Get That Pickle Out of Your Mouth!
9 Steps to a More Positive Attitude
Copyright © 2005, Joe Tye - Used with Permission
The next time you're standing in line at the airport,
eating in the company cafeteria, or walking through a
shopping mall, listen carefully to the conversations
going on around you. It won’t be long before you
hear somebody complaining about something. Listen
long enough and it will dawn on you that you’re
hearing a lot of complaining. If you then turn your
attention inward and pay attention to what you
yourself are saying and thinking, you will be
astonished – no, you will be appalled – at how much
of your mental energy is being wasted on complaining.
We have become a nation of pickle suckers.
Complaining and its conversational companions
commiserating (Oh, you poor baby!) and
one-upping (You think you’ve got it bad? Listen
to what I have to put up with!) have become
conversational mainstays. Once, while conducting a
seminar, I challenged a group to monitor their own
complaining for a 30-day period (the Pickle
Challenge™). One participant remarked that if it
weren’t for complaining, she would never talk to her
mother!
Is it possible for someone to be a negative,
bitter, cynical, sarcastic pickle sucker in the break
room and fifteen minutes later become a genuinely
courteous customer service or genuinely compassionate
caregiver? Not likely. And do customers and patients
see right through the act? You bet. Is it possible
for someone to be a pickle sucker at work, then go
home and be a nurturing and empowering parent? Or is
that person more likely to be raising a Junior
Dilbert, a kid who will enter the workplace
preconditioned with negative attitudes that will
eventually prove to be self-sabotaging?
This negativity takes a terrible toll on
organizations in terms of morale and productivity,
but we become so used to it that we’re not even
aware of it. An analogy I often use is smoking on
airplanes. It used to be that as soon as the seatbelt
light went off, all the smokers would light up. The
rest of us just put up with it, thinking that there
was nothing we could do, so we simply endured getting
off the plane feeling sick and smelling like we’d
slept in an ashtray. Well, what would happen to
someone who lit a cigarette on an airplane today?
(Answer: they’d be shown the door.)
The same principle applies to emotional toxicity
in the workplace environment. If I could somehow wave
a magic wand and eliminate all criticizing and
complaining from your workplace for the next 30 days,
the first person who started in again would be
treated in about the same way as the smoker on an
airplane. People would get so used to working in a
positive and supportive place, they simply would not
tolerate somebody contaminating it with bitching,
moaning, and whining (the BMW club).
As pernicious as all this emotional negativity is
to the organization, the real tragedy is the
corrosive effect it has on the human soul. Every time
you complain – about anything – you are proclaiming
to the world, and to yourself, that you are a victim.
Why? Because to complain (as opposed to objectively
identifying a problem and offering a solution) is to
simultaneously state that: 1) something is bothering
you (otherwise you wouldn’t be complaining; 2) it’s
someone else’s fault (otherwise you’d be looking in
the mirror instead of pointing a finger); and 3) you
are powerless to do anything about it (otherwise
you’d be doing something instead of just complaining).
Gradually, without even being aware it’s happening,
pickle suckers slip into the victim mindset. And
their dreams slowly die.
Here are nine practical yet powerful actions you
can take to get that pickle out of your mouth and
cultivate a more positive attitude. While a positive
attitude alone won’t guarantee your success, the
absence of one will almost certainly contribute to
your failure.
Step #1: Don’t be a victim of your past.
In his book The Soul’s Code, Jungian
psychologist James Hillman wrote that a Freudian
fixation with the hurts of the past (why do you
think mother loved your brother best, Tommy?)
tends to turn people into self-perceived victims. As
every historian knows, the past is substantially what
you choose to remember. If you want to have a
brighter future, the first step might be to remember
a brighter past by being a lot more selective about
the things you choose to recall. If you don’t have a
nurturing past, make one up. Hillman wrote that many
of the world’s great geniuses “remember” a past that
never actually happened, but which supports their
desired self-image (e.g. the musical prodigy who
“remembers” getting up in the middle of the night to
practice, but whose parents swear she slept the sleep
of the dead). If geniuses can boost their happiness
and success this way, why not ordinary people like
you and me?
