Complaining is Not Problem Solving - Part One

I bet if you sat down and really thought about it. You could make a long list of the things over the last 30 days that you have complained about. It might be something as simple as the weather and the traffic all the way to the complicated such as the economy.

Some things that we complain about, we have no control over. The weather is beyond our ability to change. The most we can do to solve that problem is to move somewhere with different weather. But even the best place in the world has bad weather days. That is right, even Florida and Hawaii have their miserable days.

Some things we complain about, we have a small amount of control over. We, ourselves, have no control over traffic. We do have control over routes, times we travel and even how we travel. Examples of problem solving rough traffic would be leaving earlier, taking a different route or riding the public transportation so we can read that novel we have had no time to complete.

However, many things we whine and complain about we have complete control over. We complain about our incomes while we instead could be studying for promotion or applying for a better job. We complain about our spouses but make no attempts to take the first step to repair the relationship. If all we do is complain, we are not in solution, we are part of the problem. Negativity, especially in the workplace, spreads. I can complain about something small in the break room and soon everyone is listing all the reasons the company is horrible. If you are not doing ANYTHING to solve the problem - you have no RIGHT to complain.

My favorite Poem about this topic goes like this:

This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done
Author: Unknown

Will you be an Anybody? Or will you be Everybody and get the same results Everybody has always gotten?