No More Complaining In 2018

A solid difference exists between a complaint and complaining.

Complaints are fine. Complaints are feedback. Opportunities to be heard over dissatisfaction. Opportunities to improve when you’re on the receiving end. However, complaints implicitly contain a solution. If a customer comes up and complains about service, the provider has a responsibility to resolve the complaint to the customer’s satisfaction. In a relationship a complaint would provoke some type of improvement on the part of the couple.

Complaining on the contrary, has no solution. Complaining is not circumstantial. It’s more of a default approach to handling tough circumstances.

When a person comes to me with complaining, by benefit of the doubt I assume it’s a complaint that has a solution and so I try to solve that problem. But complainers don’t want a solution. They just want to complain. The complaining is the solution. If they can just complain and blow off their steam they’ll feel better and move on.

I have no time for that. You must have me confused with someone else.

It’s not that I don’t care about other’s discomfort or displeasure. On the contrary, I will break my back trying to remove the discomfort. So many people who you complain to will break their backs to solve your problems but that is not their responsibility. Complaining adds a level of anxiety to the people who care about you that shouldn’t be there. They instinctually want to solve the problem for you. But they can’t. So don’t put that on them.

2017 was a year of non-stop complaining. Complaining about personal issues, relationships, politics, race, sexuality, awareness, woke-ness, privilege, on and on. You read all of this stuff over and over. All of the vitriol coming from the same people — everyday a new hot topic. You start to realize that some aren’t really looking for solutions, they aren’t really even raising awareness. Folks are just complaining about something as a means to an end.

A person is upset about something going on. Complaining makes them feel better. “Likes” validate their grievance. Problem solved. No matter if the issue is still effecting others. The complaining soothed the pain. But in the process it stirred up the hearts of everyone else, pushed them to complain as well and now everyone is upset but also feeling better because they complained, which really just passes off the pain to someone else. We just end up passing our pain around like a hot potato when we complain about it.

We just end up passing our pain around like a hot potato when we complain about it.

Raising complaints, however, is much different and much more powerful. #MeToo was by far the most effective complaint of the year, if not the decade. #MeToo is, “Hey, this is happening, this has been happening, it cannot happen any further and this is what is going to change to make it better…” Men losing their careers. Company handbooks actually being followed. People on high alert. Women free to speak. Men realizing the inappropriateness of their behavior and feeling remorse over it. Change. Repentance. Reconciliation.

So here is my proposal, my solution to this complaint. When something isn’t going right in your life, to your dissatisfaction, before you bring it to anybody’s attention, come prepared with a solution. Come prepared with an idea of how you can make things work better, run more smoothly or demand greater consequence.

For issues that are 100% your responsibility here is a positive mantra, “This is my problem and this is how it needs to be resolved and if it is not resolved this is what’s going to happen.” Or when the issue involves the responsibility of an offender, “This is my issue, how do you plan to correct the issue? And, this is what’ll happen if it doesn’t get corrected.” When the issue is equal responsibility, “This is the problem we are facing, I need your help coming up with a solution. If we can’t come up with a solution together, then this will happen.”

We have to start looking at solutions and no longer settle for the complaining to be enough.

*in situations of abuse and harassment victims should never blame themselves or think that they have any responsibility to end the abuse other than reporting it to the proper authorities or getting help from people they trust.