You Can’t Help Complaining? You’ll Be Surprised At What It Does To You

It just seems like complaining is a built-in feature that comes with every human born from the wombs of women. Some people make it short and concise, while others can really drag it out to the point that it intrigues you.

Does complaining affect our body or our mind? Is it good or bad? Will it be a good reason to tell my mom to keep her next complaints short?

Complaining can become a behavior that is hard to change. And what will surprise you is that complaining is a contagious behavior. Travis Bradberry likens this to smoking – you can be passive smokers or passively be affected negatively to the complaining attitudes people around you are showing.

It shrinks your brain.

To put it in short, this subheading isn’t just an exaggerated fact.

Complaining is can become a habit. The first time you do it, your brain tries to remember the neuron pathway and expands. The more you complain the easier it is to repeat the same act. In no time, you will be complaining without even worrying about the side-effect.

This act induces the production of cortisol or more commonly known as the stress hormone. What does it do? It drives your mind into a fight-or-flight mode, keeps you tense as oxygen and blood are unnecessarily pumped quicker. You can suffer increased risks of getting diabetes, obesity, and strokes.

Another study on stressed baboons shows that these stressed apes are more likely to suffer brain injuries or strokes. It also causes rats’ brain cells to shrivel.

Don’t get this wrong. Cortisol is good to pump those adrenalines and get your body and mind ready. They keep you alert and concentrated when you work or emergencies. It’s vital for survival. But complaining has nothing to do with survival, so all you are doing is basically wearing yourself down.

Excessive release of cortisol leads to health risks. But the most concerning of all is that putting yourself under stress can actually shrinks your brain. To be more precisely, it shrinks the hippocampus, a small part in the medial region responsible for memory and problem solving. It’s also the same part Alzheimer’s attack and the same shrinking effect found in people with chronic depression.

It’s time to stop

Some people find themselves to be especially critical of things. It’s hard to stay positive because we all have a negative bias. Our attention is directly aimed at negative or bad news rather than goodness.

It’s not impossible to change that. So long as you are breathing and want to.

1. Start looking at the positive sides

Consciously look at the positive sides of things. It’s most of the time easier than you think. For example, for those who work under the service industry, did they fulfill the basic requirement of the job? That’s one positive thing. Were they polite? That’s another. Did they dress up properly? You see, it’s not so hard!

2. Be upbuilding

People tend to complain, not to improve the service, but to prove themselves right. The next time you find something unsatisfactory, instead of simply spouting words of hatred, change that into suggestions that can be applied.

3. See how you feel better about yourself!

Yeah, positive words give positive impacts to not just the people who receive them, but also to yourself. Researchers have found how people actually feel happier and even high when they commit to kindness acts.