I heard a podcast recently by Gary Vaynerchuk. I love listening to him although I always warn people that his language is “salty,” but that is definitely part of his charm. In this particular instance, he was talking about complaining. According to Gary, every time you complain about something, your next response should be “AND.” As in AND what are you going to do about it?

Complaining is so easy, but coming up with a solution is much harder. Perhaps if we cannot complain without having our “AND” ready, we won’t complain as much. I know that would work for me. I like to complain about things that are just bugging me without even considering what a solution might be. It probably isn’t hard or time consuming to come up with our “AND” to most complaints.

Even big complaints need their “AND.” Complaining just makes us feel bad. It reminds us of little annoyances that are currently making us unhappy. And it keeps reminding us. It makes much more sense to complain if you must, AND . . . come up with a solution so you can be done complaining and get on with the positivity in your life.

Even though I realize this about complaining, I still complain. It’s too easy. I can simply bitch about things that aren’t going quite the way I want them to without spending the time to work on solutions. Just complaining. For the sake of complaining. Without even considering solutions. That’s just dumb and it’s not at all a good idea to try to keep myself in a positive mode.

There have been many times in my life that I have been sucked into a vortex of complaining. Where one problem in life cycles into another cycles into another and until I actually recognize it and make an effort to stop it, it could go on forever and suck me into the deepest, darkest black hole imaginable. Who wants to live like that? I certainly don’t. I want to spend my time being a positive force in my life and the lives of others. It is so much easier and more beneficial than complaining.

So let’s make a pact. Starting today, we live every day in positive mode. Have to stop for gas on the way to work because you were too tired to stop on the way home last night and now you’ll be late to work? Is that just me? For me, this is an opportunity to take a little detour from my normal route and see different things. Or I can just complain about having to stop for gas and being late to work and be grumpy at work all day even though the people I work with had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that my car needs gas and I didn’t fill up when I should have. Or I can complain about having to stop for gas AND . . . decide that next time I will stop on the way home. Positive mode sounds so much better to me. So if you simply must complain, don’t forget to AND it. It will make you and everyone you come in contact with much happier.