You may know the elephant joke:
Ițic and Ștrul meet. The former was angry, the latter was cheerful. Ștrul tells how he got rid of all the problems at home: he got an elephant who does everything: it washes cars, polishes them with its tail, sprinkles the garden with its trunk, walks the children around the neighbourhood on its back, plays football with them. The elephant has saved Ștrul from a lot.
Ițic asks how much he paid for it. When he hears the amount, he offers to buy it for more. Ștrul refuses, but Ițic insists. He manages to buy the elephant for three times as much, if only to get rid of all his problems.
After a few months, the two meet again. The saddle is just as cheerful and enthusiastic, while Ițic is tired, stressed and sleepy. He starts complaining about the elephant who has ruined his garden, his car, beats his children with his trunk, not to mention ruined his life even worse!
Ștrul tells him that the problem is with Ițic.
‘It’s not like that,’ he says, ‘the elephant I bought created the problem.’
To which Ștrul gives the memorable reply: ‘Well, with that attitude, you’ll never sell that elephant!’
I’ve met many people, of all ages, who complain all the time: about pay, managers, colleagues, life partners, recruiters, friends, neighbours, life as a whole. If you ask a few questions to find out what their role is in your interactions with all of the above, you run the risk of making them your enemies.
The valley of complaint is full, there’s a seemingly irredeemable sadness there. But taking ownership of your own decisions or owning the choices you make, taking action, self-awareness and self-regulation can be some good directions to go in order to get out of that state. All of them, however, presuppose a conscious, consistent, long-term effort, at the end of which there is likely to be not a valley but a meadow, not with complaints but with potential, with confidence, with a touch of enthusiasm.