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A couple of months ago, the vice
president of a local manufacturing company read a short newspaper
article describing one of my workshops and called because she thought I
might be a good speaker for one of her monthly training meetings. When I met with her and four of her
department managers the next week, the first thing I asked was: “What
do you hope I can do for you? What kind of results do you want?” Some of their responses were: “We
need to overcome negative attitudes.” “We need to get better at working
together.” “We’d like to do something about
the perpetual complainers who hang out by the water cooler.” “We need better communications
skills.” “People with bad attitudes bring
down the morale of the whole group.” After listening to about fifteen
minutes of stories illustrating these points, I finally sat back and
said: “Well, I think I’ve got a good picture now. You’re
complaining about the complainers.” That got a chuckle. Then I had to say, “I’m sorry,
but I don’t think I’m a good fit. What I teach is that the only
person we can change is ourselves.” I was pretty sure that wasn’t
what they wanted to hear, so I was really surprised when, after a
moment’s silence, they each indicated they understood and agreed. “Well, then,” I continued,
“since the only person we can change is ourselves, maybe I can suggest
some ways to change how you experience these chronic complainers. Ways
to hear them without stressing or getting irritated about it. “One thing I’ve found is that
people who complain don’t think of themselves as complainers at all.
Many think that their assessment of the situation is the only correct
one and that they’re issuing a needed warning before things get worse
or fall apart all together. Others think of themselves as open and
sharing or even as brave for saying what’s on their minds when others
won’t.” In fact, I did an interesting
personal experiment about this very issue. My ex-husband, let’s
call him Cliff, fit right in with what you would call the complaining
crowd. In fact, every night when he came home from work, he complained
about traffic, and complained about his boss, and complained about
co-workers, and complained about computers. All that complaining was
driving me crazy, but I’d patiently listen because I thought this
venting would help relieve his stress somehow. This pattern reliably repeated
practically every weekday for the first 4 years of our marriage. Then,
in year 5, my mom came for a one week visit. On the third morning she
said to me, “How can you stand all that complaining every night?” My first reaction was delight; my
feelings had been validated. But, as I thought about it over the next
few days, I remembered that while I was growing up there was an
unwritten rule in my family that no one was ever allowed to complain.
The phrase that comes to mind is, “You made your bed, now lie in
it.” I realized too that whenever Cliff
asked how my day was, unless it had been extraordinarily great or
extraordinarily awful, my stock response was, “Fine.” This led me to
realize that since Cliff acted differently, maybe his family had
different ground rules. To test my theory, I was inspired one evening,
at the end of a very long, bad day, to turn the tables and see how it
felt – for me and for him. What a revelation that turned out to be. When he asked how my day was, I took
a deep breath and started to share all of the day’s stressful events.
How I discovered the refrigerator was broken when I slipped and fell in
the puddle of water it had made on the kitchen floor. How I had to limp
back and forth on my sprained ankle to carry all the food out to the
old, but still useable, one in the garage.
How I dropped the orange juice in the process and the trouble
that mess was. How hard it was to find a repairman. How the cat dashed
out the door when the repairman came in and how long it took to catch up
with him (the cat, not the repairman). And, finally, how much it cost to
fix the fridge and the dent that put in our vacation plans. As I recounted my tale of woe, I was
really surprised by the powerful hold my childhood conditioning still
had on me. It literally took every ounce of strength I had to stick with
it until it was all told. When I was done, I was exhausted. And here’s the kicker. When I
finished, Cliff said, “Well, thanks. I really appreciate you sharing
your day with me for a change.” You could have knocked me over with a
feather. While I was doing
my best to complain, my husband heard it as sharing. I noticed too that while I was telling him all this, I didn’t feel like I was complaining. I felt more like I was just reporting the day’s events, even though it was so foreign to me that it was tiring. This is how I learned firsthand what is meant by projecting. I was projecting my childhood ideas about complaining and complainers onto Cliff. I was shocked to learn how prejudiced I was. Like Pogo said in his comic strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” |
