An annoyingly upbeat song about thinking positively. You have been told!

Do you know people who just never seem to be able to go five minutes without complaining about something, whether it is about their dissatisfaction with their lives or just about any small detail that happens to have grabbed their attention?

I have been guilty of this myself and these days I am purposefully dealing with that. I complain so much less than I used to. It’s basically a gratitude thing. Complaining is a way of being ungrateful for what you already have. Of course some people do have a lot of seemingly justifiable things to complain about, but even then, complaining about them only gives such circumstances more power over you.

It is so important to engage with something that really gives you a sense of belonging in this world, doing something you love to do and in doing so being more to other people as is so eloquently put by Tina Su at Think Simple Now: One of my favourite blogs on the entire web. When you do that and become outstanding as Tina puts it, you will automatically have far less to complain about. How can you think about stopping what you are doing to complain when what you are doing is giving you a great sense of fulfillment and joy?

Living in South East Asia where the standard of living for many people is not as high as it is in the West has really helped to educate me in the fact that happiness comes first, before all the comforts and luxuries and especially before money. Not only in the sense of it being more important, but it literally comes first. You don’t attain happiness by coming into money or a new car; at least not true, lasting happiness anyway. If you want to be happy, you have to choose to be happy and start now before anything else has a chance of becoming real for you.

The people here are generally less stressed than back home in the UK, they smile nearly all the time and most of them don’t get grey hairs until they are well into old age! There’s a lesson! I noticed the same thing too when I travelled around Cambodia in 2004. Those people really do have very little compared to the West, but they seemed to have much more in the way of inner peace and happiness. It was obvious even from 100 yards away and think what those people have gone through in the last 30 or 40 years. Food for thought.

Stop Complaining
Complaining is like praying for what makes your life a drag. Can you imagine waking up every morning putting your hands together and saying "I pray for misery, suffering and all things annoying in my day, Amen". That would be ridiculous wouldn’t it? Well a perpetual habit of complaining is pretty much doing just that, especially when you already have things in your life that other people would be really happy to have.

You know the old saying "Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it"? Well stop complaining and you will stop getting many things in life that you don’t want.

Enjoy!