Hold on — I am not about to tell you be happy, you don’t know how good you have it, people are starving in Africa, etc. This is not about how you should be grateful and all that. I’m saying something more useful. A direct action item that you can start on immediately and it will bear fruit in your life. It is simply this: Stop Complaining.
When you complain, you tell yourself (and anyone still listening) that you are powerless. A quick example: Say you see a single ant in your kitchen. Would you complain about this on Twitter? “Saw an ant today, OMG. Will need therapy to deal with this. FML.” That would be crazy — you simply squash it and go on about your day. You don’t complain about things you can fix — you fix them. You only complain when you feel powerless, like if you have a huge ant infestation that the exterminator has not gotten rid of.
You all know by now the power of priming. People, including you, are highly suggestible. So stop doing that to yourself. Stop telling yourself that you are powerless over a situation, which is what you are doing when you complain. Maybe you can’t see a way to fix it — okay, take out a pen and write down 100 ways you could remove that problem from your life (Protip: Don’t google “How to dump a body”). Keep at it until you find a solution. But what if there isn’t one? You still stop complaining about it, since when you do that you are telling yourself that you are a powerless person. You hear yourself sounding helpless and you will start to believe it. But how do I deal with the feelings of frustration/rage/helplessness, you ask. By letting them fuel you. Let the tension build inside you until you do something. And by “something”, I don’t mean a drunken tirade or the prequel to an episode of COPS. I mean you decide, today, that you will come up with a real answer. Keep on it until you have a real solution, and save the complaining for Yelp.