00:00

Well, hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 394, "How to Complain Better." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just go into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:21 

All right, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. As always, just so happy to have you here, and I'm happy to be here to share with you some things that I have been thinking about, things that I've been processing. I find it fascinating that people always say, "don't you ever run out of things to talk about?" And you would think I would. Like, this is number 394. Come on. Like, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would have the tenacity to do a podcast every week for 394 weeks. And yet here I am. And, but you know what? I don't run out of things to talk about because there's always a different angle. There's always a different take. There's always a different situation that comes up. And it amazes me that every week I come up with three or four different ideas for a podcast, either in something that I'm working with with one of my clients, a topic comes up and I'm like, oh, I want to talk a little bit more about that. Or other podcasts that I'm listening to or books that I'm reading. There just always seems, or even situations in my own life, there just always seems to be so many things to talk about and so many different angles to approach things from. And so I just love getting to prepare this for you because it helps me to really clarify my own mind around the concept and helps me understand it better and helps me understand how to implement it better into my own life and my own relationships. So no, I don't run out of things to talk about ever. I don't know how long we'll go on with this podcast, but I love the growth that it offers me as I get to prepare this content. It helps me a lot. 

01:58 

So before we jump in, Talk with Tanya is January 13th. You're going to want to get signed up for that if you are available. It is at 2 o'clock Eastern, 12 o'clock Mountain. It is just a free webinar where you can come on and ask me any question, get coached on something, even just come and listen to other people get coached. It's always just so beneficial, whether you're receiving or listening to the coaching. Just a fabulous way to learn and understand the concepts better. And especially when you see other people get coached, it's so easy to see how these things apply to your own life. And so would love for you to join us there. 

02:38 

Also, two classes starting. The Should I Stay or Should I Go starts on January 19th. That is Monday. That is two weeks from today. And it's going to be an evening class. It's going to start at 7 o'clock Eastern. And that will be 5 o'clock Mountain. So a little bit earlier than I generally do my evening classes. But this one is for anybody who is wondering about divorce. Is it time for me to go? Or do I stay in here? Do I stick it out? If so, how do I do that? How do you make that decision? Probably one of the biggest decisions of your life. And that's what we're going to be discussing this whole six weeks of this class. It is limited to eight people. So if you're interested, you're going to want to go to tanyahale.com, go to the group coaching tab, and you can learn more about that class and get signed up for it. 

03:28 

The second class I'm doing is called the Ultimate Date Night, and this is for couples. There will only be four couples allowed in this class. And this class is not for couples in crisis. Now, that doesn't mean you have to have a perfect relationship to show up for this. It doesn't mean that you have to be in a place where you're never fighting or upset with each other. It just means that you are both in a place where you're like, okay, let's move next level. Let's create something that we dreamed of years ago when we got engaged. And let's start really moving forward to create something that we have not really known how to or had the courage to before. 

04:08 

So this is called the Ultimate Date Night. It starts on Thursday, January 22nd, another six-week class. Classes for both of these are about an hour long. So just super excited. These are two new classes that I haven't taught before. So I'm enjoying creating the content for you and getting the syllabus ready. So both of these you will have podcasts to listen to in the course of the week and questions to consider. And then we come to class and we dive a little bit deeper into the concepts and answer your questions about it and figure it out a little bit more to help get you, give you some clarity. So that's going to be those two classes. Please join me if these are of interest to you. You will be amazed at how much your growth and your understanding increases in something like one-on-one coaching or a class. It's just a fabulous opportunity to up-level the work that you're doing here on the podcast. 

05:06 

Okay, that's all the announcements I got for you. So let's jump into today called how to complain better. Because we all like to complain, don't we? We all have things that are frustrating to us or annoying to us. In fact, when I looked up the definition, it says that it is "to express dissatisfaction or annoyance about something." Listen, all of us are going to be dissatisfied with things going on in our life. All of us are going to be annoyed with things and with people, with situations that are going on. Of course we are. That is part of us being humans. We have our likes and our dislikes. We have our preferences. We have things that we want to have happen and things that we don't want to have happen. And that's all great. However, complaining never really gets us what we want. In the thesaurus, some synonyms for complain are protest, grumble, moan, and whine. Okay. Like all of us, I think I hear those words and my back gets a little bit stiff and I feel so much resistance in my body to somebody complaining to me. 

