[04:56] small group, whatever can work on helping each other, just complain only when it’s appropriate and somebody can do something about it. And if not, zip it, like, just don’t even let it past your lips because it’s not helping. So so true. Here’s the problem that I face and I hear others face and I have to catch myself and maybe you’ve done this as well. When there are pending things, you know, and tends to be like government or regulations. That’s where it’s really easy to complain. I mean, here we are. We’re entrepreneurs, we have visions, we’re doing stuff. And we hear a new law pass or some outside entity. And I go, really, come on, like, you’re just hurting me. And I think, as you just mentioned, that that is, for me, at

[05:42] least the hardest place it is. And so I’m listening to this. And I’m saying, okay, wait, now, you know, I need to recalibrate. Well, and that goes back to something that we were talking about earlier, which is focusing on what you can control. You cannot control what the government does. However, you can control how you respond to it. And so when that kind of thing occurs for me, first of all, I try hard to keep out of that space. Like if, if there’s a new law, somebody’s going to tell me about it, I don’t have to read about it or listen to it. And besides that, there’s so much conversation that goes on prior to the passing of a law that sometimes then that law doesn’t even get passed. And then you’ve been

[06:22] complaining about something that’s never even going to impact you. When it does, however, that’s one of those times that you will benefit yourself by just going back to focusing on what you can control, which again is how you respond to it. So if you respond, and I’m just as guilty, I’m as human as they come. And when I respond, so I’ll put it that way, rather than pointing the finger at you. When I respond to something, when I hear it like that, it’s just a wake up call to me to say, all right, who’s really in control here, like with a big capital C, right? And what can I do to focus more on the laws that I know that are in that space where I have a modicum of control because it’s all about how I’m thinking and how I’m

[07:18] being or how I’m acting, if you will. And so a good example, recently, some news came down about a particular business structure that I wanted to work on and I’m not going to be able to because of certain licensing issues. And I had a choice, I can be belligerent, mad, frustrated, I can spew all that kind of thing right out my mouth. Or I can just go, okay, door shut. Where do I turn? What else do I look for? Who’s really in control here? What kind of options do I have? Where else should I be looking? How should I be responding? So it’s not only the thinking part. It’s the being. And when I got this news, I thought, okay, I was bombed too. I thought, how would I act if I was 100% confident that

[08:14] it was going to work out? Not maybe the way I wanted it to work out, but it was going to work out. And I thought, okay, I would continue to be optimistic, I would go forward, I would be happy, I would be solution oriented, I would be responding in a positive way. So I’m going to do that, even though I didn’t know and actually still don’t know how that is going to work itself out. Are we going to be able to take on that additional business advantage that I wanted that licensing is keeping me from not taking on, etc. So that is, I think, part of what Complaint Free World helps us do is to focus on what we can control, which is our thinking. And then the second so critical part of that is our being and our actions. And you know

[08:57] this, even how our bodies are physically, when we’re in complaint mode versus when we’re in gratitude mode, it absolutely affects our health. So why wouldn’t we want to choose Complaint Free World? And why wouldn’t we want to choose redirecting our thinking, being super conscious about what comes out of our mouth, and more importantly, being additionally conscious of how is our being being, how is our human body being out in the marketplace? Are we shoulders slumped? Are we, you know, stomping around? Are we frustrated? Do we have mad looks on our faces? Really? Does that help? And I do it. I just did it the other day glaring at somebody because they were doing something I didn’t want them to do, you know, trying to

[09:49] send darts with my eyes. Yeah, that’s grown up. Real grown up, Kim. Nice. So I’m going to ask it and I’m going to ask the summary of this podcast in a different way, which is this. If the recipe, so what we’re trying to do is make the dish called the Complaint Free World dish. We need to create the recipe. And depending on your cooking skill level, some people may be really stuck and some people are just looking to do a little bit better. What can you write on that recipe card for our listeners right now? You’re asking somebody that doesn’t even want to go in the kitchen, much less cook. I will try though. I will try. Recipe card. Come on, we can do this. So the first is if you’re really, really struggling with it to

[10:35] just start with 10 minutes of complaint free and it’s mental to write, not just verbal, then go to an hour, then go to a day, then do what Will Bowen did and try to go 21 days in a row, complaint free. Like his whole thing was the little, you know, plastic rubber band thing on your wrist, switch it from wrist to wrist to wrist until you can get to be 21 days complaint free. That’s awesome. And if you’re looking to up level this even a third tick, instead of just going into what I would call material gratitude mode. So like I’m super grateful for warm weather right now because I’m so tired of dealing with the cold. That’s a material gratitude. Nothing wrong with it. The up level is so what does

[11:21] that do inspirationally for me or maybe spiritually for me? And the answer is that I can go walk within the dog. I can think more about what’s important to me and my faith. I can be outside. It’s sunny. I benefit from that. And so anytime you can add the inspirational element or the spiritual element, if you will, of the gratitude thing, then I think you’ve up leveled it even more. So we’ve got two up levels there. I love it. That is so good. Well, I think that now you have given a recipe for our beginner cooks that want to have a complaint free world. And for some people feel like they’re masters. They’ve now got another example. So thanks for sharing those with us, Kim. Absolutely. Wonderful.

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