Complaining affects so much in our lives

As we begin our journey toward turning complaints into contentment, we need to take a hard look at the ways in which spreading constant negativity is harming your life. From your personal relationships to your career, complaining can take a toll and cause damage to all the things you hold dear. This also includes your physical and emotional health. It is important to understand just what a high price you pay for complaining if you genuinely want to overcome this destructive habit. Let's look at just some of the ways your life suffers at the hands of complaining.

Relationships

People do not like to be around complainers. Hearing nothing but negativity from a friend or loved one is a huge turnoff for most folks. Constant complaining can be contagious. Have you ever noticed that it tends to be easy to slip into a habit of moaning and groaning when you are around a Negative Nancy? Unfortunately, it is possible that you're the bad influence. If this is the case, it is likely your circle has taken notice. Most of us make an effort to avoid spending time with toxic people because we know it's bad for our own mental health to surround ourselves with their bad attitudes day in and day out. Being a daily complainer will probably be a fast track ticket to losing some of the important people in your life.

Career

Your professional reputation is one of the most valuable things you have. Not only must you be topnotch at your job to move ahead in your career, but you also need to possess soft skills like good communication and strong listening ability. Your people skills are noticed when it comes to your work life. How you conduct yourself, get along with and lead others all play into your success. If you are known as a constant complainer, you can pretty much guarantee yourself career stagnation. Those who never seem happy and are always griping are not known to be good leaders. No matter how skilled you are at your position, you probably will not excel if you gain a reputation as a complainer. Positive and content professionals are what managers look for when it comes to hiring and promotions.

Health

Your physical and emotional health may face the biggest impact when it comes to constant complaining. In fact, it's been shown that your brain actually rewires itself for negativity when faced with regular bouts of griping. That is because neural pathways form to accommodate activities such as complaining. Soon, these habits become ingrained into your neural functioning, making it easier to come back to these patterns again and again. Chronic complaints have also proven to shrink the hippocampus, the part of the brain that is responsible for problem solving, and to increase the hormone cortisol, known as the stress hormone. Cortisol affects a wide range of bodily functions, including the regulation of blood pressure, memory formulation, metabolism, inflammation, blood sugar and the immune system.

These are just some of the main ways complaining can impact your life. We will delve deeper in later posts. For now, I hope you understand that constant negativity can have some serious effects.

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