06:24 

So when you complain to somebody else, though, I want you to ask, how is that complaining working for you? Is it getting you what you want? And let me ask you this. If you do get what you want, what is the backlash of that in your relationship for the most part? Mostly you're going to notice the other person starts feeling a little bit resentful, a little bit frustrated, a little bit less patient. Okay. So what about when you complain and you don't get what you want? Why is it that you don't get it? Well, probably because the other person then was like, "oh, I'm never doing it right. This never works. Like she's never happy," blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff, right? Complaining is a horrible way to try and get what we want. 

07:17 

But let's turn this around. What about when other people complain to you? How do you respond? Okay, if you just roll your eyes and then give them what they want, then what? Then you're the one building the resentment and the frustration and the anger and having back burner issues. Because then you are feeling like you have to always walk on eggshells or you have to always acquiesce to their wants and needs. So what if you don't give them what they want? Then what? Well, then oftentimes there's a backlash on their behavior and how they start treating you and the possibly passive-aggressive comments that are coming out, right? 

08:00 

So this is the challenge. How do we express dissatisfaction or annoyance without complaining, without whining, without grumbling? How do we do that? Let me give you another definition that Kathy, who I talked to last week, this is a definition that she gave me many years ago and I still use it all the time because I love it. She says, "complaining is nothing more than a poorly worded request." Think about that. When we are complaining, we want something different, but we're wording it in a really bad way. We're expressing it in a very ineffective way because complaining has the great possibility of shutting other people down, or we might elicit their defensiveness, or we might breed resentment through obligation. 

08:55 

So if it is a poorly worded request, how do we request in better words? How do we do it better? Okay, so this is what we're going to talk about today. How do we complain better? Right? How do I ask for what I want without really complaining and whining? 

09:16 

Okay, so let's talk first about when we receive complaints. Okay. Why do people complain? Why do people want to tell you things that are not happening? Well, because we all want things the way that we want them, every single one of us. And the way that we want them is very often a different way than somebody else wants them. And we all want to be seen and heard. The person complaining to you wants to be seen and heard. Sometimes, if you notice, there are people that complain even when you have zero capacity to do anything about it. Like maybe you're standing in the grocery store line with somebody and you start up a conversation and they start complaining about the service at the store or something that they just bought or whatever, right? Isn't it interesting? They're not expecting you to fix it in that instance. They know that you can't fix all the  problems in the store. So why are they complaining? Because they want to be seen and heard. They want their discomfort, their frustration to be seen and heard. 

10:24 

This is how we are as humans. We want people to acknowledge that we exist. We want people to see our struggle, not because they need to fix it or they can fix it, but because it's part of this human connection piece, wanting other people to see our struggle. And when we take the time to really understand what the person is complaining about or to give them a space to have that, to see and hear them, so much of the angst that they are feeling is alleviated and so much of the angst that we feel about them complaining is also alleviated. 

11:06 

So what we want to do is to learn how to respond to this poorly worded request and not respond to the delivery. The delivery can come across as complaining, and we need to be able to look past the delivery to understanding what they are really wanting. What is their request? When someone doesn't have a better way to express themselves, when they don't have these tools that we're talking about today, those requests will come across as a complaint. 

11:40 

So here's how you can handle when somebody else is complaining to you. 

11:45 

Number one, validate their emotion. We don't have to validate their point of view or their opinion, but we want to validate their emotion. Something like, "I can see that it's super frustrating for you when I'm not ready at the time that we planned." 

12:05 

Okay, then second thing, we want to express some empathy. "You know what? I get frustrated as well when things don't go the way that I had planned either. I get it." Right? Empathy. Not going to go into a five-minute story about how, oh, when I was young, when I was a young boy and my dad was doing this and he was always like, oh, no, we're not going to go there. Right. We just want to go into, listen, one sentence, maybe two. "I get frustrated as well when things don't go the way I planned." 

12:32 

Okay. The third step, we want to get curious, right? "Tell me a little bit more about that. Why is that so frustrating for you? What's going on?" We really want to say things like, "help me understand. Will you explain more thoroughly what you're going through? What exactly are you asking for?" And if it's a complaint toward us, that's the kind of question we would ask. Or maybe something, "how can I help? What do you need me to do different?" Okay, so we're really just seeking to understand what do they really want? Do they just want to be heard? Do they just want somebody to be a witness to their struggle? Or if it's more pointed toward us and it's a complaint toward us, what do they want us to do? How do they want us to show up differently? How can we be a better partner for them? That's what this part about getting curious is all about. And then the fourth thing I want you to do is if they tell you something that you can do better, make an effort. Put forth the effort to do what they ask you to do or just be straightforward and say, "actually, no, that's not something that I'm willing to do." But let's start being honest. 

