At the beginning of 2020, I listed out 18 goals for me to achieve, and one of the more important goal I aim to accomplish is to NOT COMPLAIN for 21 days.

Its been roughly a month since my first day of the challenge and I am here to jog down some of my thoughts, and share my piece of mind. What does it really feel like living in the complaint free mindset.

This whole challenge is inspired by the book J’arrete de Raler! by Christine Lewicki. Yes, this is a French book by a French author; however, I didn’t read the book in French. Full confession, I read the book in Chinese; french or not this book have opened up my mind and forced myself to self-reflect on my behaviors.

In the book, the author point out how intentionally or not, a normal person would usually spend 70% of his/ her energy on complaining daily. If you put this in the time frequency that means in a 24 hours day, we could spent up to 16 hours complaining things. To me, is like us wasting too much time and effort on literally NOTHING. On top of that, the mindset of complaint will affect negatively on both you and the people around you.

You probably think what I am writing are just common sense. Indeed, they are, but how many people are willing to act upon common sense to achieve greatness and how many people are capable of keeping up the good habit? I actually had this book up in my shelves for over 3 years, and this isn’t my first time reading the book. However, only this time I have taken the book seriously.

When I first told my friends about my no complaint challenge, some of them are excited for me while others thinks it’s not necessary. To them, being able to complain might be beneficial for yourself because you have and outlet to let go all you negativeness. While agreeing with them, I also think that to complaining about life is NOT the only way to let go your negativeness. There are many other ways to distress and detox, we just need to figure out the most healthy and effective methods.

With that being said, What is a No Complaint Challenge? Well, do not mistaken “no complaint” with “playing the language and saying thing in the ‘more positive‘ way” or “staying silent and just never talk about your feeling.” A No Complaint Challenge is an exercise of mind and an act of self-love. The entire challenge is separated into 3 different stages (at least for me), and I will be walking through each stage and my piece of mind during my challenge.

First: Self Realization.

First stage of the challenge is for you to re examine yourself and really think about how you have been living and what are the ideal life for you. During this stage, (for more efficient tracking) I wore a rubber bracelet on my right arm and swap it to the left arm every time I complain. I found this exercise really help me realize that how OFTEN I complain a day. The first day of my challenge, I swapped the bracelet so often that I had to end my Skype call with a friend early. During that 45 mins Skype call I have swapped my bracelet over 15 time; that means on average I complain in every 3 mins.

However, realizing your frequency of complaints are not enough, you have to figure out why you complain and what can complaints bring you. In my case, I found out usually I complain about the inconvenience and difficulty things happened around me. Such as having a demanding supervisor, waiting for my food (from Doordash), dealing with a mis-located package. By complaining I am hoping that something good will magically happen and fix my problem. Sadly, in reality complain will get you NO WHERE. In fact, it might even get you further away from what you want.

To me this stage of the challenge is the easiest yet the most crucial one. For the longest time I believe that I am a positive person, but the truth is, I have too much unsanctification about my current life and frankly just a negative person. Yet, this practice really gave that urge of self improvement. Moreover, to really breakdown why I complain, helps me see that I am not a person who complain just for the sake complain (like I actually complain for a purpose, and all I need to do right now is figure a different way to expressing my feeling). This helps a lot when I am coming up with strategies on self-improving. Since there is a clear start of the problem, I could always find the right solutions for it.

Second: Self Complement.

Second part of the challenge is a bit more challenging for me because I am not the most confident person and I often dodge other people’s complements when they were given to me. Nevertheless, this part of the challenge is so empowering that I put extra amount of effort while doing it, and it is for sure my favorite part of the challenge.

During stage two, we are trying to form a POSITIVE MIND. By doing so you must find one thing that sparked joy for you everyday and to look into the mirror and complement yourself at least once day. I think my biggest take away during this part of the challenge is to really feel and realize that happiness isn’t something that required any supplement. You don’t need a major event, or a new pair of shoes to sparks your happiness. In fact, happiness is straight forward and simple; most oftenly, it happens when you are just by yourself! Personally it is a mind breaking finding because I am that person, who is use to rely on my friends, and sincerely believe that I will be much happier when I am with others.

