New Year’s Resolution to Stop Complaining: Update #3

Posted on March 19, 2010 by zoeweil

Believe it or not my inner complainer was in full bloom during a nine-day vacation in Belize. Yes, when I was at my most privileged – getting to snorkel and scuba dive at a remote atoll – I was complaining (and not always to myself!). So much for my New Year’s resolution. And what was my inner complainer harping upon? Mostly the weather (it was cloudy, cold and windy almost every day), but also the food (despite assurances, they did not have any vegetarian entrees, so I had a lot of mashed potatoes and coleslaw). I had one truly justifiable complaint – the owners of the island on which we stayed were nasty to their employees and treated them terribly disrespectfully – but really, the weather?

I think my inner complainer was so alive and active because of how many expectations I had wrapped up in the trip. I envisioned calm seas, sunny days, and warm weather during which I’d snorkel for hours. Normally, I don’t “look forward” to vacations, but this trip to Belize was fraught with hopes and dreams and visions of what it would be like. When my expectations weren’t met, I was disappointed.

This was such an important reminder to stay present, shelve expectations as they pop into my mind, and meet what appears in life with acceptance. My friend Erica, who had joined me on the trip, had such a good attitude. The “bad” weather didn’t bother her a bit. She was happy to knit if the weather was too cold and the seas too rough for snorkeling. I marveled at her lovely and impressive equanimity.

I need to work on my New Year’s resolution more resolutely, and I think that I’ll begin by focusing on what is most good, instead of what is most disappointing. This is a new twist on the MOGO principle that I would do well to cultivate. I think it’s also time to add to my New Year’s resolution not just a negative imperative (stop complaining) but a positive invitation (cultivate gratitude).

Please wish me fortitude and continued perseverance!

By the way, lest you think I was a grumpy complainer the whole trip, please stay tuned for more blog posts on the amazing and wonderful experiences I had in Belize.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind and Claude and Medea

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Update on Complaining and Gratitude

Posted on February 10, 2010 by zoeweil

In my blog post, Ever-growing Expectations and the Roots of Complaint, I wrote this:

“Later this month I’ll be flying to Vancouver, B.C., for work. I’m planning to… reflect upon what I’ve received from the airline, airport, pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and all the personnel and inventors and engineers who will have made my flights possible. If something goes wrong and I miss one of my two connecting flights or wind up spending hours in an airport due to inclement weather or experience some other hassle, I hope that I will be able to maintain my resolve not to complain and instead find ways to still marvel, be grateful, and give something back.”

Well, I wanted to write a post about how I did.

First, it wasn’t very hard to keep this commitment, initially, because despite the fact that I left Maine in a snowstorm, every flight ran on time, and I even had a whole row to myself between New York and Salt Lake City. I tried to contain my inner complainer a bit when the woman in the seat on the other side of the aisle was coughing the whole time, but since I was able to move to the window and create some distance I did fine keeping the complainer at bay. (I would add, though, that now I have a cough myself and need to fly to New York City on Friday, where I will likely annoy someone else if I’m still coughing — I promise to keep a lozenge in my mouth the entire time if necessary!)

The flights back home were equally uneventful. I was grateful. Especially in the Detroit Airport, which has the coolest light and music show that accompanies the moving walkway between Gates A and C and which always makes me smile.

I arrived in Bangor at 1 a.m. After digging out my car, I began my 45-minute drive home in freezing rain. The roads were bad, but not horribly so, so I went slowly and expected the drive would just take longer than usual. But by the time I reached the town of Dedham, the road had become a sheet of ice.

Before I go on, I should say that this particular stretch of road between Dedham and Ellsworth comes with bad memories. On our trip to the area to find a place to live shortly before we moved here, I ran out of gas on this stretch of road. On another late night drive home from the airport, my car lights failed, which was quite harrowing. A friend’s son says that this section of road is haunted, and even though I wouldn’t go that far, it’s a hilly, dark, and lonesome road through the mountains at night. And I should also say that shortly after moving to Maine, I skidded off a road (not this one) on black ice and over a 10 foot embankment, totaling my car, and so I’m particularly scared of icy roads.

I came to the one light on the stretch of road where there’s a gas station. I considered holing up in my car until morning rather than trying to go further, but the thought of such a cold night in the car without appropriate clothing chilled me, literally. So I climbed the hill past the gas station and realized my car was having trouble gaining any traction on the ice. At the crest of the hill was the Dedham School. I pulled in to call my husband. He offered to come get me, thinking I was probably overreacting because of my history on icy roads, but I told him no in no uncertain terms!

My hope lay ahead one more mile. At the very top of a bigger hill, nestled in the mountains and overlooking a beautiful Maine lake, lay the Lucerne Inn. I had no idea if they were open, and I knew I could go no further after that because the road precipitously descends beyond the inn, but I decided it was worth it to try to make it there.

I did!

I almost wiped out as I got out of the car because the parking lot was a sheet of ice as well (of course it was!), but I caught myself. Then I was provided with a warm room with a comfy bed. I was so profoundly grateful. Grateful the inn was open and that someone heard me knock at 1:45 in the morning. Grateful I could afford a night’s stay at a lovely inn. Grateful that Ihadn’t had to spend a cold night sitting in my car waiting for the roads to be safe.

