Hi, this is Wayne Brown from Life Back On Track. Welcome to the latest episode.

In this one, I want to talk about something that I encountered the other day. I was at one of my social groups and there are a couple of people there who partook of a behaviour, which seems to be quite common, and the funny thing is, the people that do it don't see anything wrong with it, and the people are subject to it are the ones that struggle with it. So I just wanted to explore it a little bit and that's whinging.

So whinging, whining, complaining, whatever you want to call it. It's basically the desire of someone to cling to negative viewpoints, negative opinions, negative observations. They tend to do this almost habitually in as much as when they're doing that, they can go on endlessly. There never seems to be an end to it. So I want to talk about some of the reasons why people do it, how to get them to stop doing it, and also maybe what to do if you're one of them, which could be. Everyone likes to have a little bit of a whinge now and then. The challenge is when it gets out of control.

So some of the reasons why people do it. Whinging is a lot easier than actually going out and seeking a solution. Anyone can whinge. You can whinge endlessly forever and achieve nothing but feel better because you've got it out. The problem is when some people are inclined to complain, they will do it endlessly. Now there's a number of reasons why they tend to do it endlessly. One is they've been trained from a young age, so they've seen it modelled in their parents and the people around them, and as we tend to want to fit in, we tend to adopt that same behaviour. So if our parents were complainers, we tend to be complainers, so if someone is doing that endlessly, it's just because no one's ever taught them anything different. And it's an easier thing to do. Rather than actually finding a solution.

People that whinge, they tend to congregate together. They tend to form little groups and clusters where they can compare their stories and see who's got the biggest challenge. Who's got the biggest problem that they have to deal with. Now, of course, it's very easy to compare. Everyone's got challenges, problems and obstacles. It's easy to list them. I could list hundreds that I've had in my life. Doesn't achieve anything, though, just wastes my time.

So if you're one of the people who is doing the whinging, you might want to stop, as it tends to wear people down. If you're someone who's being subjected to the whinging, you may want to use some of these little options I'm going to give you so that you can break them of that habit of whinging.

A nice easy one is just say to them. "I'm limited in my time, and I only want to devote so much of it to whinging. I'm only going to give you two minutes". A friend of mine, when she gets together with her girlfriends, they allow each other five minutes, like literally five minutes. When it hits five minutes, you stop your whinge, and after that you can't do any more whinging, which I think is a fun way to do it, because then you will be a little more selective about what you whinge about.

Which I like that little method, which is good for friends. But if you're at work, it's a little bit harder. So one thing to do is to just tell them that there's a time limit. Now, if you're struggling to do that one, because you know they don't want to have a time limit, they want to be able to whinge endlessly. You might need to snap them out of it. So there's things like a state break. So if you give someone, something that is sufficiently distanced from what they're talking about, you can actually get them to forget what they were talking about. So they could be complaining about the work hours or the pay or something or other. And then you can throw something at them completely left of field. There's got nothing to do with work to the point where they just like, uh, almost pushed back and off their feet and they're off balance, and they don't know where to go from there and where you take it is up to you as long as it's somewhere sufficiently distanced from what they're talking about, to completely bamboozle them.

So I've always found in the past when people are doing too much, just throw a bit of trivia at them. So they're doing a whinge when they've got a bit of a break you say "I was watching a documentary the other night and they were saying that the Octopus has three hearts and it's actually got a brain for each of its tentacles, which I thought was absolutely fascinating". And they'll just go, "what?" and then just keep talking as if nothing's wrong, and then they'll soon forget about whinging. And if you do it often enough, eventually they'll either stop whinging when they talk to you or they'll stop talking to you, which is always a good thing.

Now if you really want to shake them up. So if someone is habitually whinging to you. And the worst thing is when people whinge, it's the same stuff again and again and again, so nothing really changes. One that I've always liked throwing in on people is when they're whinging about something, I'll get to a certain point where they're happily still going on about something, and when they pause, you ask them "So what are you going to do about it?" And they might say, "Oh yeah, but you don't understand... blah, blah, blah" and you just say "No. I understand. You're just telling me all of this information, which is completely irrelevant. What I want to know is, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to resolve this? How are you going to minimise it? How are you going to make sure it doesn't happen again? How are you going to make sure you can be free of this? How are you going to resolve this situation" and basically keep throwing that at them, and they'll either do one of two things.

Again, they'll either stop talking to you or they'll actually start to think about a solution, they can seek a solution, that they can follow up on to be able to do something about it so that their life is better and therefore they stop whinging as much.

Now, if you're someone that's doing the whinging, you may want to do that. When you're whinging, which is fine, everyone is allowed to whinge if they want. If you're trying to break that habit, follow it up with a whinge, whinge, complain about whatever it is and then say "So what I'm going to do is X" so that that person, whoever you're unloading on instead of them just suffering their way through listening to you whinge, they'll actually see that you're trying to resolve the situation. You're trying to move forward. Therefore, they're going to be a little more willing to listen to you unload and complain next time so that each time you have a solution and you're hashing it out, and in fact, that's probably one of the only times that whinging is suitable. You use it to dump all the information of a situation out, and then you seek an answer.

You actually actively explore a solution rather than just unloading all of this rubbish. So that's it about whinging. If you're listening to it, you don't need to. And if you're doing it, stop. It's as simple as that. Really, you know, it's natural. We all do it. How much you do, it makes a big difference to the quality of your life, so you might want to consider doing a little bit more proactively if you're going to complain anyway.

That's it for today. Hope that's giving you a little bit of information. Until next time, look after yourselves. Feel free to send me a voicemail with some feedback or questions or whatever. And until the next time I speak to you, here's to a good life.

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Thanks for listening.