13:47 

Because here's the deal. This is the person that you love. Of course you want to make their life better if it is possible for you. You don't want them to feel frustration or be the source of this frustration. You are there to make their life significantly better. So genuinely seek to understand where they're coming from and what they're really asking for. If complaining is just a poorly worded request, ask yourself when they're complaining, what are they really requesting? What do they really want here? When you can figure out what it is they really are asking, then you can respond in a way that is more loving and more kind. Then you can move into the validating, the empathizing, those pieces. But we have to ask ourselves first, what are they requesting? So look past the poor delivery sometimes and look to the request. What do they really want? 

14:48 

Okay, so now what about when you have a complaint? What is it when you have an annoyance or there is something that you want that's not happening? Okay, again, let's go back to this. You have tools. We are teaching you tools here. So learning how to deliver well is the key to being heard. Okay, so when we start with complaining, everybody's defenses go up. Now I'm teaching you how to have other people complain and not have your defenses go up by what we just talked about a few minutes ago. 

15:22 

But now we're talking about other people who may not have the same tools that you have. Okay, so if you start with a complaint, most likely their defenses are going to go up. So remember we use the phrase on here often. We want to rock the boat, but we don't want to create a tsunami. Rocking the boat says, "listen, we're going to have the conversation. We're going to talk about what frustrates me. We're going to talk about what I want, even if it is not in what you want." But we're going to do it in such a way that we don't create a tsunami. They're holding on to the boat. It's got a good gentle rock going on. But they also are not holding on for dear life. They're not trying to not die. 

16:06 

Okay. So here's the deal. We get to have opinions. We get to want what we want. We get to make requests, but we get to request and not demand. We're not demanding that other people change and do what we want. We're requesting what we want. The other person gets to want what they want as well. But by asking rather than complaining, we will have a better chance at getting what we want. 

16:42 

So here's some examples. Instead of "you always leave a mess in the kitchen," which is a complaint, that becomes, "will you please clean up after yourself?" Okay, remember we're asking rather than complaining. Here's another one: "you're never affectionate with me" becomes, "I would love more touching and hugging." You seeing how this is working? Here's another one. "You're always late to everything" becomes, "it's important to me to be on time. Will you please be ready at 7 p.m.?" Okay, are you hearing the difference? Are you seeing that we have this complaint? "You always leave a mess in the kitchen." What's really going on is that we're saying, "will you please clean up after yourself? Will you please not leave the mess for me to clean up?" Okay, we have to learn to ask. We do not have a right to complain about things we aren't willing to ask for. And the complaining just becomes a place for everybody to shut down and to start creating a lot of drama. So we're going to learn how to ask. We're not going to demand. We're not going to complain. We are going to clean up our delivery. 

17:56 

And this is a place where I'm going to take you back to some old school stuff and we're going to consider the own your own sentence structure. Okay. If you, I will put this in the show notes of the podcast for this, but here's the, here's how the sentence structure goes. When you're going to name the circumstance, "when this happens, I feel (a one-word emotion) because I'm thinking...", what is the thought that's creating that emotion? And then we're going to follow that up with, will you help me understand from your point of view? 

18:29 

Let me give you an example. Okay. "When you were 20 minutes late being ready to leave for the concert last night, I felt frustrated because I was thinking that my time and preference weren't a priority. Will you help me understand what was going on for you that caused you to be late?" Notice that this takes more words, more effort, more time. But guess what? Our relationships are worth words, effort, and time. It is worth it to have a loving conversation with a person that we love and that we choose rather than a harsh accusation that shuts everybody down and shuts down all communication. Offering grace beforehand is loving and kind and compassionate. It says, "I love you and I respect you." It says, "your happiness matters as much as my own." It says, "you deserve to be treated well." Doesn't everybody want that from their spouse, from their person? Remember, this is the person that you have chosen. So choose to be kind. Choose to monitor your tone of voice and your word choice. These small nuanced behaviors make all the difference. Learning to make these small adjustments is huge. 

