Join Us! The No Complaint Challenge
21 days of no complaining. A tall task, but a worthy one.
How It Works
You wear a rubber band on your wrist. It is part reminder, discipline tool, and fashion accessory (although my lovely wife loathes when I wear them casually). If you complain (about anything!!) you pull that rubber band and let it snap against your poor, uninformed wrist. Why? To create a negative association with the act of complaining. If your brain associated a snap of a rubber band on the wrist with complaining, it will start to think twice when producing negative thoughts and complaints.
That’s Not All
Each time you have a rubber band assault on your wrist produced by your complaint, you need to switch which wrist your rubber band is on, and set the clock back to 0 days of no complaining. The goal is to reach 21 days without complaints and with the rubber band staying put.
It’s All About Gratitude
While going through life there are many stressors that drag us down into a negative and complaint filled state of mind. There’s a lot of negative propaganda out there that can suck you into that headspace. Our goal in this challenge is to become more aware of those thoughts and feelings and attempt to positively frame the situations we find ourselves in. There are so many things to be grateful for, yet most of us look right past this things in order to vent or complain. We’re hoping this exercise will stop us in our tracks, acknowledge our negative mindset towards whatever the situation may be, and change how we view it. If we don’t change our mindset, the wrath of the rubber band will come down on us time and time again. An attitude of gratitude is hard to come by, but I think the rubber band will reinforce that it’s a necessity for living a happy life.
Let us know in the comments of you’ll join us in the endeavor!!
P.S. We got this idea from Tim Ferriss and his blog, so you may have heard of such a challenge. Our hope is that we can get as many people involved in the process as possible to hopefully create some more grateful people. Join us!
Comments
I thought I have heard this somewhere but still a great reminder and many have not heard of it. Gratitude is so big in my life. When I have it it makes days have purpose and meaning. When I don’t…well it’s not pretty. We need to practice discipline and practice gratitude, then it will be ingrained in who we are.
Oh goodness! I can’t wait to see how this goes. Half of me wants to try it and the other half is too afraid I’ll never make it past day 2.
It has been hard but we’re happy we did it. We both work in schools and summer school has just started up. We never realized how much we complained about students, the work, etc. until we started snapping our wrist every hour! It’s been (painfully) eye-opening and has made us much more aware of it all. We hope the awareness will make us alter our perspective more frequently!
Fantastic! Hopefully there’s a way to turn rude children into a positive 😉
Love this!