Dear Catalin,

Everyone hates complainers and yet we all enjoy complaining for some reasons. It’s nice to have someone else hear about our problems and connect with us. It makes us feel like we’re not alone. Unfortunately, the more you complain, the more you want to complain. You create a habit. A bad habit.

Now, complaining has become your default. From what I understand you want to stop complaining. The first approach would be to start from a place of gratitude. It’s very hard to complain about anything if you’re grateful for what you do have.

There are times when that does not work. This is where “not caring” helps. Mark Manson really hits the nail about the importance of being selective with what we give an F about. There’s an old saying that “if you care about everything you care about nothing”. If you complain about everything under the sun, then you’ll be labeled as a complainer. What will happen is that when something really bad does happen, you will complain and no one will care. Why would they? You’re complaining again. Nothing new about that… you do that all the time.

This is a parallel to Stoicism. There are things you can control and things you do not control. Complaining about things that are outside of your control is pointless. It won’t make them go away. It won’t actually make you feel any better, because the root cause is not solved. The only thing that it will do is make people want to avoid you. Not just that, but complaining also drains the energy out of you. Which makes you more likely to complain, again. Now, things that are within your control… well those things you do not complain about, because you can do something about it.

That’s about it. Focus on what you can control, be grateful and watch it… you just might stop complaining.

So that’s what I am going to do. I am going to do. For the next week I will track every time I feel like complaining. If I do complain I will journal about it later. The plan, however, is to stop myself in my tracks and ask myself whether complaining is worth it.

Hopefully this is helpful to you, too.