So, I guess one could say that I succeeded in my goal not to complain when something went awry on the trip.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm

Image courtesy of Morten Rand-Hendriksen via Creative Commons.

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Ever-growing Expectations and the Roots of Complaint: Reflections on Sy Safransky’s Notebook #3

Posted on January 8, 2010 by zoeweil

Reading one of Sy Safransky’s Notebook entries in The Sun magazine this week provided a great explanation for my continued complaining (see my New Year’s day post: Stop Complaining) and provided some clarity for why it’s so hard to break this habit. Sy writes:

“In the nineteenth century it took six months to cross the country by covered wagon. At the start of the twentieth century it took six days to make the trip by train. Yesterday I flew from North Carolina to California in a little more than six hours. The engineering marvel of a modern jetliner borders on the miraculous, yet how mundane flying has become. There I was, soaring through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, fulfilling one of humanity’s age-old dreams, and all I could think about was how little legroom I had and when the couple behind me was going to shut up.” (The Sun, January 2010)

When something becomes mundane we take it for granted. When we take something for granted we cease to think about it, and when we cease to think about it, we fail to cultivate our gratitude for it. We notice when things go awry, not when they go as planned. For example, most of us in the U.S. and other industrialized countries never have to think about obtaining water. Each day we drink from our taps, take showers and bathe in hot water that flows from our spigots and showerheads , and flush our wastes away in clean water. Imagine that. Not only do we fail to appreciate this incredible gift, we also fail to see its shadow (coal-fired power, sewage systems that pump our wastes into the environment, and so on). We only seem to notice if the water stops coming.

I remember the story of Boris Yelstin’s eyes filling with tears when he experienced a U.S. supermarket. But those tears will inevitably dry up in his or anyone’s eyes as soon as aisles of relatively inexpensive and abundant food (however unhealthy, overpackaged , and processed) become the norm. Our expectations just grow, and our ease in finding fault and vectors for new complaint just expand.

I wish I knew the solution to this beyond a committed practice of gratitude. I’ve written about Naikan, a Japanese form of self-reflection, in previous blog posts. As a reminder, Naikan revolves around three questions (you fill in the blank):

1. What have I received from ________________?
2. What have I given _______________?
3. What trouble or difficulty have I caused _______________?

Later this month I’ll be flying to Vancouver, B.C., for work (see my speaking schedule). I’m planning to practice Naikan on the plane and reflect upon what I’ve received from the airline, airport, pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, and all the personnel and inventors and engineers who will have made my flights possible. If something goes wrong and I miss one of my two connecting flights or wind up spending hours in an airport due to inclement weather or experience some other hassle, I hope that I will be able to maintain my resolve not to complain and instead find ways to still marvel, be grateful, and give something back.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind

Image courtesy of Genkaku.

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My New Year’s Resolution: Stop Complaining

Posted on January 1, 2010 by zoeweil

In 2010 I’m going to endeavor to stop complaining.

This shouldn’t be too hard, as I am profoundly blessed and privileged. I have all my needs met and so much more. I have a happy 20-year marriage and a healthy, bright, generous son. I share my warm, spacious home with three great dogs and a spectacular cat. I have good friends and live in a wonderful community. I do work that is meaningful to me and others. I have so many freedoms and opportunities that I’ve become almost oblivious to them. There is nothing, not one single thing, that I lack.

Yet I complain all the time. Whether it’s my son’s failure to remove dirty dishes from his room, my husband’s forgetfulness, a slow driver in the fast lane, the weather (too cold, too dreary, crusty snow, wet snow, icy trails), too many demands on my time, extremists in the media, school systems, political systems, economic systems, health care systems, cruel people, prejudiced people, sexist people, homophobic people, myopic people, greedy people.

You see what I mean?

I’m going to try to turn this around, not because I don’t think that there are wrongs to right in the world and things that justify our anger, but because complaining isn’t a positive response to anything.

My plan is to try to reroute the deep complaining grooves in my brain and turn each complaint in a new direction. As I find myself snapping at my son for some infraction or railing against a poor driver, I will try to remind myself of what I’m grateful for (my son’s good qualities; the fact that I am lucky enough to have a car and roads to drive on). When I am distraught over a lack of critical and creative thinking, I will try to remind myself of my own challenges in this arena, my own unexamined biases, and make an effort to compassionately respond with a non-judgmental question, a letter to the editor, a new approach in teaching these skills. In other words, I’m going to attempt to turn reactive negative responses into proactive positive ones and cultivate my gratitude, fortitude, and initiative in creating a healthier, wiser attitude in life.

You may notice I keep using words like “try,” “attempt,” and “endeavor.” I have a friend who doesn’t like such words. “Just do it,” she says. If only it were that easy. Those mental grooves are deep and entrenched, and I know that it takes great persistence and perseverance to divert them and form new grooves. It’s as hard as shifting a mighty river. And so I plan to be persistent, as well as gentle. I’ve asked for my husband’s support. I know it won’t be easy.

May your own new year’s resolutions garner both your own persistence and gentleness, too. May you, too, find support. And may the new year find you growing in wisdom, kindness, and positive responses to a world that needs you.

~ Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Above All, Be Kind, and Claude and Medea

Image courtesy of aturkus via Creative Commons.


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