[blox_column width=”1/1″][/blox_column][blox_heading title=”Stop yer bellyaching!” size=”h3″ style=”style5″ animation=”none”][/blox_heading][blox_text animation=”none”]
Growing up as a kid way back in the 1940’s and 50’s, this was my father’s comment to me from time to time. Those three words, sternly offered, meant that I had a limited about of time to change my emotions and attitude, get a better handle on what I was feeling and be a bit more concerned with what I was saying and how I was saying it.
Times, since way back then, have certainly changed, but humans all over the globe, have often honed their “skills” at complaining and showing their downside emotions and attitude. Why? Because many times how we feel about life events, no matter the age, does punch the emotion button in our brains…for good…and, at times, for not so good.
Yet, emotions are also a gift. By far, not all emotions are negative. How we express our emotions…how we take in the emotions of others…will, in time, add to our growth and character, or it will minimize our growth and character. Stating the obvious, all people who are alive have emotions of some sort all day long.
Within LDG’s Circle of Life Mentoring Model we talk about the Emotional Dimension. Briefly defined, we are talking about:
…core feelings…
…self awareness of our inner world of emotions…
…self management of our feelings…
…empathy and identity with others….
You and I both know that volumes have been written about the varying categories of emotions and attitude. There are the positive ones. There are the negative ones. There are the feel good ones. There are the feel bad ones. All of these can show up or disappear in a matter of moments, depending on circumstances. Emotions can nurture us. Emotions can deplete us.
One of the exceptional leaders I’ve the sacred privilege of mentoring is a man (38) with a wonderful wife (36) and four remarkable kiddos, a boy (8), twin boy and girl (6) and another younger girl (5). Yup…one busy family.
This dad of the family is a design and technical genius. He makes web sites beautiful and efficient. He and his wife are even more genius in their parenting with these vibrant four kids…with the twins being adopted from a severe foster situation. It’s great fun to be in their midst, and to see just how computer/tech savvy they are all becoming.
So, one day, the dad and the older boy (longer story made short…) decided to build a website to help themselves and others stop complaining. That grew into another friend helping them, and viola! Complaintproject.com was born.
Since the dad, Mike Ruman is also helping us at LDG with some of our tech design work, he challenged me to begin the three week process of reducing my complaining. 😉 So I accepted the challenge.
He (that be me…) who thinks he does not complain too much had to realize the subtle and varied ways I do complain. Ouch. It was an important lesson learned. I’m glad I had three weeks to do some changing. That awareness continues to this day. I am grateful.
So, you who are reading this, I challenge you, within our talk here about the Emotional Dimension of the Circle of Life to sign up at Complaintproject.com
See how you do. It will certainly be a great gift to those who know you to find your emotions being better expressed than through the sad avenue of complaining.
Join me in spreading the word about this website that an 8 year-old helped put together. He will be encouraged by that…and you will be one happier, better focused person…even in the midst of unusual or unexpected circumstances.
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