PNTV: A Complaint Free World by Will Bowen (#102​)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hey guys, what's up?

This is Brian with another Philosopher's Notes tv. We're going to take this six page PDF with a bunch of my favorite big ideas from this great book and talk about it in less than 10 minutes. So a complaint free world. How to stop complaining and start enjoying the life you always wanted. This is by Will Bowen, another one of my new favorite teachers who's become.

A friend over the last year.

Check them out@willbohen.com Now Will was a minister at a church in I believe Kansas City, Missouri and he decided to challenge his congregation with a complaint free challenge. And, and the basic idea was he'd pass out bracelets and you'd put on a bracelet on one wrist and if you ever caught yourself complaining, gossiping or criticizing, you had to move the bracelet to the other wrist. Right now the challenge was could you stick with that for 21 consecutive days? And he thought he bought like 500 of these to give to his congregation. He was a little bit nervous. He wouldn't be able to get rid of all 500 of those and get everyone engaged. And 7 million of these purple bracelets, these complaint free living bracelets later, you know, he's on Oprah, The Today show, etc. Inspiring people to play this game. 21 Days of no complaining, no gossiping, no criticizing. Really cool stuff. Check out a complaint free world I think.org or Google that. See, you can take part in that game. Really, really cool stuff. Alexander and I played the game. We got into double digits. I never got 21 days without complaining, gossiping or criticizing. So at some point I'm going to get back and get on that. But for now let's take a quick look at this book and a handful of my favorite big ideas. We cover a bunch of them in the note. We're going to look at several of them right now. So we'll talk about the fact that we're all self made. That's a fun one. The mind's effect on our body is huge. We don't want to nitpick. That's what you do with lice. Don't gossip. It's like picking lice and you're going to get infected, infested. And then we've got slingshots and running starts and coral reefs. That's a fun idea. We need to move from dissatisfaction to action, not from dissatisfaction into complaining and inaction. We're going to talk about just making it another Day in Paradise. We want to shut down the complaint factory. That's a fun one. Then we want to talk about sawdust and plank checks. We're going to talk about Jesus there and how you need to take the plank out of your own eye before you complain about someone else's sawdust and theirs. So there you go. Let's take a look at those big ideas right now. So the first idea is we are all self made. We are every one of us already creating our lives all the time. Will Bowen tells us, and he quotes Earl Nightingale. So apparently Earl Nightingale was asked, you know about self made millionaires. And Earl said we are all self made but only the successful will admit it. Pretty awesome. We are all self made but only the successful will admit it. Every single moment we're making our lives. We can't blame things outside of ourselves for our current life circumstance. We've got to take control of our minds and than take control of our behaviors and create the ideal life we want. We talk about some great quotes on how important it is to get in control of our minds. Buddha in the Dhammapada, we've got notes on that in a video he says, we are shaped by our thoughts. We become what we think. James Allen as a Man thinketh another great book, great little essay. He says, you are today where your thoughts have brought you. You will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. Our thoughts are what it's all about, which is why optimism is principle number one in optimal living 101. We talk about that all the time. For now, we're going to move on. Next big idea is on psychosomatic issues and the mind's effects on the body. I go off on a study here, which I'm not going to go into right now. Check out the note for more. But it's an amazing study where they talk about these people were brought in for knee surgery. Some of them were given the actual surgery. Some of them were given fake surgery. And the people who got the fake surgery but thought they were getting the real surgery had the same benefits as if they got the surgery. Why? Because they thought they would have the benefits. Placebo effect. It's huge. We talk about it a lot. For now, we're going to move on. We're going to talk about slingshots, running starts and coral reefs. Next, let's go deep into this one. So what determines how far a stone from a slingshot will fly? The answer is how far back you've pulled the band of the slingshot. If you study the lives of successful people. You will find that often their success was not in spite of their life challenges, but because of them. They took what happened to them and used it to help them grow. They stopped telling everyone how much they were wronged and began to look for the blessings in their challenges. And looking they found them. Their slingshot was pulled back far, but as a result they soared even farther. Even further. Really cool stuff. So we can spend our lives complaining about our challenges, or we can spend our lives more looking at our challenges as opportunities and blessings to grow. We go off in the note on another story from Earl Nightingale, who visited the Great Barrier Reef, and he wondered why was it that the coral on one side was amazing and beautiful and on the other side it was kind of dead and lifeless. And what he learned was that the coral only grew when it was challenged. And on the lagoon side, where it was super calm, it looked like it was dead. There was no vibrancy. But on the ocean side, where it got pummeled all day long and was constantly being challenged, it was vibrant and beautifully alive. Well, guess what? We have the same opportunity to be nourished by our challenges and to really come alive and shine. Big idea. Next one is dissatisfaction versus complaining. I'm going to move through this one quickly, but the idea here is we need to allow a certain level of dissatisfaction that we then take out action on. But don't get caught up in complaining and becoming immobilized. Will Bowen has a fun thing. Whenever anyone asks him how he's doing, he says, just having another day in paradise. And he means it. It's a good place to be. Now, what I want to talk about for a little bit longer, although we're already almost out of time here, this time goes so fast is the stages we move through as we learn anything. Whenever you want to learn something new, you, you start in unconscious incompetence. You're not even aware that you're bad at something. So you might not even be aware right now that you complain all the time. You're unconsciously incompetent. That's phase one. Now when you start playing something like the 21 day challenge, you move into conscious incompetence. At least now you know you kind of suck at it. You're consciously incompetent. Then when you've practiced it for a long time, you become consciously competent. Now you're pretty good at it, but it still takes conscious attention. Then you move into the fourth stage, which is unconscious competence. Once you've practiced something long enough, you actually become it becomes second nature for you. Unconsciously competent. So these are the four stages of developing any skill set. Whether it's controlling your mind by complaining less or whatever else. You move from unconscious incompetence. You're not even aware you stink at it. To to conscious incompetence. Wow, you're aware you're really not good. To conscious competence. You're working hard and you're getting better at it and you're pretty good to unconscious competence. It's effortless for you. Really, really cool stuff to keep in mind as you develop any skill set. Again, we go into depth in the note. Don't have time for that right now, but we'll move to the next big idea and if you want to soak that up, obviously press pause and rewind and listen again. Some pretty good stuff there and I just love that process and integrating into whatever I learned. Next one is Jesus helping us out Matthew 7:3 Jesus says, why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? In other words, if we want to change the world, it must first come from healing the discord within our souls. Will Bowen tells us we need to be the change we want to see. Quit looking at your neighbor and telling him or your wife or your husband or your kids or whatever and telling them what they need to do to change in order to be a positive influence in the world. Look in the mirror. Heal yourself as you do that. As you ripen to the highest within you become he talks about this beautiful story of one grape in a vineyard will begin to ripen and the energy from that ripening grape will help ripen the rest of the vineyard. Same with us as we actualize as we become the highest version of ourselves that we can, we inspire those around us to be the change as well. So there you go. A complaint free world. Super quick overview. Remember, we're all self made. Our mind has a huge impact on our bodies. We want to remember when we have challenges. It's like a slingshot. We're being pulled back far so we can get a running start. Kind of like that coral reef that takes challenges to really flourish and be vibrant. Then we want to move from dissatisfaction to action. Don't get stuck in complaining. Remember, if you want to shut down the complaint factory, we have four stages. We go through that we talked about and then be the change you want to see. Ultimately, that's what it's all about. Super quick look. Hope you dug it. Hope you got something good out of it and go out and apply it. Have another awesome day. See ya.

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