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"  It&amp;#039;s a rainy Sunday, I&amp;#039;m tired, and I have work to do. I&amp;#039;m hunched over my laptop when I hear it: a steady drip, drip, drip coming from the corner by the front window. My ceiling has sprung a leak. Just as I pop a pot on the floor to catch the water, my phone rings. It&amp;#039;s my mother. &amp;quot;How are you?&amp;quot; she asks. Honestly, I&amp;#039;m grumpy and annoyed, and the temptation to vent is immense. Instead, I bite my tongue and reply, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m great\u2014thanks.&amp;quot;\u00A0 For the past three weeks, not a single complaint has passed my lips. Though I&amp;#039;ve definitely felt annoyed and sometimes verging-on-depressed, I&amp;#039;ve resisted the urge to call someone and share it. But before you mistake me for some preternaturally perky Pollyanna, I should explain: I&amp;#039;m not usually like this. It&amp;#039;s just that, right now, I&amp;#039;m taking part in a 21-day no-complaints challenge.\u00A0 It&amp;#039;s an idea that a guy named Will Bowen came up with. He founded the movement A Complaint Free World and has spent years urging people to give up moaning about their lives for 21 days. &amp;quot;When we complain, we focus on what&amp;#039;s wrong; therefore we perpetuate the flaw,&amp;quot; he says. Scientific studies back him up: Researchers from the University of Missouri studied more than 400 girls, and found that when they complained, it triggered anxiety and depression. It affects grown-up women, too. &amp;quot;It takes you into a negative emotion and keeps you there,&amp;quot; explains Miriam Akhtar, a psychologist in Britain who focuses on happiness. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re going to be marinating in it, which is no good for your well-being.&amp;quot;\u00A0 Still, complaining is so prevalent in our &amp;quot;my life is insane&amp;quot; culture, it&amp;#039;s practically a status symbol. &amp;quot;When you complain\u2014or humble brag\u2014about how much you&amp;#039;ve got going on, it&amp;#039;s become a marker of how important you are,&amp;quot; says Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s so accepted these days, it&amp;#039;s almost automatic.&amp;quot;\u00A0 But it feels good to get things off your chest, doesn&amp;#039;t it? You&amp;#039;d think so\u2026 but you&amp;#039;d be wrong. Complaining with no real purpose won&amp;#039;t make you happier, says Robin Kowalski, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Clemson University and author of Complaining, Teasing, and Other Annoying Behaviors. You shouldn&amp;#039;t stop yourself from sharing your feelings when you&amp;#039;re hurt or angry, or from pointing out when something isn&amp;#039;t right. But &amp;quot;expressive&amp;quot; complaining\u2014 when we&amp;#039;re just venting to vent\u2014is destructive. Her advice? Instead of wailing, write it down. Or simply pause for a moment. &amp;quot;We have such a tendency to get caught up in a cycle of complaining and catastrophizing. Ask yourself, Does the evidence really support that things are as bad as I think?&amp;quot;\u00A0 While I wouldn&amp;#039;t say I&amp;#039;m particularly negative, I&amp;#039;m not immune to a good whine. My favorite complaint topics include travel\u00A0(cabs, planes), not having enough hours in the day, and my inability to resist chocolate at 4 p.m. &amp;quot;To break out of the mode, you have to practice disrupting yourself, questioning those automatic thoughts, and asking yourself, Is this how I really want to be living my life?&amp;quot; says Schulte. And so I geared myself up to give Bowen&amp;#039;s challenge a try.\u00A0  On day one, I realized how tricky it would be. An hour into the challenge, I caught myself on the verge of tweeting grumpily about running late for an appointment after rushing back home for my umbrella. That evening, when I told my partner about Bowen&amp;#039;s plan, he laughed, saying, &amp;quot;What are we going to talk about?&amp;quot; I hate to admit it, but he had a point: Our dinner discussions almost always include an element of grumbling (workloads, the weather, other people).\u00A0 But the next day, when a bulb blew in the kitchen, I didn&amp;#039;t groan. Instead, I thought of some advice given to me by Andy Cope, coauthor of the motivational book Be Brilliant Everyday: to counter negative thoughts by looking for a positive. I consoled myself slightly with the fact that at least it was only one of three bulbs in the fixture.