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Complaining & Explaining

While growing up as a basketball player in rural Ohio in the early 90’s I would regularly make my way to nearby towns in order to find competition. In those days, pick-up games provided the perfect opportunity to grow your game. Pick-up basketball is one of the more significant casualties of the sport over the years. Organized adult leagues and tournaments have virtually made pick-up basketball extinct. And, along with it, all the benefits it provided.

Pick-up games were the ultimate laboratory for a developing player. You learned what you were good at, what you weren’t, and to what you were good at. If you couldn’t follow that formula, you just didn’t get picked. You learned to compete regardless of the score. If you weren’t willing to do that, you just didn’t get picked. You learned every team needs role players and they were just as important as the guy scoring all the points. If you weren’t willing to accept a role, you just didn’t get picked.

No one cared if you sat on the sideline for ten straight games. If you couldn’t help the team win, you didn’t play. It didn’t matter if you were five years younger, six inches shorter, or fifty pounds overweight; if you could help the team win, you had a spot. 

And, no amount of complaining or explaining would change it.

Why Should We Care?
Life doesn’t care about our complaints. 
The time and effort we spend crafting our complaint is pointless. It never improves the situation or lifts the morale of those involved. Our complaining actually exacerbates the situation and corrodes morale. Saying nothing is far superior than spewing complaints. At no point in history has anyone ever walked away from someone complaining and said, “Man, I’m so glad I was able to hear all of his complaints.” It’s verbal puke.

Life doesn’t care about your explanations either.
Explanations are deemed necessary only when our actions don’t produce the desired results. Think about it, when we achieve the desired outcome no explanation is needed. It’s only when we fail that we search for explanations to justify our failure. Even if we convince those we are explaining to, what’s the benefit to come from it? Nothing. The result remains the same. Far better to save our energy we pour into explaining and redirect it in our next effort to do.

REAL TALK - Action Steps
Understanding we should avoid complaining and explaining is one thing. Eliminating them from our  life is another. There is nothing easy about erasing these habits. Awareness, commitment, and intentionality are critical to empowering this change. Here are a few aspects of each to keep in mind throughout the process.

• Awareness 
  
  • Complaining and explaining have become such a common part of our lives, and the lives of those around us, that we are all but oblivious to their occurrence. Before we can stop doing it, we first have to know it’s happening. Finding an accountability partner, writing a daily journal, and meal time reflections are a few ideas to become more aware.
    

• Commitment
  
  • A drastic change such as eradicating complaining and explaining from our life requires an incredible amount of commitment. Things are going to come up and frustrations are going to arise that we are deeply conditioned to complain about or explain away. Only through a one hundred percent commitment will we stick with a change that goes so contrary to societal norms. The line needs to be crystal clear.
    

• Intentionality
  
  • Awareness is critical. Commitment is required. But, neither matter if we aren’t intentional about the actions we do act on. Unfortunately, we don’t defer to not complaining and explaining. Quite the opposite. If left to chance we will almost certainly regress to the same habits and behaviors we are surrounded with. We must establish a system to ensure our avoidance of each.
    

Much like a sugary soda, complaining and explaining, are sweet in the mouth at the moment. However, the daily surrender of our discipline to our feelings will ultimately cost us far more than we want to give.

Checkout Surrender the Outcome on Amazon and order The Score That Matters with Ryan Hawk & Brook Cupps before its release in March 2024. The latest blog from Blue Collar Grit can be found here!