I'm allergic to complaining

I'm allergic to complaining.

Not negativity. Negativity I can handle. I can argue, fight, and raise hell with the best of them — as long as it results in some form of meaningful progress. Fixing a broken process. Turning around a business headed the wrong direction. Pushing towards difficult goals.

Those kinds of things aren’t always butterflies and rainbows. There’s some negativity that comes with progress and change. But if it’s the kind of negativity that has a job to do, I’ll take all of it.

But complaining for the sake of complaining? Negativity with nowhere to go? That I can't stand. Never could.

Probably because I've never once been rewarded for it.

I grew up with less than ideal circumstances. A single mom who was usually working, oftentimes in other countries. We didn’t have a lot of money, had a couple of dads who left, went through multiple divorces growing up. Almost no one in my family had much in the way of education, there was a fair amount of addiction and alcoholism, etc. Suffice it to say I had a few things that put me squarely on the losing side of the statistics.

I had things to complain about. And complaining would’ve felt great.

It also would've kept me exactly where I was.

The only thing that ever changed my circumstances was action. So that's where I put the energy. Building writing skills. Devouring books on politics to teach myself. Figuring out how to land a job at an organization I wanted to be part of. Going to school full-time while working full-time and volunteering for everything I could to make a name for myself. Finding coaches and mentors. Learning how to manage. Studying body language. Learning how to actually sell. Earning an MBA while running a $20M P&L with a pregnant wife at home.

That's how I changed my fate — and the fate of my kids and my kids’ kids.

Not by complaining about the hand I was dealt. By doing something about it.

Here's the part that took me longer to figure out.

It's not just complaining instead of acting that costs you. Complaining while you act has a price too.

Because complaining isn't the release valve we tell ourselves it is.

Most of us treat it like steam in a kettle — get it off your chest, let the pressure out, feel better, move on. A researcher named Brad Bushman spent years testing that idea and landed on the exact opposite. His line stuck with me: "Venting to reduce anger is like using gasoline to put out a fire."

So, complaining doesn't release the feeling. It rehearses it.

Every time you run a thought pattern, you strengthen it — neurons that fire together wire together. Complain often enough and you're not venting, you're training. You're building the wiring that makes the next complaint easier and more automatic, until knee-jerk negativity becomes your default setting regardless of what's actually happening around you.

What’s worse is there’s a dopamine hit that comes with complaining. You get fired up, righteous, certain you're going to do something about this. That feels like momentum. But read that again — going to do something. Future tense. The complaining becomes the reward, and the reward ends up replacing the action it was supposed to fuel.

I see it in business owners constantly. The economy. The market. The client who won't sign. The rep who won't perform. The project that keeps failing. All real. All problems worth solving. None of them get solved by the complaining — but the complaining sure feels like progress.

Then there's what it does to the room.

Complaining is contagious. And you know who it attracts? More complainers. There's nothing on earth less productive than a group of people who've bonded over what's wrong. The energy is shit, and the output matches it.

I was talking all this through with my wife recently and landed on a simple filter I now realize I run almost on autopilot. Two questions.

First: Is this giving me good energy or bad energy?

That's not a woo-woo question. You know the answer in your gut. The venting, the stewing, the rant you're three minutes into — is it lifting you or draining you? You already know.

If it's draining you, second question: Is what I'm doing actually fixing the problem or changing the circumstance?

Because if raising hell is genuinely moving the needle — if the conflict, the friction, the hard conversation, the tough message others need to hear is going to change the outcome — count me in. I'll go all day. That's negativity with a job.

But if it's not fixing anything? If it's just heat with no work getting done?

Then I've got better places to spend my energy. And so do you.

That filter has done more to keep me on the right side of the odds than just about anything else I can point to.

Not because I'm a positive-thinking guy who refuses to see problems. I see them constantly. I argue about them, dig into them, then get my hands dirty fixing them.

I just won't sit in them.

Negativity that builds something — keep it. Negativity that only feeds itself — kill it.

That's the whole difference.

Adios,

Ray