How does a person learn to stop complaining so much?

[Hodegetria]

feastofsaints.com/waycrossfrancis.htm

This helped me a lot. I have it on a video and I listen to it almost everyday. Who, or what, we compare ourselves to can have a drastic effect on things like complaining.

Just fyi, the feast of saints link is disabled.

 

[ready]

This is my third post and bit of advise on your thread, Holly.

If you wish to complain less about others, think about how you’d feel being the one talked bad about. We are not supposed to discuss other people’s hidden faults and sins without a good reason, such as when we are being questioned by a superior. God bless you.

 

[pianistclare]

Ummm, no. I never said that my boyfriend has no redeeming qualities. That is a complete and total misinterpretation of what I said. He has a LOT of redeeming qualities.

So…why can’t you be thankful for that?
Are you saying that you want to feel grateful for the things that annoy you?
I suppose in a way of penitential prayer, you could thank the Lord for trials…join in His passion, that sort of thing.
I guess I just don’t understand your original question.

 

[JamalChristophr]

The solution to complaining is thanksgiving. Every time we feel the need to “vent” we should find something in our lives to be thankful for.

This is good. I will try to remember and do this. Thanks!!

 

[insideitall]

oh boy, was this thread meant for me. I can complain about anything, anytime… just ask my husband

 

[ineeda]

I am so glad that I read this thread. Yesterday, I noticed that I was very irritable. I did not like myself. I noticed today that I was feeling negative feelings again. And, I realized that every morning I offer up my joys, works, and sufferings. And, then I blow it by complaining about situations instead of being quiet and remember my offering. I need to quit feeling sorry for myself about certain things and thank God for all that I do have.

 

[ready]

I noticed today that I was feeling negative feelings again. And, I realized that every morning I offer up my joys, works, and sufferings. And, then I blow it by complaining about situations instead of being quiet and remember my offering. I need to quit feeling sorry for myself about certain things and thank God for all that I do have.

 

[Mystical_Seeker]

This is my third post and bit of advise on your thread, Holly.

If you wish to complain less about others, think about how you’d feel being the one talked bad about. We are not supposed to discuss other people’s hidden faults and sins without a good reason, such as when we are being questioned by a superior. God bless you.

 

[DBT]

Holly -

As others have said gratitude is the way out of dilemma’s like this. The other key is to change the way we look at our little sufferings. In the words of Fr. de Caussade in Abandonment to Divine Providence, we need to turn our “attitudes inside out.”

Try to look at this situation with your boyfriend from the point of view that he is an instrument to purify you of some little attachment. God is using him to draw you closer to Himself. That is reason alone to be grateful!!

Seen in this light all people who vex us … and all circumstances of life that try us in ways large and small … are instruments from the hand of God to purify us. And without purification there can be no union.

Blessings,
Dave

 

[DBT]

And a quick lesson from St. John of the Cross. The more we cooperate with God in our sufferings (by recognizing He’s purifying us in some way) the more bearable the pain will be. In fact, pain may quickly become light and joy.

On the other hand, resistance to His grace - in the form of complaining, self-defense, howling at the moon – simply magnifies the suffering and lengthens the duration of our pain. Ironically it is often our response (resentment, bitterness etc) to the circumstance of our trial rather than the circumstance itself that is the true cause of our suffering. Our “response” if typically what is being purified.

Turn it inside out.

 

[Robert_Sock]

And a quick lesson from St. John of the Cross. The more we cooperate with God in our sufferings (by recognizing He’s purifying us in some way) the more bearable the pain will be. In fact, pain may quickly become light and joy.

On the other hand, resistance to His grace - in the form of complaining, self-defense, howling at the moon – simply magnifies the suffering and lengthens the duration of our pain. Ironically it is often our response (resentment, bitterness etc) to the circumstance of our trial rather than the circumstance itself that is the true cause of our suffering. Our “response” if typically what is being purified.

Turn it inside out.

 

[DBT]

One last little tidbit from St. John of the Cross:

All our sufferings are based on purification of one or more of our spiritual faculties … intellect, will or memory. While not explicitly stated as such, the comments of most posters in this thread point to memory as the faculty that is in play.

What is the will of God as relates to memory? To remember the goodness of God with thanksgiving in all times and circumstances while forgetting all the little “moods” that creep into our soul like a thief at night to rob us of our peace. What are these moods? They are legion: worry, bitterness, resentment, complaining, apathy, indifference to name just a few.

To often our use of memory gets the remembering and forgetting backwards.

Which is why we suffer.

So turn it inside out.

Dave