No complaining here


One of my resolutions this year reads:

Catch myself if I begin to complain and consciously make an effort to stop.

I regularly find myself saying: I'm so tired, I just want to go home, I hate driving, Ugh there's so much traffic, I feel sick, I ate too much...the list goes on. With all the rushing around, manic scheduling, and bad lifestyle choices I've brought with me into this year, I haven't been able to follow through with my goal at all. Perhaps another reason I haven't been doing well with it is because it's too vague, making the end goal feel unattainable.

So I've decided that starting today, Friday, January 17, 2014, I am not going to complain for 1 whole week. Please keep me accountable for this! It's is going to be such a difficult challenge for me. Humans commiserate together. We enjoy (in a sick, twisted way) sharing bad experiences with each other, because it means we're not alone. How many times do we chat about how we're so stretched thin, how our boyfriend didn't text us in a timely manner, how work kept us for so many hours? I figure, if I can eliminate the act of talking/typing out complaints, that hopefully, the thoughts will fade away as well.

I might even implement something I've learned through practicing yoga and attending counseling, which is, rather than pushing away a bad thought (in this case a complaint), I replace it with something positive. By not pushing it away, and rather shifting my paradigm, I will make a total change, rather than a temporary fix.

And although I am not married yet, I want to do the following exercise with Shane. Whether it's in person or over the phone, I'd like to talk about the following things before we go to sleep:

* two things you're grateful for overall
* two little things you enjoyed that day
* one reason why you're glad you're married to doing life with the other person

I got this little exercise from Joanna at Cup of Jo. I look up to her as a human, writer, mom, and wife and have so appreciated her honesty about postpartum depression and the struggles of motherhood. She's really a gem and I recommend her blog to all of you!

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