No Complaining

Lately, I have tried to get in the habit of not bitching and moaning about things.

1. It doesn’t change anything

2. It actually makes you feel worse in the long run

3. It is counterproductive (more on this in a moment)

4. Your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, etc.

5. You’re miserable to be around

Look, it is difficult to control your thoughts. You see something that is fucked up, and your first thoughts are, damn, that is fucked up. I have a tough time with the positive thinking crowd because your first reaction to things is typically negative, and then people start feeling guilt about their own thoughts, which is fucked up. Your first thought may be negative, but your next thought can be positive, and that second thought can be about the solution to the problem, rather than complaining about the problem. Again, I think some people take the no complaining/positive thinking to the point of absolute delusion (which I have written about before here), but a good general principle is to stay positive and not focus on the negative and stop bitching about things and find solutions to problems, rather than making the problems worse.

Back at Lehman, I was a big complainer. I complained about the customers, I complained about the sales traders, I complained about everything. Guess what? None of it ever got any better. It got worse. Making markets in ETFs in the mid-2000s was a shitty situation, as any ETF trader from back then will tell you. Complaining about it didn’t help. It was essentially an intractable problem, as you were giving liquidity away for free, and there wasn’t much in the way of solutions, outside of hiring some quants to build some ETF-trading robot to minimize losses, but complaining certainly didn’t help. I mean, the gallows humor was fun, but I might have had a better attitude if I wasn’t complaining all the time. If I were to do that job nowadays, I’d have a completely different approach.

My Coast Guard career—pretty much nine years of complaining. Four years of complaining at the Academy, and five years of complaining out in the fleet. My second tour, in intelligence, there was less complaining, and I was a lot happier. In the military, people go around thinking that they’re getting screwed left, right, and center. If you’ve ever met a military man, you probably know that they have a pretty twisted sense of humor. I think the word I’m looking for is resignation. You are resigned to your fate, you are resigned to the fact that everything is going to suck, no matter what happens, it’s going to be the worst possible outcome, and you might as well bend over. BOHICA is a military term, too, along with SNAFU and FUBAR. Starting to get the picture? I think it would be unseemly to draw a connection between military culture and mental health, but I think there is a reason why so many military folks don’t succeed in the private sector, or anywhere else.

It wasn’t until I started working for myself that I had a can-do, positive attitude. Of course, the beginnings were inauspicious. I started the newsletter in the depths of the financial crisis, and things were so bad that I’d start my day by puking in the trash can. And I don’t want to imply that I never had doubts that I would be successful, because I absolutely did. But there was nobody to blame anything on. Not sales traders, not customers, not commanding officers, just me and my brain against the world. If I succeeded, I took the credit, and if I failed, I took the blame. Entrepreneurs generally fall into the category of people who have a pretty good attitude about things. You have to, or you’re fucked. If you think that you will fail, you probably will fail. If you complain about the external forces that are buffeting your business, instead of doing something about it, you won’t last a minute. There aren’t too many pessimist, hangdog entrepreneurs, mostly because if you’re a negative nellie, you’re not going to start a business in the first place. Self-selection in action.

I mentioned that complaining is counterproductive. What is the one thing that people have complained about ceaselessly for the last ten years? Trump! And guess what—he is president twice. All that complaining actually got him elected. Every tweet, every Facebook post, every TV anchor, every op-ed complaining about Trump, all got him elected. We are seeing the same thing play out with that turd Mamdani. The more people complain about him, the more popular he gets. I’ve had to hit delete on a bunch of Mamdani tweets, why? Because I was complaining about him, and only making him stronger. If you complain about something, you make it stronger! Don’t believe me? Stand outside with a pink pussy hat and see how far that gets you. President twice. Pretty much any time you are marching in the street with a sign like a cunt, you are doing the exact opposite of what you intend to do. Well, what about the civil rights protests of the 1960s, weren’t those effective? Yes they were, but notably, they were not complaining. They were not resentful, angry protests. In addition to being nonviolent, they came from a place of love. Protests these days (like the recent ones in Los Angeles) do not evoke sympathy—they do not claim the moral high ground, and are always, always counterproductive. I challenge you to come up with an angry protest that changed hearts and minds. Name one.

So if you complain about something, you make it stronger, that means you should really never complain, ever. And I’m not just talking about politics. If you have a jerk boss, and you complain about your boss, you are actually giving power to your boss. If your wife is mean, and you complain about your wife, you are actually giving power to your wife. Do something about it, or shut up—those are your options. But people always choose door number three, which is to complain about something relentlessly, which provides some temporary relief,, but makes everything worse in the long run. And complaining about the weather is about the dumbest thing you could possibly do—you have no control over it! In fact, you have no control over most things you complain about. I get it—it’s hot—can we change the subject? Complaining about traffic? Jesus Christ. Complaining about the line at Starbucks? Get a grip. Just head down the road to Dunkin Donuts. And finally, complaining about the stock market? Get your head examined.

You want to stay in the solution. My kid plays video games all the time. Okay, what are some possible solutions? All of them probably involve confrontation, something you’re not looking forward to, but as they say, hard talk, easy life. Instead of bitching about it to friends and family, put on your pants and do something about it. Faith without works is dead. Stay in the solution, take action. Or you can ignore it and hope the problem goes away. You may think I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not—some problems do go away if you ignore them long enough. Complaining about it is not an option.

Again! I am not one of these power of positive thinking mooks. You can’t control your first thought, but you can control your second thought. And you can control what comes out of your mouth, because whatever comes out of your mouth is going to reinforce your shitty thinking. And if you do end up complaining about something, it’s probably going to result in you doing something that’s not in your best interests. I’m sure we all know someone who complains all the time. Not a lot of fun to be around, right? Don’t be that person. I don’t think it’s self-delusion to say that if you focus on the positive, your life will probably be a lot better.

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Don’t forget to pick up a copy of RULE 62! The only book I have not gotten one complaint about.