Ordinary people grumble 15 to 20 times a day, not to mention those who never stop grumbling and are unaware that this attitude will not change anything. Grumbling may be entertaining, but it does not change the situation.
“Stop Grumbling!” says Christine Lewicki, coach, speaker, and author of (Stop Grumbling!) Grumbling should not be the only reaction of people when faced with problems; other strategies should be followed to express what they see as wrong from a constructive point of view.
Consequences of frequent grumbling
Grumbling has multiple passive effects, including:
1. Deterioration of relationships
Grumbling affects the mirror neurons in the brain and thus negatively affects everyone around you. These neural connections - the source of empathy - are transmitted from one person to another, and in this way grumbling spreads and directly affects the surrounding environment.
2. Addiction
People often think that grumbling breathes out what is inside them, but they are unaware that it generates a pattern of dependency, exhaustion, and discomfort. So, if you grumble a lot, try to avoid this habit by refraining from practicing it. There are also other strategies to stop grumbling that we will mention later.
Behaviors in the brain are reinforced by practice and can control the motives for grumbling, and you have to resist the temptation to fall into it. On the other hand, grumbling brings you only more grumbling, and thus, you go through an endless cycle of grumbling. If things do not go your way, reduce grumbling, do not talk too much, and look for solutions.
3. Harm to the mind
In an investigation conducted by Stanford University in the United States, it was found that grumbling reduces the size of the hippocampus in the brain, which is a helpful area responsible for thinking and helping to solve problems. If your mind is trained to grumble, then grumbling will only make you feel worse.
As a result, you will become trapped on the same track, leading to hippocampal atrophy, and eventually, your mind will stop providing you with alternatives and solutions to your problems.
4. Spoil the beautiful things in life
Continuing to see the empty half of the cup makes you not appreciate the positive things that are always there because you have trained your mind to make grumbling its first reaction, and in this way, your vision always becomes dark as a blur on your eyes that prevents you from enjoying what is around you.
5. It makes you grumpy and hurts your health
In addition to everything, grumbling promotes the release of cortisol, called the stress hormone, weakening your immune system, which makes you vulnerable to heart disease, digestive system, diabetes, and high cholesterol.
Remember that the goal is not to eliminate grumbling altogether. Moderate grumbling, which is conveniently directed, is necessary and helpful for finding solutions, and the main target here is not to make grumbling an automatic mechanism for communication.
5 Tips to Stop Grumbling
1. Always focus on finding solutions
As long as you accustom your mind to grumbling, you can train it not to grumble. The tendency of people to constantly grumble will lead them over time to catastrophic or horrific ideas. There is massive harm even in expressing grumbling, even in simple words, because this process involves judging issues and making assumptions about them and criteria to distinguish between them. If we add to this the tone of voice and the emotions fluctuating to different degrees, we will see pure grumbling in its purest form.
If you want to change your perspective on a topic, start focusing on the solution. Through mindfulness training, you will be able to curb the desire to grumble, and once you get used to the problem-solving mechanism, you will reduce grumbling.
2. Create alternative scenarios
Identifying the cause of the grumbling helps people who find it challenging to focus immediately on finding a solution to encounter alternative behaviors in their minds. It means that when knowing the magnitude and consequences of the grumbling, you should start looking for other ways to replace the grumbling behavior.
Try asking yourself what you are grumbling about, why, what alternatives you have, what benefit you might gain from it, and whether it would make you feel different if you were not complaining. This technique is helpful and would make more sense to change your behavior.
3. Go back to find out why you are grumbling
This technique suggests stopping any thinking that fuels grumbling. The first step is to pause for a while. The stop technique invented by coach Tim Gallwey can help you stop grumbling. It is an acronym that collects the first letters of the following words in English:
- ( S = Stop): Stop.
- ( T = Think): Think.
- ( O = Observe): Observe.
- ( P = Proceed/ Act): proceed/ Act.
Once the tendency to grumble has stopped, check what will happen if things are not as you think or imagine. That is the counterargument technique within your mental perception. You can check what will happen when you behave differently. When we deepen the analysis of the situation, the tendency to grumble will decrease, and by practicing this technique continuously, it is possible to reduce and eliminate grumbling behavior as well.
4. Ask yourself, “What benefit do I gain when I grumble?”
Individuals strive to turn a profit, so you should use investments to your advantage even if they don't seem beneficial at first.
This exercise is about self-awareness and changing harmful behavior into another behavior that offers different perspectives focused on promoting changes or finding solutions.
To practice it, you have to bring a notebook and a pen, then start asking yourself honestly what you gain when you grumble, and then prepare a comprehensive list that includes all the details of the grumbling that resonates in your mind or you say it out loud and can dive into the process as much as you want.
Now, put this list aside for at least an hour, then return and read it to see if the whining motives are still true.
5. Accept what you can't edit, and change what you can
“Whatever we do not accept is the basis of suffering,” says the Colombian philosopher Gerardo Schmedling, “so it is necessary to get used to unconditional acceptance in situations that we cannot change and positive actions that we cannot carry out.
Acceptance does not mean agreeing to the facts or justifying them. Rather, acceptance is the right solution when these facts are totally out of your control. If you do not do so and make it a reason for your constant grumbling, you will be like a child with a knife in his hand to harm others, but in fact, he will only hurt himself.
Recall that we always get to pick the circumstances we will deal with. Stop grumbling means a radical change in this aspect so that you can enjoy a life with fewer conflicts, become more harmonious, and be a person whose existence gives value to himself and the environment in which he lives.
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