The Bottom Line: Complaining is easy and sucks away at your enjoyment of life. Celebrating is a lot more fun AND makes it easier to see everything you have going for you right here and now.
When I was a kid, I enjoyed playing a board-game version of the game show Jeopardy. The designers were very clever about hiding the answers until it was time to check them: The answers were printed in red ink, and the grid was covered with red plastic, making the answers invisible until you removed the cover.
While this inability to see what was literally right in front of me worked fine in the context of this game, it’s really not helpful for me or any other adult going about her life.
We unfortunately live in a society that seems to prioritize acknowledging and spreading bad news, rather than good. That makes it way too easy to get into the habit of always noticing what’s wrong, and what’s not going right, and what’s hard.
The problem is, if you constantly view the world through a mental filter of “bad,” that’s exactly what you’re going to notice – and be affected by. Noticing leads to complaining, which leads to feeling negative, which leads to filtering in more bad stuff, which leads to experiencing more negativity, ad nauseam.
If you’re stuck in this loop, everything that’s going great is like that red ink in the Jeopardy game – invisible until you remove what’s hiding it.
I challenge you to experiment for one week with making an active effort to appreciate positives in your environment. Large or small; it doesn’t matter. What’s important is developing the habit of noticing and celebrating what’s going well. By doing so, you’ll shift your default energy from angry/sad/hopeless to pleased/appreciative/optimistic.
So pay attention to that gorgeous flower, how delicious cool water is when you’re parched, the unexpected compliment you received, or anything else that gives you a nice lift. There’s a lot that’s worth appreciating out there. We just get to start noticing it.
If you suspect that you tend to wear red glasses and would do well to switch them out to some rose-colored ones, you’ll find plenty of tips on how to do so in several of my DIY Guides. Feel free to grab whichever looks best for you.
(BTW, thanks to Julian Myles for posting the red-lenses image on Unsplash.)
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