The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work

“One negative person can create a miserable office environment for everyone else.”

“in life you have a choice between two roads. The positive road and the negative road. The positive road will lead to enhanced health, happiness, and success and the negative road will lead to misery, anger, and failure.”

“Lou Holtz said, ‘Don’t complain. Eighty percent of the people you complain to don’t care and 20 percent are glad you have problems.”

“The measure of our success will not be determined by how we act during the great times in our life but rather by how we think and respond to the challenges of our most difficult moments.”

“that there were two main reasons why people complained: (1) because they were fearful and helpless and (2) because it had become a habit.”

“Stop being disappointed about where you are and start being optimistic about where you are going.”

“She decided that the greatest gift she could give her children would not be wealth or material things, but rather the gifts she could leave in them. In their hearts, in their minds, in their attitudes toward life”

“Let your complaints about problems move you to solutions.”

“what we need the most we resist the most.”

“Step 2. When you do complain, because you most certainly will—everyone does—use your complaining to your advantage. You see, every complaint has an opposite. If there is something you don’t like, then there is something you do like.”

“you have a choice between two roads. The positive road and the negative road. The positive road will lead to enhanced health, happiness, and success and the negative road will lead to misery, anger, and failure.”

“Ninety percent of doctor visits are stress related, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the #1 cause of office stress is coworkers and their complaining, according to Truejobs.com.”

“Step 1, you do a No Complaining Day. I call it a complaining fast. You quit cold turkey. It’s great because it causes you to monitor your thoughts and realize how negative you really are.”

“Instead of letting it generate negative energy, we can use it for a positive purpose. We can use complaints as a ‘signal’ or ‘sign,’ letting us know we are on the negative road and then in the next moment we can take a detour to get on the positive road.”

“Every one of us will face negativity, energy vampires, and obstacles on the road to success. That is why one of the most important things we can do in business and life is to stay positive with strategies that turn negative energy into positive solutions.”

“3. Turn Complaints into Solutions. The goal is not to eliminate all complaining. The intent is to eliminate the kind of mindless complaining that doesn’t serve a greater purpose and allow complaining that is justified and worthwhile. The opposite of mindless complaining is justified complaining. The former is negative and the latter is positive.”

“1. The But → ___ Positive Technique. This simple strategy helps you turn your complaints into positive thoughts, solutions, and actions. It works like this. When you realize you are complaining, you simply add the word but and then add a positive thought or positive action.”

“If everything came easy, we wouldn’t know what it felt like to truly succeed.”

“People are most energized when they are using their strengths toward a bigger purpose”

“With mindless complaining, you are mindlessly focusing on problems; however, with justified complaining you identify a problem and the complaint moves you toward a solution. Every complaint represents an opportunity to turn a negative into a positive.”

“one person can’t make a team, but one person can break a team.”

“great companies and teams have great energy and spirit that are fueled by a positive culture and purpose,”

“2. Focus on “Get To” instead of “Have To.”

“If there is one thing I’ve learned in all my years of coaching it’s that you need to know your competition, and once you know them you can exploit their weakness. Negativity has a weakness. Let’s find a way to exploit and conquer it, and we’ll be well on our way to a successful turnaround.”

“Life is a test, and a deciding factor of whether we pass or fail is the answer to the following question: “Are you going to stay positive in the face of your doubts, fears, and challenges?”

“Stay Positive It’s easy to be positive when everything in life is going great. The hard part is staying positive when you get knocked down and kicked around. The fact is, no one goes through life untested. If you study history, sports, and business, you will find that every great leader and team had to overcome adversity and challenges to define themselves and their success”

“No matter what the psychologists say, complaining doesn’t make us feel better. Maybe temporarily, but in the long run complaining creates a cycle of negativity that feeds itself and grows. Think about it. For years psychologists had their patients hit punching bags to relieve anger only to find out recently that this practice creates more violence. It works the same with complaining. When we complain, we feed the negativity.”

“focus on the solution, not the problem, and be the change.”

“Research shows that when we count three blessings a day, we get a measurable boost in happiness that uplifts and energizes us. It’s also physiologically impossible to be stressed and thankful at the same time.”

“Positive energy flows from the top down in our organization. It trickles up and moves sideways, but it flows from the top down. Positive leadership is essential,”