11:11 Create or Complain?
Pivot from Why me? to What am I learning?
Complaining is praying for what you DON’T want.
If you’re complaining about fill-in-the-blank, it’s an opportunity to awaken your creative power instead.
When life appears unfair, random, or governed by forces outside of your control and you’re faced with gut-wrenching challenges, it’s easy to think, Why me? When worn down by constant stress, it’s easy to feel victimized by others and even by life itself and descend into self pity. Before you know it, the voice of the inner monologue starts rehearsing at length how you’ve been wronged, who’s to blame and what should have happened instead.
Though common, this reasoning represents a low-vibration mindset that results in misery, no matter how airtight the case you build in your mind to prove someone else’s guilt.
Whenever we feel victimized, it’s a natural impulse to defend ourselves by collecting evidence of someone’s wrongdoing. Smarting from an offense, we tend to marinate in compensatory thoughts of judgment, punishment and blame to soothe the hurt. While it may be an understandable reaction, it’s a losing strategy: Focusing on another’s guilt only serves to bind you to the perpetrator. By prosecuting a case against someone in your mind, you harm only yourself; it’s like taking poison and hoping the wrongdoer dies.
When situations are not to your liking, complaining only perpetuates a bad situation and squanders your power of choice. Arguing or thinking, “I have no choice; I HAVE to put up with it” tricks you into engaging unproductively with something or someone that’s crushing your spirit. Complaining is a contagious habit that cements these unwanted conditions in place because by focusing on what’s wrong, you affirm the reality of wrongness and block out potential solutions.
If you feel you “must put up with it” recognize that there are always three sane choices in any unwanted situation: change the situation, accept the situation or walk away.
Instead of getting trapped in endless, pointless debates about who’s right and who’s wrong, who should do what or what should be happening, decide what you will do. Instead of confining yourself to a limited “palette” of black and white, ie., right and wrong choices by thinking in terms of “shoulds,” realize that an elegant solution lies just beyond the right-wrong binary.
Instead of judging yourself and others for not doing it right, get curious. Ponder what a situation has to teach you. Wonder what you could (not “should”) do differently. (Could connotes options; should is a non-negotiable demand resulting from critical judgment.) Curiosity and wonder open you to perceive positive potentials that are not available to a complaining, comparing, criticizing mind. Remind yourself that you always have options, even if they may seem unthinkable at first.
As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison. ~ Nelson Mandela
Pay attention whenever you catch yourself complaining about an undesirable aspect of your life, and flip the script: Embrace it as an opportunity to consciously choose your response to an unwanted situation. Claiming your right to choose in every moment preserves your integrity, your dignity and keeps you from betraying your soul’s wisdom in complex situations.
Spiritual Practice: Recognize that whatever you’re currently complaining about means it is a belief that’s “ripe” for transformation (change the situation), acceptance (accept the situation as it is without complaint) or completion (conclude situations that are not serving the highest good of all concerned.)
Instead of complaining with a need to be “right,” be curious.
Instead of complaining, learn about an opposing perspective.
Instead of complaining, decide what you will do.
Challenge the validity of your current complaints. Accept that what is happening is happening and deal with it by embracing your power of choice. Bust out all of the color options in your pallet instead of working with only black and white. Activate your child-like curiosity, which can open you to an infinite array of possible options.
When you accept that we’re each on our own learning track and that you have not been granted the authority to correct another’s “mistakes, you start to lovingly detach and allow others the dignity of their process. When you realize that each person is on a unique journey, you understand the futility of comparison. When you stop unfavorably comparing yourself with others, you can finally relax and just be yourself.
When faced with unwanted conditions in your life, remember, you can consciously and sanely decide how you will proceed. Make a proactive decision to: change it, accept it or leave it.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense. ~ Rumi
