I get daily emails from some of my favorite teachers, leaders, and organizations. I like that every morning I get to start off my day by reading messages that uplift my spirit and set me off in a good mood.

One such email that I read this past week said, “You are not doing any good for your friends by encouraging them to complain.”

At first I thought, “Who would encourage their friends to complain?”, but upon some more thought I realized “Who ISN’T encouraging their friends to complain?” In fact, I know a great many people who seem to actually bond by complaining. It almost seems to be a direction that conversation goes when we don’t know what else to say.

The problem with complaining is that we begin to create the life experience of that which we focus on the most. If we choose to focus on the things that are worthy of complaint, we begin to frame our thoughts and condition our minds to notice more and more things to complain about, in any and all situations.

If we, instead, frame our thoughts and condition our minds to notice the things that we are grateful for, things to praise rather than bash, we will begin to create more and more reasons to be grateful, and more and more things to be grateful for will show up for us!

Next time you notice yourself or your friend starting to fall into the rut of complaining do yourself and your friend a favor and change the topic of conversation to something that you love!