Kvetch Free Zone

Last night I dropped by to visit a friend whom I hadn't seen for Christmas.  She'd been in the hospital prior to that, with an attack of ulcerative colitis.  She also has to contend with chronic back pain, still massive sometimes...in spite of the fact that she had spinal fusion surgery.  She is of slight build, but routinely takes enough heavy duty pain medication to knock out a professional football player.  We were talking about her medical progress, and about side effects of the steroid she's taking to quell the colitis.  At one point we said that it seemed ridiculous to hear people's complaints about the weather, having to get up for work in the morning, sitting in traffic, etc. when compared with situations like this.

On the way home from her house, I had to buzz by the library to find a book for my seventh grader.  I also decided to go into the audio books section because it's been a while since I listened to anything like that in the car (45 minute commute each way is very good for that sort of thing!).  Wouldn't you know it, my eyes came to rest upon A Complaint Free World by Will Bowen.  I started listening to it on the way home, and listened to more of it on the way to work today.  His schtick is that people foul the air with lots of complaints routinely -- a lot more than they realize -- and consequently lots of negativity.  I haven't yet heard what his strategies are for replacing the kvetching with positive thoughts and words, but he talks about the long term action plan for getting out of the complaining habit.  Get a free purple rubber bracelet from http://AComplaintFreeWorld.org and put it on.  Every time you catch yourself complaining, switch the bracelet to the other wrist...even if you have to do this 50 times a day.  The goal is to go 21 days without switching the bracelet...because it's been proven that 21 days is the period of time it takes to internalize a new habit.

I don't know whether I will get a bracelet, but it sounds like it'd be worthwhile to focus on making my behavior more positive.  I tend to be fairly upbeat, I think, but I'm sure I do my share of complaining too.  Yeah, Pollyanna's on the bandwagon for another happy cause.  Suck it up.   :-)    Seriously -- if anyone's tried this, or knows someone who has, I'd love to hear what happened.