Yahoo Finance Cut the complaining: it’s shrinking your brain
“I’m so busy.”
“This is too cold.”
“My team is so lazy.”
“These seats are too small.”
Life is annoying, stressful and uncomfortable. But while it can feel great to vent, constant complaining actually shrinks your brain.
A 1996 Stanford study found that the act of complaining, or listening to someone complain for 30 minutes or more can damage the brain.
Those 30 minutes of stress were connected to a smaller hippocampus, the part in the human brain responsible for remembering facts and critical thinking.
The same trend was observed in Vietnam vets and survivors of sexual harassment and abuse.
The problem is, the average person complains between 15 and 30 times a day, according to Psychology Today.
Why do we complain so much?
As our brains shrink, they’re also being trained to veer towards negative rather than positive thoughts.
“Your brain loves efficiency and doesn’t like to work any harder than it has to. When you repeat a behavior, such as complaining, your neurons branch out to each other to ease the flow of information,” Dr. Travis Bradberry, author of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and co-founder of emotional intelligence test provider, TalentSmart explained.
“This makes it much easier to repeat that behavior in the future—so easy, in fact, that you might not even realise you’re doing it.”
To make matters worse, constant complaining isn’t just bad for the complainer. It’s also bad for those listening in, Bradberry explained.
As humans are social, our brains like to copy the moods of those we’re with, and is the basis of human empathy.
But it also means that spending a lot of time around a chronic complainer affects your health as well.
“You need to be cautious about spending time with people who complain about everything. Complainers want people to join their pity party so that they can feel better about themselves,” Bradberry said.
“Think of it this way: If a person were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? You’d distance yourself, and you should do the same with complainers.”
Okay, how do I quit complaining?
The Complaint Restraint Project challenges entrants to quit complaining every February. According to them, there’s “no secret sauce”.
“Simply stop complaining. Be mindful and notice when it happens.”
But to Jon Gordon, author of The No Complaining Rule, there are some strategies to help quit.
Be grateful
“Research shows that when we count three blessings a day, we get a measurable boost in happiness that uplifts and energises us,” he explained.
“It's also physiologically impossible to be stressed and thankful at the same time. Two thoughts cannot occupy our mind at the same time. If you are focusing on gratitude, you can't be negative. You can also energise and engage your coworkers by letting them know you are grateful for them and their work.”
2. Praise
Shift your focus. If you’re always looking at what others are doing wrong then you might not notice all the things they’re doing right.
And if you praise them, they’ll likely go on to create more success. It’s worth noting that this doesn’t mean not pointing out mistakes or ignoring flaws.
3. Use the But -> Positive technique
This means adding a “but” to any complaints. For example, “I don’t like that I’m out of shape but I love feeling great so I’m going to focus on exercising and eating right.”
4. Be specific
If you do need to raise an issue, be specific, added Bradberry.
“It’s not a good time to dredge up every minor annoyance from the past 20 years. Just address the current situation and be as specific as possible. Instead of saying, “your employee was rude to me,” describe specifically what the employee did that seemed rude.”
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