In thinking about the past, it’s important to
remember that the truth is more important than
the facts. I once had a teacher tell me, in
front of the class, that I would never amount to a
hill of beans. The fact is, that was a humiliating
statement that was not healthy to my self-esteem. The
truth is that this teacher was frustrated by
my misbehavior, knew that if I didn’t change my ways
I’d cause myself endless problems in the future, and
was genuinely trying to motivate me in the only way
that at the time seemed possible. Which history do I
remember? The choice is mine, but remembering the
truth is empowering; remembering the past is
victimizing.
Step #2: Give your complaints the Valley Forge test.
Whenever you find yourself complaining about
something, imagine being transported back through
time to Valley Forge during that horrible winter of
1776-77. Visualize yourself describing this complaint
of yours to the freezing, starving patriots who
sacrificed so much to win the freedoms that you now
enjoy. If your suffering makes them cry out in
sympathy, then, by Jove, you do have a
legitimate gripe, so by all means keep whining about
it if you must. If, on the other hand, your mind’s
ear hears them laughing at your “problem,” then
either drop it or deal with it, but for heaven’s sake
stop whining about it.
Step #3: Focus your dissatisfaction.
Dissatisfaction can be an incredible source of
energy and motivation, if you don’t
dissipate it with promiscuous complaining. If you are
sitting on a thumbtack, you will be incredibly
focused on that one problem, and powerfully motivated
to move! If you can focus your dissatisfaction on one
thing that really matters, and not promiscuously
spread it around on every little thing that irks you,
you will have created for yourself a great source of
motivation.
Say, for example, the one and only thing you allow
yourself to be unhappy about is your crummy home
(like Jeff Foxworthy’s redneck, your house has wheels
and your car doesn’t). If you refuse to complain
about anything else, that focused dissatisfaction
will grow into a raging inferno of ambition. You’ll
start waking up in the middle of the night with ideas
for how to make the dream home become your real home,
and getting up in the morning with the inspiration to
take action on those ideas.
Step #4: Get rid of your emotional baggage.
We all carry around emotional baggage from the past
– ancient grudges we can’t seem to let go, hurt
feelings that never healed, insults that have
festered and metastasized. As Charlotte Joko Bec
noted in her book Everyday Zen, deny it
though we may, we actually love hanging on to these
little dramas. Complaining about them comforts us in
our failures (well, of course I couldn’t climb
that mountain, what with all this baggage I have to
haul around). The more emotional baggage we carry
around, the more we have to complain about – and the
more excuses we have for living a life that is less
than what we would desire for ourselves.
When I take people on wilderness retreats,I have
each hiker place an ugly rock in their backpack
(though I once had a geologist tell me there’s no
such thing as an ugly rock). This rock is to
represent some emotional baggage they’d like to be
rid of. Trust me, by the seventh day of carrying a
heavy pack, the unnecessary weight of that rock is a
real burden! On the last day, we have a ceremony: we
build a cairn – a small pile of rocks that marks a
trail. Each hiker adds his or her rock and says
goodbye to it. I’ve seen miraculous things happen as
people turn and walk away, leaving their rock, and
the emotional baggage it represents, behind in the
desert.
Step #5: Challenge your negative self-talk.
Listen to the way you talk to yourself. If you’re
like most people, you put up with abuse from your
inner critic that you would never tolerate from even
your boss or your spouse. One way to erase negative
self-talk is with a technique I call Metaphorical
Visualization™. Visualize your inner critic as a
vandal with a can of spray paint who runs around
painting the graffiti of negative self-talk on the
walls of your mind. Then imagine The Janitor in Your
Attic™ (my janitor is named Spike) painting over that
abusive mental graffiti (How could you be so
stupid!) and replacing it with positive and
nurturing affirmations (I am capable of achieving
my dreams and I deserve to enjoy the fruits of my
success). Be creative. Instead of a Janitor,
imagine a crew of elves up there in your attic. All
you need to make this work is frequent repetition and
the belief that it will indeed work. Make it fun and
it won’t even feel like work!