In reality, I am a working lady who no longer live in a college dorm. Even though I have the luxury to meet my coworkers on daily bases, it is impossible for me to go out and have fun with friends each night. I really feel like this challenge make me realize my happiness held in my own hands. I am the only person who is responsible for my feeling; though I couldn’t I have successfully complete this challenge. Because I still wish my friends and love one to cheer me up while my mood is down, but this is definitely a learning experience for me and I would love to work on it.

Moreover, this challenge also make me realize that my life is never horrible. Before, I might thought myself as “the most miserable person” because sometimes bad things happened to me. However, bad things don’t happened everyday; on the countries, good things do happen everyday (just by the matter if you are welling to acknowledge the good things happened around you).

Moving on, it is also very important to understand that things happen for a reason, and good or bad it is in a blink of your mind. There is no absolute good things and bad things, they are all about how you see them. (in my experience) A year ago, I was dumped in the airport by my “best friend (at the time),” as shocking and heart breaking as it was, I actually gain a lot from this experience. Obviously, I was heartbroken and thought that I must be so unlucky and problematic that even my “best friends (at the time)” could abandon me for her carry-on. Yet, thinking back I actually bond with more others friends and make more friends after this experience, so to me, this isn’t really a bad thing. It might seems like one if you are only focusing on a part of the story, but by looking at the bigger picture I am living in a amazing life with friends who value and care about me the way I want. Moreover, as the time past, me and that person (my best friend at the time) had talked about it and things became much neutral nowadays. From this experience, I would say I didn’t lose anything but gain more friendship, so its a WIN!

Third: Self Centered.

Lastly, and no doubt THE MOST CHALLENGING part of the challenge is the Self Centered. Here I am going to explain, Self Centered doesn’t mean that you need to selfish and to only think about your wants and needs. Instead, Self Centered here indicates that you need to STAND YOUR GROUND. By completing stage one and two, your mind are now aware and positive. Therefore, the final step of the challenge is to continue practice these exercise and beliefs whenever and wherever.

While this stage of the challenge might be easy, I found myself had a difficult time to really accomplish this step of the challenge. During my third weeks of the challenges, I started to hang out with my other friends and began to listen to your problems (aka. their complaints), which I have been avoiding in the first two weeks of my challenge. Here to make it clear, I only avoided because the beginning of the challenge required me to self-focus, and I only want to be an effective listener for my friends when I know I am mentally ready for them. Although, I was mentally prepared to consume their negativeness, and confident that I could survived the challenge. When the hang out began, I instantly become exhausted and have so much trouble focusing on my friends constant complaints. I felt horrible after the hang out. Even though I did not once crack to complain alone her side, or be that know it all who point out my friends for complaining too much, I did check out from the conversation from time to time just for me to survive.

If I were to learn anything from this experience, is that standing your ground could be tricky especially when you are dealing with people you love most dearly with your heart. Not Complaint is personal choice, and I have no right to ask my friends to enforce them as well. However, how to stay close with my belief and stay positive is something that I need to figure out. Right now I am still working on this part because I am really easily influenced by my friends and avoiding people is not the way I want for sure.

To roughly conclude some of my biggest take away on my thought of this 21 Day Not-Complaint Challenge. First, I definitely feel like I am a much happier personal than I were 21 days ago. I no longer think nothing good has or will happen to me, and become much grateful for what I have. Secondly, I feel like while hanging out with others, there are less and less awkward pauses in between conversation and it is quite obvious that our conversation are not all negative and depressing! Lastly (and probably the most important one), the time for me to have big arguments with my love ones has significantly decreased. Perhaps, its because my general mindset has change or because the way I talk is a bit different. Regardless, it WORKS!

I learned so much from this book and this challenge. While I am still in the process of the challenge (and I have no intention to stop, like ever), here are just some of my thought and hopefully these are useful for you.

We all deserve Happiness, and you are fully responsible for your own Happiness.