I woke up this morning to find that it was cold outside. Let me rephrase that; I woke up this morning to find that it was so cold (How cold was it Cory?); It was so cold that the snowman outside was next to a fire trying to warm up. Alright, comedy may not be my forte, but I tried.
This morning on Facebook, I saw a post from a friend of mine (Jordan Hanely) that I thought was pretty thought provoking. Jordan said, “An interesting study found that 100% of people complaining about the weather didn't change the weather at all.” I thought this was brilliant. Every time there is some sort of winter storm or cold weather or if it is extremely hot, my social feeds fill up with pictures of car temperatures from their dashboards or complaints. What does that do to help change the weather? Nothing.
I can relate this to everyday life. I am apart of a few different boards and committees around the Dayton area and have noticed a common factor with people who complain about either a city or how operationally items are run. That commonality is that those complainers do nothing to fix the problem, and truly believe complaining helps.
Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes you need to have someone complain to have an item or concern brought to attention, but if the roles were reversed and I was the one complaining, I would want to see it through to the end and get involved with creating a solution. It is easy to say something, but to do something is a completely different experience.
This also reminds me of a story I heard on the radio last week. They gave an example of a person in a restaurant who placed an order that had some complication to it. The server can react one of two ways. The first being to complain about how hard the order is, how much of an inconvenience the order has been added to her day, and also complaining throughout the entire guests dinner and doing the minimum amount of effort required. The second being that the server can accept the complication and say, “You know what, thank you for giving me this challenge. You are allowing me the opportunity to show you how I can earn my tip for this meal.” There may be frustration along the way, but in the end the server did something productive rather than complain and be negative.
I challenge you to not complain, rather be the vehicle for change.