Step #6: Use Direction Deflection Questions.
Complaining is often the first step on a slippery
slope of negativity that hits bottom with you saying
or doing things you later regret. Whenever you catch
yourself about to complain, immediately stop and ask
yourself this question: “Is what I’m about to say
consistent with my best self?” If the answer is No,
the next question is, “What would I say if I
were being my best self?” If you listen to
your intuition, you will hear the answer; if you act
upon that answer, you’ll spend more time in “best
self” mode. Pretty soon, you’ll also find that you’ll
be doing a lot less complaining because you’ll have a
lot less to complain about.
Step #7: Internalize The Serenity Prayer.
You’ve no doubt heard this prayer: grant me the
courage to change what I can, the serenity to accep
what I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Internalizing The Serenity Prayer can help you have
the courage to confront your problems with
constructive action, the serenity to accept your
predicaments with equanimity, and the wisdom to not
complain about either, knowing that you’re doing all
you can do and the rest is in God’s hands.
Step #8: Take The Self Empowerment Pledge.
Are you willing to spend one minute per day for a
year to dramatically change your life for the better?
That’s 365 minutes – the amount of time the average
American spends watching television every two or
three days. The Self Empowerment Pledge
contains seven simple promises – promises that you
make to yourself. Every day for a year, make that
day’s promise four times – once each in the morning,
at noon, in the afternoon, and before bed. That’s one
minute per day. At first, you’ll hear your inner
critic laughing at you (You’re going to take
responsibility for yourself and stop blaming other
people? Yeah, right, when pigs fly!). Over time,
however, just hearing yourself make these promises
will have a profound impact on your beliefs, your
attitudes, and your behaviors. And as those
transformations occur, the quality of your outcomes
will improve in stride.
If you’d like to make The Self Empowerment
Pledge a part of your life, you will find it and
additional resources at the website
www.pledgepower.com.
Step #9: See one, do one, teach one.
This is a statement surgery residents hear all the
time, because it conveys: 1) there is too much to
learn to be dawdling around; and 2) to really learn
something you must do it, but to be an expert you
must teach it. The same principle can be applied to
developing a more positive attitude. In this article,
I’ve shared with you nine proven strategies (you have
“seen one”). Now your challenge will be to take one
or more of these strategies and apply them in your
work and your life (now your challenge is to
“do one”).
Assuming that they work (and they will work),
the best way for you to help yourself is to help
someone else by sharing with them (the next stage is
for you to “teach one”). This can be your children or
your coworkers, or both. Anytime you “teach one,”
remind yourself that you need to be sitting front and
center in your “classroom” re-listening to the
lesson.
Get that pickle out of your mouth and smile.
Remember the woman who said that if it weren’t for
complaining, she’d never speak with her mother? Well,
several months later she told our group that for the
first time in her adult life, she and her mother were
actually talking about things that really matter, not
just exchanging gripes.
Are you unhappy with your life? Trapped in a
dead-end job, weighed down by debt, struggling with
difficult relationships? Get that pickle out of
your mouth! You can’t smile when you’re sucking
on a pickle. Smiling in the face of difficulty
instead of whining about it is often the first step
to turning your life around.
In their book The Mind and the Brain:
Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force,
Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. and Sharon Begley describe
research evidence which shows that directed mental
effort can actually bring about physical changes in
the brain. “We are seeing,” they say, “the brain’s
potential to correct its own flaws and enhance its
own capabilities.”
When you consciously override the negative
self-talk of your inner critic and replace it with
nurturing affirmations; when you replace worthless
complaining with constructive problem-solving; and
when you deliberately focus your attention on what
really matters instead of letting it wander to
whatever annoyance happens to grab your attention,
you replace the toxic pickle juice of victimhood
with the sweet nectar of self-empowerment. In the
process, you breathe new life into your dreams.
Recommended Additional Reading:
The Self Empowerment Pledge:
Seven Simple Promises that Will Change Your Life
www.pledgepower.com.
Take the Pickle Challenge! Listen to the complete "Pickle Challenge" audio program or download all 14 tracks of this free audio CD here.
