Everywhere I look, people are complaining.

At work I hear people complaining about how management screwed them over on bonuses again this quarter. At the gym people are complaining that exercise is “too hard”. In the supermarket people complain if their favourite brand of cereal is out of stock.

I’m sick of this… I can’t do that…

Do you want some cheese with that whine?

Here’s the thing: the more time you spend complaining about your career, your health, your relationship and the selection of bagels available at the store, the less time you have available to actually fix your problems.

This is why people get stuck in a holding pattern for big chunks of their life. I know because I’m still in mine. But instead of complaining about my problems I’ve learnt to deal with the things I can solve and forget the rest…

I recently started a little competition with myself. No complaining about anything for 30 days. If I do complain, then I have to start the challenge again from day 0. Here’s the checklist I outlined in my head:

• No complaining about managers at work or the company and their bonus policies.
• No bitching about colleagues behind their back when they annoy me.
• No judging customers harshly when they speak to me like I’m five years old (this one was hard!)
• No objections to chores and tasks my lovely (she might read this so I have to say that) girlfriend sets me.

There are obviously more things I could complain about but these were the main things that I did complain about before the challenge. Basically I wanted to try and remove any negative comments from my daily life. The end goal is to achieve no negative thoughts.

How is the challenge going?

I’m only a couple of weeks into the challenge, even though I started it over 4 weeks ago. Let’s just say I had a few restarts. It was very hard to shift my negative thought patterns to avoid my incessant complaining and I realised just how much I used to bitch and moan.

One of the most remarkable observations to come of this challenge so far is that when you’re not complaining about anything, you notice just how much other people complain about everything.

It’s a pretty rude awakening when you see how common complaints are. It’s like when you’re the only sober person at the party and everybody is falling over, trying not to be sick, stripping off and slobbering over any member of the opposite sex with a pulse! Whenever I’m in that situation I think to myself, “Damn, I’m never drinking alcohol again!”

That’s how I now feel about complaining and I’m hoping that by the end of this challenge, I’ll have broken the negative thought pattern that is holding me back from the important tasks that I should be doing.

One more observation that is worth noting as well is that a lot of my complaints were about myself. I’m very harsh on myself and I noticed that a lot of my complaining were things like, “I’ll never make any money online.” or “I just can’t do this. I’m not good enough.”

While complaining I’d question myself and wonder how guys like Glen Allsopp can earn $20,000 in 4 months while the only Clickbank sale I made this month was refunded. The more I looked at it, the more I realised that Glen is a do-er. He doesn’t complain about his situation. Instead, he opts to go hell-for-leather towards his goals knowing that he can achieve them. While I’m complaining about my refund, he’s building backlinks to generate more sales.

Success is 90% mindset and 10% raw talent. And it all starts when you stop complaining.

Start your challenge today

The interweb is awash with goal setting posts at the moment. To Do list users are on the rise and everyone is trying to make 2010 their year. But is there any point in setting yourself tasks if you spend more time complaining about them, questioning them, or questioning yourself, than you do completing them?

My advice to you is that alongside all of your New Years resolutions and good intentions, you take the No Complaints Challenge for the next 30 days and see what happens. To get started, here’s the simple 3-step process that I used:

1. Kept a diary for a day of everything I complained about. It was looooooooong!
2. Spent a few minutes at the start of each day reading the list to make me aware of them.
3. Any time I felt like I was going to be negative (or I was thinking negative thoughts) I’d grit my teeth and change the subject.

Do the challenge however you like. The important thing is that you don’t complain. You’ll soon see how the majority of people complain, bitch and moan almost on autopilot and you’ll never want to be one of those people again.

Try it and let me know in the comments how you get on. What other challenges are you guys doing to start 2010 with a bang?