Complaining is negativity

Every situation is like food.

The ingredients you put in food determine the final product.

The ingredients you put in a situation determine the final product.

Would you like to put negativity into the food of the future? [Relationships]

All negativity generated within you, you have to see the causes. And find healthy ways to either transmute the negativity or employ it as fuel for something good. Don't put it into food of the future, i.e. relationships.

The Critical Inner Voice

Dealing with the critical inner voice:

Keeping a Journal© psychalive.org

Keeping a journal can be an effective tool for helping you identify and challenge your critical inner voice. Divide a page in half by drawing a line down the middle of the page from top to bottom. On the left side of the page, record negative thoughts toward yourself that you experience during the day. Be sure to write these thoughts as your critical inner voices in the second person, “you,” that is, as though someone were talking to you.

It is helpful to devote 10 to 15 minutes at the end of your day to recalling the negative thoughts you experienced that day. Just let these thoughts flow. Don’t censor yourself. Give full expression to your negative thoughts. Don’t be afraid of them. You don’t have to believe them or act on them. Getting them out in the open, writing them down, will actually give you more control over them. Get to know all the aspects of your negative thinking. Also don’t worry if the thoughts are not logical. Remember that the voice is irrational and the thoughts often contradict each other. After you have finished writing your critical thoughts on the left-hand side of the page, take some time to go back over them. Check to make sure you have written them all in the second person.

Next, on the right-hand side of the page, in relation to each attack, try to express a more friendly, compassionate and realistic view of yourself, your qualities, and your reactions. What would a close friend or an objective observer say or see about you and about the situation? Write this more accurate view of yourself on the right-hand side of the page. Make sure to write it in the first person, as “I” statements. This is not meant to be an exercise where you buoy yourself up with self-affirmative statements, but rather where you look at yourself from an objective but compassionate point of view. How do you see yourself?

If you do this exercise on your computer, follow the first step and write down your critical inner voices (in the second person). When you are done, go back into your document and, after each attack, write your objective view of yourself (in the first person).

Throughout the week, continue to keep a record of the negative thoughts you experience each day, always in the second person, followed by a more compassionate view of yourself written in the first person. At the end of the week, review your journal. Look for any areas in which attacks recur. In the future, you can be aware that these areas are vulnerable to attack by your critical inner voice. Were any of your attacks triggered by specific events? Now when these events occur, you can be on the look out for self-attacks.

Motivation

Teal on Complaining

Great advice, things like maintaining a positive aspects journal, and digging deeper into feelings behind complaining.

Of course, our complaints are mostly correct. No denying that. We are intelligent, sentient beings.

But those deeper emotions beneath our complaints. Is there a deeper layer underneath our complaints? This deeper layer can be our general perspective. Much like climate is the deeper layer of our environment, and today's weather is the upper layer.

So what is our internal climate? And what is our internal weather today?

Are all our complaints correct? Or do some of our complaints hide something else? Can our emotions manipulate our judgement? Can a morbid situation be seen in a different light? Is everything morbid, or is it our mood that is morbid? Is our mood morbid because of unresolved events, or is our mood morbid as a general condition that has developed over a lifetime?

Are there any real issues that we are not focused on?

Did we come into this world with resolved emotions?

Was there any moment in our life, even brief, in which our emotions felt fully resolved? How long did it last?

Have we ever met anyone who's emotions are fully resolved? [Disciplined emotions are different from resolved emotions.]

Assume that our emotions are fully resolved one fine morning, by divine intervention. What happens next?