I Accept The Millionaire Mind Challenge: I Will Not Complain For 7 Days

Tue, Feb 26, 2008
Deep Thoughts • Goals
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7 comments

One of the great bonuses of “temporarily retiring” is that I have had a lot of time to think about where I want to be in life, where I am now, and how to get from here to there.

Really, I wouldn’t trade this period of reflection for anything. I have come up with great business ideas. I have learned Internet marketing and blog-writing skills that have helped me to grow this blog from 2000 unique visitors per month a few months ago to nearly 10,000 this month. I have been able to commit serious time to writing about beliefs I am really passionate about.

The one thing I want to do before I jump back into the business world, though, is to do something seriously personally challenging. I did start working out three times a week, which is good, but not challenging enough by itself. I wanted something that made me cringe to do it… and would have significant opportunities for my personal growth, as well.

Picking a challenge

Recently I got the inkling that I should go back and read Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker again. You may have noticed I put several business books I recommend on my left sidebar. There are little page numbers at the bottom of the widget — flip through them to see all the books I recommend. I recommend Secrets of the Millionaire Mind because, even though Harv pitches his seminar all the way through it, the book contains a lot of outstanding advice.

When I first read the book in December, I put Harv’s budget recommendations into effect and created a personal budget for myself. I now track my spending down to the dollar, and as a result, have saved several hundred dollars a month on things like food. It has an added benefit that I think about what that negative number will look like to my budget before I spend on anything, which has dramatically decreased my “splurge” spending.

That was an excellent tip in and of itself. Intuitively, though, I knew there was more I could learn from the book. Sure enough, when I went back and read the book again today, one sentence jumped out at me: “Complaining is the absolute worst possible thing you could do for your health or your wealth.”

Complaining as humor

Doh! I like complaining. I think it’s because when I was growing up, I’d see my father, with his dry, sarcastic sense of humor, make people laugh. I always wanted to make people laugh, too, so I adopted my dad’s sense of humor. Although I love my dad’s sense of humor, it invariably involves a lot of complaining. My challenge during this 7 days, then, is to continue the funny part of the humor, but leave the negative, complaining aspects out entirely. I know I can succeed at not complaining for 7 days, but attempting to be funny without complaining is what makes this challenge extremely difficult for me.

Another challenging part of complaining is that it is infectious. Everybody loves to chip in about how bad they have it, too. Another difficult part of the next week will be to resist getting into the complaining “fray”. I’ll have to really watch for this.

Tracking my progress

Of course, I won’t do this alone. Richard (my boyfriend) can help by pointing out when I am complaining. I am sure some of my other friends will volunteer to spot, too. 😉 I will be at the BIL Conference this weekend, so that will add an additional level of difficulty to the challenge — I won’t just be able to hide out at home and not talk to anyone!

I am sure this will be incredibly eye-opening for me. I complain multiple times a day now, though I mostly do it in a humorous fashion. My last complaint was 8 hours ago, about wiki software I am installing on this server for a couple projects I am working on. Trying new things, for me, always results in a round of complaints and some eye-rolling. That won’t be happening this week!

I will start the clock at midnight tonight. That means I won’t be able to complain until Wednesday, March 5. It covers the BIL conference, the announcement I plan to make this week about a project I am working on, the next monthly payment for the company I sold last year, and paying most of my monthly bills. In other words, there will be plenty of opportunities to complain.

If you want to watch my progress in real time, follow me on Twitter. Of course, I will post back here with, at the very least, a wrap-up at the end of the 7 days. This should be, uh…never mind. 😉

Ron@TheWisdomJournal says:

2/26/2008 at 7:32 pm

What a great challenge to take upon yourself. Please post later about what happened and how you were able to overcome it.

I’ve recently decided to take a challenge upon my self to NOT interrupt people. That is hard, but I’m not sure it’s quite as hard as NOT complaining.

Philipp Schumann says:

2/27/2008 at 7:17 am

[irony]
Stop complaining about your complaining habits 🙂
[/irony]

Seriously though, there no hard and fast rules for ANYTHING in life. Complaining is not by itself good or bad—it depends on the context, as always, doesn’t it?

Very abstract contrast: Person A is complaining about how his/her demonstrably best efforts and hard work are made harder needlessly by say colleagues or bureaucrats. Person B isn’t lifting a finger and complains only that his/her life isn’t made even easier by everyone else.

Now, do you think anyone would feel indiscriminately equal levels of sympathy towards both kinds of complaining? Don’t they depend on their context to be judged correctly?

ericabiz says:

2/27/2008 at 11:10 am

Hi Ron! That’s a tough one, too. The best part is to pick the challenge that helps you personally overcome goals. It sounds like you and I are both doing that.

Hi Philipp: I don’t know if T. Harv Eker would necessarily agree with that. He states that if you allow negative energy into your life in any way, you sabotage your chances for success. In Person A’s case, I think Harv would say that A has a “money blueprint” that ensures that he will continue to be sabotaged. I tend to side with Harv on this one–we make the choices that determine who we are around. If there are people in our lives who are sabotaging our success, it’s because we made the choice to invite them in. Job stress? You have the choice to change your job. Government? Either get out of the situation where the government affects you that much, or move if necessary.

Harv’s advice (which parallels much of the advice I’ve read in other books) can be a tough pill to swallow sometimes. It forces us to stare ourselves in the face and admit that we lost money because we made bad decisions. It’s not an easy path, but it can be an incredibly rewarding one.

I’d recommend you read his book if you haven’t yet, along with some of the others I recommend, like “The Master Key System.” If you don’t agree with them, no problem. But by reading them, you may gain a deeper understanding of the complex web of choices that creates our reality, and how complaining can actually create the very situations we complain about.

-Erica

Philipp Schumann says:

2/27/2008 at 1:35 pm

Essentially, most of the time and usually I agree with your and T. Harv Eker’s position.

But still, I think there’s complaining and there’s complaining. Sure, it never helps.

Still, lets replace the “job stress”, “government stress” examples with something I’m sure you can relate to. Back when you were building Simpli rather than being “temporarily retired”, did it feel like an uphill battle most of the time? If so, did you never complain?… 😉

What I mean is that sometimes expressing frustration about something results from and further expresses your positive values, ambitions, achievements, goals and indeed choices. (I want to do what I consider good, and in the process am annoyed at everything that doesn’t get out of the way!) As such, where this is the case I consider it part of the positive choice one makes. It doesn’t necessarily mean the choice was bad, because no matter what choices you make, if you feel strongly about them, then this will show in enthusiasm as much as in annoyances. I could be relaxed about say hindrances (your technology examples are good ones I can relate to) only if I couldn’t care less about what I’m actually doing. As an employee, I could get away with that, but as entrepreneurs we shouldn’t be doing things we don’t care about intensely. And that might mean some of our complaints are absolutely valid in the big picture.

ericabiz says:

2/27/2008 at 10:25 pm

Hi Philipp,

I see your point, definitely, but I still don’t think complaining is valid. In fact, one of the things I’ve discovered in the past day of not complaining is that I tend to jump faster into “solution mode” by not having the ability to complain about something. That, or I realize I can’t do anything about it and let it go to focus on the things I can change.

I do get what you’re saying, but I now believe (after watching myself for the past day) that everything you’re talking about can also be resolved by not complaining. It’s a pretty eye-opening experiment. I think 48 hours ago, I might have completely agreed with you. 😉

-Erica

Philipp Schumann says:

2/28/2008 at 10:54 am

Now I’m convinced! 😉