Something that has long been a struggle for me is when people complain a lot—I really don’t love the negative energy, and I tend to turn away from people who are complaining. So I’ve been examining this in recent years and learning a lot about myself. The first thing I realized is that I have difficulty with people who complain because I have a hard time loving the part of myself that complains.
And so I’ve been learning to find the complainer in myself, and bring love to him. This is transformative! It means it’s OK for me to have complaint, to feel put upon, to not be happy or grateful. This is permission to just be how I am right now, which is sometimes full of complaint.
The second thing I’ve learned is that I can transform the complaint, when I realize that it has two parts: 1. A complaint is actually, in part, a request: Could you please do this instead of that? If we complain about someone, hidden in that is really a request for them to do something differently. Getting clear on my request empowers me to actually make a direct and clear request.
2. A complaint is also hurt. It’s not simply a request, because embedded in a complaint is the belief I’ve been hurt in some way.
It’s not always obvious how I’ve been hurt, even to myself. But there’s hurt there somewhere. If I don’t like the way someone is acting, that’s usually because there’s something they’re doing that’s aggravating me or causing me pain.
So I can transform the complaint if.