Everyone loves to complain. Heck, even I love to complain. It’s something we all do, and if you say “No, Jordan, I don’t complain, I’m an optimist,” you’re lying to yourself.
Even today you probably found something or someone annoying or had a frustrating experience and called your mom to complain. I don’t blame you, I would do the same.
But recently I was reading a book called “The Art of Not Giving a Fuck” and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There was one part that stuck out to me that talked about when you should and shouldn’t give a fuck.
As someone who used to give way too many fucks about basically everything, I was taken aback at first. I rolled my eyes and thought “I can complain about anything I want to because I just can.”
But after sitting on it for a hot minute, I had a realization. All of the complaining and negative talk I’ve done in my life hasn’t really done anything for me. Yeah, I’ll still continue to complain about mean people and bad situations, but I will no longer be complaining about situations or opinions I have no control over.
My freshman year of college was pretty great, but I definitely spent most of the time being a people pleaser, or, in other terms, a doormat. I would spend countless nights awake wondering if certain people didn’t like me or what people thought about me. And let me tell you, that was exhausting.
I have some friends who are even bigger pessimists than I am and like to trash anyone they see. And what I’ve noticed is that when they talk about other people in a bad light, they don’t get any happier. If anything, they just get more pissed off.
Who wants to live like that? Now I’m not telling you to turn into a Positive Patty or anything, but if you’re spending a lot of time thinking about what others think about you or if you spend your time talking negatively about others, it’s a huge waste of your time, and it’s not going to make you any happier.
Look, I’m not judging you for talking bad about others because every person does it, it’s a natural human instinct. I’m saying if you limit the amount of negativity you spread, your life will become more positive.
Let me give you an example: myself. I used to be the biggest Negative Nancy and I also used to care way too much about what other thought of me.
First, I want to talk about how I used to be incredibly negative and why it made my life worse. I would always set myself up for failure, like any person does, telling myself I’d do terrible on a test or that my friends secretly hate me. But what did that ever accomplish? Not one thing. If anything I would just become more and more paranoid over things I couldn’t control. Once I started telling myself I’d do amazing on the test, or that I loved my friends and they loved me, I was a lot happier and more stress-free.
Next, let’s look at the stuff I cared about. There was quite a lot. When drama would happen in my fencing team group chat and someone would get heavily roasted, I would call my mom up like it was some emergency and start talking 100 miles a minute about how absurd and upsetting this was.
“Well, did anyone say anything rude to you or about you?” my mom would ask me. I remember I would be furious and fire back “well that’s not the point.”
But it really is the point. If that drama in the group chat didn’t affect me at all, I really shouldn’t have cared as much as I did. And something that literally had nothing to do with me now made me annoyed for hours and basically ruined my day. In hindsight, it sounds pretty stupid, and that’s what I’m trying to prevent in your life, whoever is reading this.
We only have a certain amount of fucks we can give. Why waste them on people we don’t even like or things that have nothing to do with us?
For the last two weeks, I’ve started to view life and the the people around me in a more positive light and I stopped letting small, pointless things get to me, and let me tell you, I couldn’t be happier. I listen to my friends talk about how some girl looks hideous in the pants she’s wearing or how they are nervous that their hair looks bad and I actually feel bad for them.
Living a life where you complain and talk bad about people and things instead of appreciating the people and things you already have will never make you happier. Start viewing your life in a more positive light and stop looking around so much at what others are doing. Work on yourself, take that time and energy you spend talking about others and use it to make your life better.