Years ago, I learned how to teach Transcendental Meditation by studying with the great guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I learned so many invaluable things from this wonderful spiritual master, but one of the most poignant that I’ll never forget was the following quote of his: “The teacher learns more than the student.” A case in point: a longtime client of mine introduced me to the work of Will Bowen, who describes himself as “A catalyst for positive transformation,” and aspires to create a complaint-free world. The more worldly people I play tennis with responded to this idea by saying, “Good luck.”
I understood the sarcasm of my tennis mates. Complaining is such a contagious habit that it pervades our culture and causes increasing unhappiness in anyone who does it, as well as all of us who have to listen to it. And I’m not even talking about the famous tennis complainer John (“You can’t be serious”) McEnroe. Even nice people complain, even spiritual people complain. Most people, in fact, are so enmeshed in its hold, that they don’t even realize that they’re complaining when they are. As a result, the very thought of getting out of the habit of complaining seems laughable, if not impossible.
The Bracelet
I put into practice what my client taught me about Bowen’s inspirational teaching, a method which is really a very simple one. He recommends that you put a bracelet around your wrist, and every time that you complain you shift the bracelet from the wrist you’re wearing it on to the other wrist. (You can order a package of 10 purple complaint-free bracelets for $10 at his site, complaintfreeworld.biz, with the money going to schools, prisons, churches, etc., as well as for people who can’t afford them. A rubber band will also do the trick and won’t cost you a penny.)
His challenge: see if you can go without complaining for a full 24 hours. If you do - and if you do, congratulate yourself - take on the bigger test: 21 days. Why three weeks? The prevailing thought is that it takes between 3 - 4 weeks to rid yourself of a bad habit and develop a good one in its place. According to his website, willbowen.com, more than 10 million people in the world have adopted this complaint-free aspiration both for themselves, and to share it with the people in their lives. Hence, this column.
Try it, You’ll Like it
I tried this approach and I liked it.
In the beginning, I became conscious of my complaining on the tennis court, often chastising myself for missing shots that I had no business missing, or making a dumb play. When I complained, I just moved the bracelet. The key thing was that I avoided the trap of complaining about complaining. I mean think about it… complaining is the act of making wrong whatever has just taken place. As The Secret so brilliantly teaches, what you focus on expands. So if something just happened that you don’t like it, and then you complain about it, you actually expand its presence in your consciousness. If you’re intent on overcoming complaining and you make the fact that you just complained another complaint, the vicious cycle just goes on and on. Forgive yourself, move the bracelet, and simply move on with your life. Overcoming complaining is a process.
My verbal complaining on the tennis court soon switched to a quiet whisper, but it was still a complaint, even if nobody else heard me. I heard me. The Universe heard me. And so the purple bracelet moved to my other hand. In time, the whispers died away, as well. I sometimes still had mental judgments on the errors, but as long as it didn’t erupt into speech I kept the bracelet where it was. I also noticed how many of the guys I played with needed to wear such bracelets, because the quieter you get the noisier others are in comparison. I soon found myself quietly accepting my poor shots as a human being doing the best he could. As Alexander Pope, the poet, wrote, “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” Even Roger Federer erred on the tennis court often; if he could accept that fact, I figured I might as well, too.
In time, I would go days at a time without complaining. Soon enough, I went 21 straight days without a complaint, and found so much more inner peace and freedom as a result. So I retired the bracelet. But I haven’t retired talking about it. It’s an amazing process. Give it a shot and let me know how it goes for you. In time you might become like the many Thai people I met when I was in Bangkok and Chiang Mai about five years ago. When I asked a number of them why they were so peaceful, their responses were almost all identical: they take the concept of karma quite seriously. (In the West, the corresponding idea is that as we sow, so shall we reap.) In other words, whatever happens to them they simply see it as the result of their past actions and thoughts coming back to them. So since what happens is something they, in effect, created themselves, why should they make it wrong and complain about it? Now that’s a good question indeed.