A short personal talk by Asif Osman reflecting on the nature of complaining. He distinguishes useful, outcome-driven complaints (e.g., returning a faulty product or seeking compensation) and constructive criticism aimed at changing behavior, from unproductive complaints about unchangeable circumstances (e.g., being short or lacking education) which lower morale. He advises pausing before complaining to ask whether the issue can be changed or warrants constructive feedback.
Chapters
Foreign. And here I am once again with a thought of mine which I'd like to elaborate on. And this thought is about something we all hear every day, and that is about complaining. We all hear in our daily lives from some people. Don't complain. Don't be a complainer. Don't be a whiner. And to a large degree, I agree there's no point in complaining sometimes. But I want to add a little context or little elaboration to what I think people mean when they say don't complain. Now, if you went out to an electronic store and bought yourself a mobile phone and you came home and you realized it doesn't work, wouldn't you complain? Of course you would. You would take it back to the store to expect a refund or a replacement or some sort of compensation. And if you bought yourself an airplane ticket and boarded a plane to go somewhere nice and the service was terrible, or the service was not up to expectation, not the value that you actually paid for, of course you'd complain. And the objective of that complaint is really to get your value worth, the value of what you paid for, to get its worth or to get some sort of compensation or rectify the situation. I believe that sort of complaint is absolutely necessary. And I think most of you would agree that's not what people mean when they say don't complain. What people mean when they say don't complain is don't complain about things like, oh, I'm so short, or oh, I'm not educated, so I didn't get that job, or oh, my boss fired me because he can. These are complaints which may be valid, but those are things that you can't do anything about. You can't do anything about being short except to think positive and about all the other positive attributes that you might have. You can't think about being uneducated or not educated enough. In a way. You really can't complain about the things that you can't do anything about, which are a result of natural circumstances. I think that's what most people do, is complain about things that they can't do anything about. And that sort of complaining is absolutely useless. It just gets you down, gets your morale down. But if you do complain in a positive, constructive way about people's behavior, for instance, I think that can be useful sometimes if you complain and criticize a particular person's behavior in the right way, there is a possibility that person can change his or her way. And that sort of complaining, if it's done properly and you really can't call it complaining. You'd rather call it constructive criticism. That is a positive way. So the next time somebody says to you, stop complaining, maybe you stop for a second and think, what am I complaining about? Is it something that I can't do anything about, or is it something that I think I can change? So in that case, you're on the right track. So think about complaining for a bit.
