#BeInspired Mondays with IK: Using Complaining Well

Inasmuch as we do not like complaining as an act, we know that we all do it. You can’t escape it, really. With the way life itself is set up, we will have to complain about one thing or the other as we go through this journey.

Life is a blend of ups and downs, successes and failures, and rights and wrongs, hence we will at some point or the other be dissatisfied with the events taking place in our lives. Expressing this dissatisfaction is what complaining is all about.

We don’t like it, but we’ll have to do it probably the rest of our lives. How then can we use it for our own good? You see, there are varieties of complaining:

First, is chronic complaining and we do this just to make the individual who caused the dissatisfaction we experienced feel bad for what they have done – to treat their f**k up as we say in Nigerian parlance. We tend to also focus on the pain/loss it has caused us, hindering our progress with our own hands and plunging us into the dangerous waters of despair. The saddest thing is that if we continue like this, we keep building neural pathways that eventually make this type of complaining the default action when faced with dissatisfaction.

Second type of complaining is the infamous venting. To express dissatisfaction, we speak to friends or family about what’s going on and why we feel bad. It’s all about having some to listen to us and validate our experience, someone to tell how angry we are and why. We just want to feel good about the whole situation, not necessarily finding a solution.

The problem with the two types of complaining above is that it changes nothing and when another party is directly or indirectly involved in the cause of our dissatisfaction, they will either not know, or not get the message.

The sad thing is that due to raging emotions, we tend to act in one of the two ways above, but there is a better way – one which is both effective and efficient. This way of complaining asks the question “what do we do moving forward?” and it involves contacting all parties involved. You’ll express your dissatisfaction, but also ensure that everyone picks up and use new information that’ll aid future relationships and projects.

So, by all means complain – it is good, but be solution-oriented when doing so. Cheers!