In part one of this blog series, we talked about living a complaint-free life. Complaining not only drains your energy, but it is also pours negative energy onto the situation about which you are complaining. It is much like adding fuel to a fire. That will only make it burn brighter and hotter. It won't put the fire out. If you find that it is hard to stop complaining, then perhaps you need to find something to do instead of complaining. Your complaining focuses a spotlight of energy on whatever thing, situation, or person you don't like. Since it is a negative situation to which you are adding your energy, causing it to grow and expand under the nourishing light of your attention, you might want to find a way to focus your attention on something that reverses the negative thing you don't like. Ceasing to complain about a situation may not make it go away, even if it does stop the process of feeding it, which should eventually cause it to diminish and die. To speed the progress towards improving your situation, why not try focusing attention on the opposite of whatever is the complaint?
If there is a person in your life who is the source of your complaint, you can try a couple different ways to shift the energy in the situation. Let's say that you work with ten people throughout the day, and nine of them are easy and pleasant enough to work with, and it is only one person who bothers you. Why not focus on all the other people? Instead of complaining about the one person you find annoying, try focusing on the other the enjoyable fellow employees. Instead of complaining about the one person, start praising and appreciating the others. It would be even better if you praised them to their faces and in front of others. Let them know that you enjoy working with them. You could even thank them for being so easy to be around and a great team player. Focus your attention (i.e., your creative energetic power) on all the good things about your coworkers. Try it for a while and see if your feelings change towards your workplace. Liking nine out of ten coworkers is a really good thing. It is in fact a blessing, something that makes you happy. If you focus on the blessing of the good fellow workers, the one who isn't so hot will fade in importance in your overall job satisfaction.
Another way to turn the situation into a positive one is to bless the person who is the annoyance. This is a little harder perhaps than praising the amiable coworkers, but it comes with its own set of rewards. You are turning your complaint, which is not much different from a curse, into a blessing. If you think about what you are doing when you curse something, no matter what words you might use, you can see that you are essentially spewing negative energy at someone or something. A complaint is also negative energy being projected onto someone or something. At an energetic level, there is little difference. When you complain about something you might not be aware that you are putting out negative energy until you try blessing the situation or person instead. Just try it and see if you can't tell a difference in how you feel inside and how the air around you feels. Whenever you find yourself complaining, you will be amazed at how different you and the situation feels once you begin to pour positive energy into the situation in the form of a blessing. It feels even better than simply not complaining. Not complaining creates a void that almost begs to filled, so why not fill it with a blessing instead?
