Experiment 5

Goal: Go 21 straight days without complaining or uttering non-constructive criticism. (If I catch myself doing it, I must start again at day zero.)

This was inspired by Will Bowen’s book A Complaint Free World, in which he claims that if you stop pronouncing your negative thoughts, you stop having those kinds of thoughts, and that if everyone did this the world would change completely.

What happened: It took 55 days to get 21 complaint-free days in a row, but I did it. This experiment really does teach you not to complain, and I think everyone should do it once in their lives. But it didn’t create much of an inner change. My negative thoughts were unaffected, I just got more polite about whether to pass them on to others. Complaining can even be a worthwhile form of bonding, as I learned while I was working a painful manual labor job with new friends, and could never join in on the lighthearted griping. Still, it’s better to never complain than to complain freely.

Where I am with it today: Even though the exercise didn’t eliminate internal negativity like the book promised, the experiment left me much more conscious about expressing needless negativity, and I am pretty good at keeping it to myself most of the time. I’m also more patient with others when they’re complaining. This is one experiment I would recommend to almost anybody.