Dear Readers,
The roads are bad! The
govt doesn’t function efficiently! All politicians
are corrupt! All bureaucrats are crooks! All businessmen are cheats! There is
no justice available in this country! Is it not common to hear this sort of
comments every day? Are in that case,
how many of us are really free from this sickness called “Cribbing”. Not many
of us. Isn’t it?
So, what is the end result
of all this cribbing? Does it make our life better or create a better world.
No! It just drains our energy and creates
a negative environment not only for us, but also for the people around us. But,
for some reason or other this habit of cribbing has been deeply engrained in
our life. While we very well know that it does no good, we still continue doing
it as a habit.
My question is if we are
going to continue cribbing about all these things and feel unhappy, when are we
going to start living our life and find happiness? Cribbing is just a gross waste of time. It
doesn’t get us anywhere.
I know people, who are
always cribbing. They can never find the good in anything. All they can see is
the negative things, that they magnify a 100 times and make a mountain of a mole
hill. For example, if it is raining,
they exclaim “Oh my God, this rain spoiling my day?” and if it is a sunny day,
they again exclaim, “Oh my God, it is so hot today, that I don’t feel like going
out”. It is These people can be called “perpetual cribbers”. This type of people
can never be changed, unless they decide to change themselves. Even if something
nice is there to appreciate, they mind focuses on what is not good. Cribbing is
a defensive mechanism, people have to justify the world, why they are unhappy
and I am sure they cannot find happiness.
My concern is not about
those people, who fail to see the brighter things of life, but those of us, who
are unconsciously falling prey to this habit of cribbing, as a part of the
social acceptance.
So next time, somebody
cribs, ask them so what? What are you going to do about it? By doing so, you
will be slowly cutting down negative thoughts that are draining your energy.
When we encounter with an
issue that is not in accordance to our liking there are just 3 things we should
ideally do: 1. Accept it, 2. Find a
solution or 3. Ignore it. Let us not make cribbing the 4th option,
which we normally do.
When we learn to
appreciate the good things in our life, our life seems to become instantly
better. So instead of searching for a fault, start searching for the good. Just
a small change in this attitude can change your life.
Stephen Covey, in his book,
“7 Habits of Highly Effective People” talks about, “Circle of Concern” Vs “Circle
of Influence”. There are many things in
our daily life that disturbs us, such as news of a disease outbreak, a murder,
a suicide, a terrorist act, a road accident, a earthquake so on and so forth.
These are just example of things, over which we are concerned about, but have
no control. So, literally there is nothing much we could do about it. Whereas,
there are also things like our town is not clean, there is noise pollution in
our street, children are lacking moral values and so on. These are things which
are within the circle of our influence, which means we can do something about
it. So, instead of cribbing over things, which are not within our control (
circle of concern) let us focus our time
and effort over the things on which we have control ( circle of influence). By
doing so, we can make this world a little better place and do our part to
reduce hearing this unpleasant noise of
cribbing.
Happy Reading,
D. Senthil Kannan
Article date October 2016
