Sharing Resources to Help You Grow Personally, Professionally & Financially

Sometimes it helps to get a little dose of encouragement-along with a good cup of coffee!-to start the day. Today we discuss grumbling.

Hopefully the message below will help you get off to a good start for the week.  Please feel free to forward the newsletter on to others that you think would benefit from the content.

Grumbling

No, I'm not talking about the "Rumbly in the Tumbly" that Winnie the Pooh likes to bring up. I'm talking about the ugly habit of feigning being OK while continuing to grumble-internally or externally-about how much things suck (technical term there!).

Now, if you're a person who NEVER resorts to grumbling, you can stop reading-BUT please do reach out to me and explain to me how you have mastered this ability, as you are a very unique individual! For the rest of you reading this, I'm going to offer a framework that has helped me deal with the inclination to grumble when it arises.

The framework comes from Ryan Holiday's The Daily Stoic and is extremely straight forward. There are three steps:

• Step 1: Control your perceptions.
• Step 2: Direct your actions properly.
• Step 3: Accept what is outside your control.

For me, I've committed the above three to memory and mentally cycle through them when the "grumblings" start to creep in. Often, I never need to even get to Step 2 of the process, as I realize that I'm just not seeing things properly.

When I am perceiving things properly, Step 2 remind me that I CHOOSE how I respond. Grumbling is a choice, but not one that is often productive.

Finally, Step 3 addresses the discomfort that often lingers even when I make the right choice to NOT grumble. Step 3 reminds me that, in the end, I am only in control of certain things. If I'm doing all I can with the things I can control, there's really not a lot more to do.

While the framework may not be perfect, I can say that it has been highly effective for me.

That brings us to this week's question:

• Is grumbling accomplishing anything in your life? 

Thanks for sharing a bit of your time with me this Monday morning.  

Have a great week!

Curt

About MMM: Each week I publish "Monday Morning Motivation" in the hopes that at least one person will find a bit of inspiration and that this inspiration will have a positive impact on their life. My motivation comes from experiences, reading, sermons, and discussions.

Photo credit:  Ryan Franco on unsplash.com

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