What ARE you complaining about? I’ve been asked that question – have you?
At first glance, this sounds like a simple question.
What are you complaining about?
Most of us can answer immediately.
The weather.
Traffic.
Politics.
Our jobs.
Our health.
Other people.
The economy.
Technology.
The price of things.
Whatever happened this morning.
But I want to ask the question differently.
Not, “What are you complaining about today?”
Instead:
What are you complaining about as a human being?
What themes show up repeatedly in your complaints?
What patterns exist beneath your dissatisfaction?
That’s where things become interesting.
Because complaints are often clues.
Sometimes they point to a genuine problem that needs attention.
But sometimes they reveal something about us.
For example, are you frequently complaining about things you cannot control?
The weather.
The past.
Traffic.
The economy.
The line @ Starbucks.
The decisions (or lack of) of strangers.
The behavior of people who have no intention of changing.
If so, your complaints may be signaling a mismatch between your desire for control and the reality of the world.
Or perhaps you tend to complain when life fails to meet your expectations.
You expected the meeting to go better.
You expected to feel more appreciate.
You expected the vacation to be smoother.
You expected people to be more considerate.
You expected yourself to perform at a higher level.
In these cases, the complaint may be less about the event and more about the gap between expectation and reality. That’s an important distinction.
Sometimes the source of dissatisfaction is not the circumstance itself but the expectation attached to it.
Then there is another possibility.
You may find yourself complaining about people whose standards, values, morals, habits, or norms differ from your own.
They don’t communicate the way you would.
They don’t work the way you would.
They don’t parent the way you would.
They don’t vote the way you would.
They don’t prioritize the things you prioritize.
When this becomes a recurring complaint, it may reveal a struggle to accept that other people are not obligated to share our worldview.
Again, the complaint becomes a clue.
Not merely about them.
About us.
This is why I believe complaints deserve closer examination.
Most people focus on the content of their complaints.
Few examine the pattern.
Yet the pattern often tells the more important story.
Imagine carrying a notebook for a week and writing down every complaint.
Not just the spoken ones.
The mental ones as well.
Every irritation.
Every criticism.
Every expression of dissatisfaction.
At the end of the week, what would the list reveal?
Would it show frustration with things you cannot control?
Unmet expectations?
Differences in values?
A tendency toward perfectionism?
A habit of focusing on what is wrong rather than what is working?
The answers might be surprisingly revealing.
Complaints are not always bad.
Sometimes they identify problems worth solving.
Sometimes they point to injustice, inefficiency, or opportunities for improvement.
But complaints can also become habits.
And habits can become lenses.
Eventually, we stop noticing the habit and simply assume the world deserves our dissatisfaction.
So today, ask yourself a different question.
Not merely:
“What am I complaining about?”
But:
“What are my complaints teaching me about myself?”
The answer may reveal far more than what’s wrong with the world.
It may reveal something important about how you’re experiencing it.
Aspire.
Come Upwards with Us™
