How to Deal with the Complainers in Your Life

I have tried by offering potential solutions, strategies and ways to make them feel better, because when we feel good, good comes our way.
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I KNOW PEOPLE WHO COMPLAIN--A LOT.

I can't stand it. OK, I am complaining about the complainers.

I have tried by offering potential solutions, strategies and ways to make them feel better, because when we feel good, good comes our way.

But they won't have it. They complain for the sake of complaining. To feel bad, not good and to try and bring everyone and anyone who listens along for the ride, so that they feel better.

Schadenfreude is a character trait where-in a person finds pleasure in other people's misery. It's an awful approach to life. I know several people like this, and they are complainers too. Making yourself feel better does not reside in glory over another's demise and then complaining about them because of their misery.

Making yourself feel better is simple: make yourself feel better. You are ultimately responsible for you, so you might as well seek out how to feel good. When we feel good, we attract good things, which makes us feel better and attract more good things. Get it?

The complainer often has other hitchhiking traits that add to their complaining characteristic and self-absorbed misery. They feel better when they express how they know so much more than everyone else.

Have you ever shared a new and exciting experience or inspiring piece of information you just learned with a complaining know it all? Do they respond by saying: Oh, I know all about that, or, I did that too and, by the way, it's not all it's cracked up to be.

You feel deflated, less than who you thought you were and you are smack in the middle of their misery funnel. Stop sharing. They will shut you down. They want you to be miserable, to not enjoy life (because they don't), to not pass them by; they want to bring you along on their ride to nowhere.

They may be smarter, more talented and have much to offer the world, yet they sit in their home all day--complaining. Did I mention that I can't stand it?
I think that complaining, arrogance, judgment and a know-it-all attitude are lethal to happiness.

SO WHAT BRINGS HAPPINESS?

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Happiness.

How do you achieve happiness? Think good things, not bad. Do something that makes you feel good, not bad.

The first and most important way to get on the path to happiness is to stop complaining. Just stop. No one wants to you hear it, no one wants to be around it and if you keep doing it, it will become part of your DNA. Soon you will find yourself all alone. Why? Because people can't stand complainers. Who wants to be around someone who has complained about being in constant pain for the past 10 years? Who wants to hear that everyone is an idiot: the doctors, the system, the junk mail senders, the computer (which is a person to complainers), the lady next door, . . .

If you have someone like this in your life, here are some potential strategies:

Listen. Let them vent and then leave.
•Make the visits shorter and shorter.
•Stop offering solutions, strategies, options--stop trying to help. They really don't want it. They just want to complain.
•Don't start complaining.
•Give them all of your money. They will stop complaining--for a while. But they will start again, so maybe save a little for yourself.

People like this have such aversion to happiness; they are only comfortable in misery. You can't help these people. You are not a professional. I don't even know if a professional can help them. But it is not your job anymore. Free yourself.

If you live your own life in happiness, seeking it out at every turn, finding ways to feel good, surrounding yourself with good and supportive people, you will not become like the complainers in your life that you can't stand being around.

Do not feel guilty. Guilt is a negative emotion. It is tough to let guilt go, especially if the complainers in your life are close to you and insist on being heard. Keep trying to release the guilt that they are so good at piling on you.

Listen to uplifting music, meditate, say positive affirmations to yourself throughout the day.

Here's one I love that I heard on a Deepak Chopra meditation series:

I am a wonderful person
I am a beautiful person
I love myself
Exactly as I am

Be positive. Be proactive, be grateful, appreciative, give compliments, look for the good. Be nice. Open your heart, be vulnerable, go with the flow of life, let love enter, and for goodness sakes, no complaining.

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Jody B. Miller is the CEO of C2C Executive Search & Strategic Management. She also writes books about work/life balance, articles for The Huffington Post and LinkedIn about topics we think about (yet don't always talk about), and novels about love and friendship. Her new book; SHIFT, How to Find True Meaning in Your Work and in Your Life, will be in stores in late 2016...

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