This is a conversation snippet I overheard recently:

“I’ve been sleeping badly for years.”
“What did you do about it?”
“Nothing.”

Humans are usually eager to complain but rarely take the initiative including the energy, resources, and risks it takes to make a change. This phenomenon can be observed easily within others. Most of us know that one person who has been ranting about the very same thing for weeks, months, or years without having made any efforts to make just the slightest of changes.

When we practice observing ourselves—looking at our own thoughts and behavior patterns—we quickly notice that it’s not just the others. We notice how often thoughts of complaint sneak into our own minds as well.

I consider myself one of these people who seek to better themselves, to grow, improve, and mature. If you’re anything like me, one of the first things that pop into your head once you become aware of all these constant thoughts of complaint is probably something along the lines of “I don’t want to be like that, how do I stop this?”

First and foremost the best thing we can do is practice acceptance. Thoughts of complaint are not a bad thing per se. They’re just another aspect of the human condition. They exist for a reason and they’re not to be exterminated.

What are these thoughts anyway? In essence, any complaint is a complaint towards oneself. Our minds come up with subjects the complaint hinges on such as the delay of a train, an offense, or anything else that happens which does not meet our preconstructed expectations of reality. We must come to realize that these objects are illusionary and merely serve as a mental coping mechanism to protect our egos from the truth:

The subject of complaint is us.

Thoughts of complaint are nothing but a symptom of us not yet having changed, left, or accepted a certain situation or condition. The subconscious understanding that we are too afraid or powerless to leave our comfort zones to make a change and that we’re too attached to our egos to accept a certain condition leads to places like frustration, denial, shame, and anger.

So how do we solve this issue? We must learn to utilize thoughts of complaint as a slingshot through transformation.

Next time you notice a thought of complaint creeping up in your mind, accept responsibility for yourself. Feel and experience the emotions attached: Anger, sadness, disgust. They’re all there to push you in the right direction. Then, when your mind is clear again, ask yourself what you want to change to meet your expectations. And if you find yourself in a situation that you can’t change, admit to yourself why you can’t change anything. Is it your ego? Are you powerless? 

We all deserve what our actions earned or haven’t earned. Use the revelation from your thoughts of complaint to drive change. Improve yourself. Quit a bad habit, make a different decision, or learn a new skill.

Thoughts of complaints will be with us, whether we want them or not. Learning to appreciate them as a useful tool is what makes the difference.

Have a phenomenal week!

⏤Ferdinand

✨ Sparks

📝 Article: The Most Precious Resource is Agency

Gem of an article about the essence of enabling people to create a sense of purpose and meaning for themselves, particularly in children and throughout adolescence.

In my examples the individuals were all doing from a young age, as opposed to merely schooling. And while they may not have wanted to work, the work was nonetheless something that both they and society felt was useful: something purposeful and appreciated. In a sense they had useful childhoods. Do children today have useful childhoods?

13-year-old Steve Jobs called Bill Hewlett and received a summer job at HP, which would be unsurprising in Carnegie’s time, was certainly surprising for 1968, and is obviously verboten today.
We seem to have a political (public) imagination so shallow that it cannot conceive of what to even do with children, especially smart children. We fail to properly respect them all the way through adolescence, so we have engineered them to be useless in the interim. We do not need children to work, that is abundantly clear, but by ensuring there is nothing for them to do we are also sure to destroy more onramps towards making meaningful contributions to the world.

Who could blame young adults for thinking that work is fake and meaningless if we prescribe fake and meaningless work for the first two decades of their existence?

We should be thinking much harder about making sure children can make meaningful contributions to the world.

The Most Precious Resource is Agency

The world is a very malleable place. When I read biographies, early lives leap out the most. Leonardo da Vinci was a studio apprentice to Verrocchio at 14. Walt Disney took on a number of jobs, chiefly delivering papers, from 11 years old. Vladimir Nabokov published his first book (a collection of p…

The Map is Mostly WaterSimon Sarris

🌐 Website: Histography

One of the biggest issues I have with studying and understanding history is the difficulty of placing events in relation to each other within the dimensions of space and time. This website helps with the latter by providing an interactive timeline that lets you explore important events of history. It provides filters for categories such as empires, religion, or art. Additionally, every event links to the respective Wikipedia article and provides an option to display related events. It’s an easy-to-use tool to explore history and possibly give your child to play with.

Histography - Timeline of History

Histography is an interactive timeline that spans across 14 billion years of history, from the Big Bang to 2015

Timeline of History

🍿 Movie Snippet: Night & Day

Kevin Kline and John Barrowman sing Cole Porter. From the movie De-Lovely.

💡 This Week’s Wisdom

All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

From The Art Of War by SUN TZU.
Captured and resurfaced using the phenomenal Kindle reader.

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