\u00A0 To my surprise, I did feel more cheerful as the days progressed. Midway through week two, I met a friend for dinner. After we ordered, she started telling me about a stressful work situation: Her boss was away and so her workload had doubled. At first I sympathized. When, 20 minutes later, she finally asked how I was, telling her my week had been pretty good felt uncomfortably close to bragging. It made me think: Whether it&amp;#039;s at a bus stop, in the office kitchen, or during a tough gym class, a mutual moan builds camaraderie. &amp;quot;We do bond in negativity\u2014it provides common ground,&amp;quot; says Akhtar when I mention this. &amp;quot;But ultimately it&amp;#039;s not particularly healthy. It&amp;#039;s not going to nurture a relationship.&amp;quot;\u00A0  After that, I decided things might be easier if I told people about my challenge before I saw them. While some friends were intrigued, others were skeptical. &amp;quot;How boring,&amp;quot; said one. Maybe. Refusing to complain is a little like refusing to eat cake, or gossip. &amp;quot;In this upside-down world, it&amp;#039;s when you don&amp;#039;t complain that you can feel like a loser,&amp;quot; Schulte pointed out. Still, by my third week, I was more in the swing of things. An unexpected result was increased productivity. Instead of five minutes of complaining when I had a lot going on, I just buckled down. Scrolling through my texts to my mother, I realized that I rarely get in touch when I&amp;#039;m happy, but I nearly always seek sympathy when I&amp;#039;m feeling low. So I made an effort to send her positive updates, and I swear her replies sounded chirpier.\u00A0 Which brings me to that moment with the dripping ceiling. The leak struck the day before my challenge ended. But there was nothing I could do but call my building&amp;#039;s management and\u2026 complain.\u00A0 Does this mean I failed? I don&amp;#039;t think so. I didn&amp;#039;t rant about the leak and how inconvenienced I felt; I simply described the problem, and a repairman was scheduled for that week. There&amp;#039;s a difference between voicing legitimate concerns to someone who can fix them and moaning for the sake of it. Later, I recounted the exchange to Kowalski. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s what we call instrumental complaining,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re doing it to bring about a specific end goal.&amp;quot;\u00A0 Since my complaint-free challenge ended, I&amp;#039;ve taken Kowalski&amp;#039;s advice and kept a running list on my phone of irritations. Looking back over them, I&amp;#039;m struck by how trivial most are: a sore throat, a slow supermarket checkout line. Without my making a fuss over them, they fade from memory. I don&amp;#039;t believe it would be realistic to give up complaining altogether\u2014not if I want my ceiling fixed. And I think there are social situations where a bit of venting is appropriate. But cutting back? I won&amp;#039;t complain about that at all. Try a Complaining Detox   Seek a silver lining.\u00A0&amp;quot;Reframe things in a way that gets a more positive feeling,&amp;quot; says Andy Cope, coauthor of Be Brilliant Everyday. For example, rather than moaning about your partner moving your stuff around, think how neat the house looks.\u00A0   Set a time limit. &amp;quot;Give yourself, say, 15 minutes, and complain as much as you want,&amp;quot; says Robin Kowalski, Ph.D., author and professor of psychology at Clemson University. &amp;quot;Vent, scream, yell. And then you&amp;#039;re done.&amp;quot;\u00A0   Use other outlets. Because bottling things up can&amp;#039;t be good, right? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s true that inhibiting disclosure takes a toll. If we&amp;#039;re really dissatisfied and keep it inside, it can fester,&amp;quot; acknowledges Kowalski. &amp;quot;Keep a journal. When you put problems down on paper, they can seem smaller.&amp;quot;\u00A0   Focus on solutions.\u00A0Don&amp;#039;t wallow when something goes wrong, psychologist Miriam Akhtar advises. &amp;quot;Think, How can we solve this? rather than, Oh, I feel really fed up.&amp;quot;    "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/a42967/stop-complaining/>