20:06 

I just, oh gosh, I wish I could remember where this was, but on a podcast just in the last day or two, the guy was talking about the difference between a black belt and one of the other colors. I don't even know, like the earlier belts. I've never done karate, so I don't know. But he was saying they learn the same skills, the same moves. The difference is that the nuances in how they use them and what they do. So this is like becoming a black belt in relationships. Okay. So I remember as a young mom, I would listen, even before I had kids, I would listen to people talk to their kids. And I always got this little grate-y kind of filling up my spine when kids would say, "mom," and the mom would say, "what?" And I hated it because the what always came out with so much annoyance, so much grievance, so much "you're bothering me" to it. And I remember thinking, "I don't ever want my kids to feel that." 

21:06 

And so I trained myself when my kids were little, that when they would come to me and say, "mom, mom," whatever, that instead of saying "what," I would always say the word "yes." Because "what" sounded like, "I don't want you here." And "yes," sounded welcoming to me. It sounded loving. So making those kinds of small nuanced changes in our word choice, in how, in our tone of voice, make all the difference. 

21:36 

So similarly, let me give you another one. "And" instead of "but" is also a nuanced change that makes a huge difference in our communication with people. So for example, let me give you some sentences here. We might say, "I really love cooking and getting to serve you delicious food. And I would love some help cleaning up after dinner." Doesn't that sound nice? Just sounds, it sounds lovely. It sounds kind. Listen to it this way. What if I were to say, "I really love cooking and getting to serve you delicious food, but you're so selfish and don't even think about helping to clean up." You hear the difference and you feel the difference. The "but" automatically negates the "I love cooking and getting to serve you food." And then it goes into a complaint: "you're so selfish. You don't even think about helping to clean up," right? 

22:30 

And think about this, that "you're so selfish and don't even think about helping to clean up." Poorly worded request. What is the request? "I would love some help cleaning up after dinner." Okay, now let's use that first sentence, but we're going to change out just the and for the but. So we're going to say, "I really love cooking and getting to serve you delicious food, but I would love some help cleaning up after dinner." Do you hear the difference? It moves into criticism. Whereas if we say, let's go back to the first one, "I really love cooking and getting to serve you delicious food. And I would love some help cleaning up after dinner." Do you just hear it? These small changes that we start making in how we communicate. 

23:18 

I have taken the word should, for the most part, out of my vocabulary, especially when it comes to talking about other people. I generally always try to use the word "and" instead of "but" where appropriate. It just sounds better. It feels better. It makes people feel less criticized or attacked or accused or blamed, right? It's just this place. Those four things are the essence of complaining. I'm attacking, I'm criticizing, I'm accusing, I'm blaming. That's what we're doing when we're complaining. So instead, before you have that conversation, before you rock the boat, because rocking the boat is going to get rid of those things, figure out what you want and ask for it instead of demanding it or complaining about it. 

24:14 

A poorly worded request is a complaint. Let's start requesting what we really want. Let's ask for what we want. Let's stop trying to go in through this back door using passive aggressive comments, using complaining to try and get other people to get on board with us. That is never going to work. It's a horrible plan for trying to have a healthier, more communicative, loving, kind, expressive relationship. Ask for what you want. So slow down what's going on in your head. And when your head wants to just come out with a zinger and complain and tell somebody everything that they're doing wrong, I want you to learn how to stop yourself and say, "what do I really want here?" and ask for what you want. Alright. How do we complain better? Technically, we stop complaining and we start asking. Know what you want and ask for it lovingly and kindly from the person that you love the most and that you want to treat really, really well. 

25:36 

Okay, that's going to do it for me, my friends. Okay, I want you to go, if you like this topic, I want you to go down to the show notes. I want you to find I've got several podcasts down there that will expound on this idea, cover some other ground that you're going to like. So check those out. Also, don't forget about my classes that are coming up. You're going to want to get signed up for those. They are going to be so good and so fabulous. And if you know anybody who you think is going to want those classes, please send them the information. You can go on my website, just go to the group coaching tab, go to tanyahale.com, and you can copy and paste the link and send it to people that you think might benefit from that. There's just so much goodness here and there's so much to be gained from attending these classes, from gathering tools and information and understanding that you don't have. Okay, check them out. Have a great, great week, and I will see you next time. Bye. 

26:36 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "Weekend Win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive weekend. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about web coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.