How would you handle him?

How would you handle him?

By Rajesh Setty on Wed 08 Nov 2006, 9:36 PM – 2 Comments

Here is a scenario to consider:

Imagine you are living with a person who is constantly talking carp. Either he is whining or he is complaining. He is constantly blaming someone for something. When he can’t blame someone he will pick the climate, economy, government, religion or something like that. From his constant bickering, he will make you feel miserable. Not only that, he will repeat the same nonsense endlessly for a number of weeks or months or even years. He will remember stupid things that happened decades ago and remind you of the same. Every now and then he will make you feel bad about yourself or your situation.

How would you handle such a person? Let me ask you a more specific question – “If you have no choice but to live with this person throughout your life, how would you handle him?”

I know. I know. You are all smart and by now you would have figured out what I am talking about.

To be clear – I am talking about a global illness called “negative self-talk.” Engaging in “negative self-talk” is costly and the returns are abyssmal. The only thing that provides you is a license to postpone positive action or any action for that matter. You can now keep drifting away in your life quoting that you are just not in a mood to do anything of significance.

So, how do you solve the problem? It may be simpler than you think. Once you have identified this problem, you should be VERY glad that you are in full control of the problem. You have to be – you are the talker and you are the listener. Don’t you think it’s cool? You have a choose either of the solutions below:

(a) you can stop talking crap

or

(b) you can stop listening to crap

Pick either of the above and you will be cured. You are very important in your life to be bombarded with crap.

All the best!

 

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2 Comments so far, Add Yours

Anonymous  on November 10th, 2006

An interesting thought, but if it was as easy as “just stop doing it”, we’d all do it.

Current neurological research shows that we actually get neurologically locked into a pattern – “stopping” a pattern isn’t that simple. It’s important to identify a replacement behavior that gives you the same secondary gain.

Kegan and Lahey did some interesting writing on this – they called it “Transforming Complaining into Commitment”, and provide an incredible reframe for the behavior that can allow you to find secondary gains.

Anonymous  on November 10th, 2006

Great point there Mike.

If you can point to any references to the work of Kegan and Lahey, that would help the readers.

Thanks in advance.

Best,

Raj

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