According to Will Bowen, author of A Complaint-Free World, 4-8 months is the average time it takes to go 21 consecutive days without criticizing, complaining or gossiping. Which makes sense because, every time you mess up, you’ve got to go back to day 1. I accepted the complaint-free challenge on Nov 5, 2007, 3 months ago. And I promised to report back to you, my faithful readers.

I haven’t yet made it 21 days; 4 days in a row is my record (although I’m back to day one since I started paying attention to the primaries and the candidates). Here’s how it’s gone so far:

At first I feared becoming someone who spouted politically correct phrases oddly devoid of meaning, a sort of stepford human, a walking corporate memo, an optimiton. When I achieved a complaint-free day, it would be followed by a negative eruption the next morning over something trivial. For instance, I’d wake up and moan “Oh great, it’s raining.” Before accepting the challenge, this was something I never did, as I’m not much of a talker in the morning.

I was stunned at how often I complained. I was very, very focused on that 21-day goal, but not at all sure I could achieve it. Perhaps it would help to clearly define the terms. I spent a great deal of energy discerning the difference between a complaint and stating a preference, and the precise definition of gossip (current favorite: “hearing something you like about someone you don’t”). I wondered if it was legal to think the complaint but not say it.

From there I got…quiet. For days at a time, I couldn’t think of a thing to say, a way to say it, or a reason to figure either of those out. Life was a silent retreat. Some days I didn’t even leave the house. At gatherings someone would ask me about the purple bracelet and, after I explained, they’d edge away, muttering about how they couldn’t talk to me. I knew just how they felt.

Alone with my thoughts, I started noticing how relentlessly self-critical they were. Nothing I did was good enough for me. Whatever it was, I was doing it wrong.

It was about this time my therapist suggested I treat going complaint-free as an experiment: “You don’t know how this is going to come out. Just see where it goes.”

That got the inner critic off my back. I began to wonder what it would be like to be someone who didn’t want to complain or criticize. Someone like the Dalai Lama who, when asked why he wasn’t bitter about having lost everything to the Chinese, replied: “Having taken everything from me, shall I also give them my mind?”

It seemed to me that the Dalai Lama wasn’t just countering each negative in his life with a sunny, positive affirmation, nor was he hiding in the house. He was doing something else, something much more muscular. But what?

This was the right question to ask, apparently, as it ushered in a new stage which I’d have to call personal growth on crack. I’ve never been more aware of my thoughts, my emotions and the utter uselessness of believing I know how anyone’s story should turn out, including my own. This makes it easier to leave all that alone and just be present with the person I’m talking or listening to. And, what a relief!

It started with noticing how the temptation to complain, criticize or gossip stemmed from fear. Once I saw that my inner critic was terrified, he became much easier to befriend. When that was working better, I started losing interest in all things negative. Which is when the resources started showing up. Things I hadn’t asked for. Things I wouldn’t have known to ask for. Like the conversation on how one tiny negative cancels a positive every time on Liz Strauss’s blog.

Two lines in her original post riveted me:

“…when we hold a negative thought we’ve already chosen sides.
Even the tiniest negative makes it about me, not about where we might go.”

And, her response to a comment of mine about how for me, negativity is always the result of fear, made a light-bulb go off:

“Any time that I start to put a negative spin on things, it’s because I’m turning over power and control to someone other than me. I’m making them more, larger, better, bigger, and important than I am.

When I endow that someone with humanity, life becomes easier again.”

It took me the better part of a day to metabolize this thought and the cascade that followed. The upshot is this: Stuck people stick people. When I’m stuck, it’s because I’m not endowing myself with humanity. I’m too busy holding myself to some impossible standard to extend you the possibility of being human.

I love this idea of humanity making life easier. So, my current plan is to endow myself with enough humanity that I’ll have plenty to give away. I’m punching my ticket and letting myself into the human clubhouse, warts and all. And. I’m leaving the door open so you can join me.

I’m imagining for some of you, this is already easy. I could use your help. How do you make it OK for yourself and others to be human?

You know how there seems to be a lot of complaining in meetings? Like when someone proposes an idea, someone else discounts it, pointing out everything that is wrong with it? Or, when trying to resolve a situation that’s really stuck, the finger-pointing can get quite intense? The recriminations can even begin to sound a little crazy: “You never do any work.” “You’ve never bothered to show up on time,” and so on. Perhaps my least favorite interpersonal situation involves gossip: talking about a group or person who isn’t present. “Ain’t it awful how…”

The typical strategies involve taking the high road: inviting the complainer to make a proposal of their own, enforcing ground rules about how to talk about the situation (focus on the problem not the person), pick up the phone and get the gossipee on the line. These are excellent strategies and I use them all the time.

But when a person, dyad or group is really, really stuck in their story of victimhood, injury and powerlessness, I invite them to lean into it and hold nothing back. I want to hear how awful it is. Except they have to do it while keeping their tongue pressed against the back of their bottom teeth.

It’s called talking funny, and it’s impossible to do this for very long without laughing. It’s impossible to stay stuck when you’re laughing. The cramp in your brain eases, and the thoughts start to flow. Your IQ rises like a balloon full of helium.

(You can test this right now. Go get your journal. Find a page full of self-pity. Now read it out loud, keeping your tongue glued to the inside of your bottom teeth. See?)

Possible uses: 1) Your company is about to fail and you’re out of ideas. Have a meeting to discuss the situation and have everyone talk funny. 2) Your co-worker has just conrnered you to complain about someone else. You say, “Tell me all about it, sweetie - but first put your tongue against your bottom teeth and keep it there.” 3) You’ve grown to hate your co-manager. You find yourself in a meeting and it all comes out. Let it rip - but plant that tongue first. 4) That other department just isn’t respecting you - they keep giving you impossible deadlines. Plant your tongue and let it rip.

After the laughter abates, you can get on with the real business at hand - you can resolve the conflict, plan the come-back or whatever else needs doing. You’ll have more oxygen in your brain and more brain cells to work with. It will be much easier and refreshing. Try it and let me know how it works for you.

When I first picked up a guitar in junior high, I loved everything about it: The way it looked, the way it nestled in my lap, and the way it sounded when I strummed that first chord. I couldn’t wait to get home, shut myself in my room and play until my mom knocked on my door to announce dinner.

Playing guitar was something I did in private. No one at school knew. No one was grading me, or demanding I spend 2 hours a night on it. I had no goal, and no performance date to practice for - it was just me, the guitar and the pleasure it gave me.

As a guitar major in college, my ego moved in to my practice room. I thought I needed its help. Everything I did was under scrutiny. I wasn’t practicing enough, I wasn’t serious, I wasn’t dedicated, I wasn’t talented enough, did I intend to perform it that way? The guitar went from being my source of joy to being my ball and chain.

My ego turned out to be quite the harpy. Fueled by the terror of failure, I found myself thinking I should be practicing all the time. Like when I was eating, or sleeping, or in the shower. No matter how well I played something, it wasn’t good enough. No matter how long I practiced, it wasn’t long enough. I still loved everything about the guitar, and the music I was learning was heaven.

The problem was the clipboards. Each time I performed, my teachers would listen for the first few lines, then start scribbling their feedback on the clipboards they carried. My ego became more frenzied and insistent.

Which must be why I came home with a banjo kit in my junior year. I’d never built an instrument before, and I didn’t know much about the banjo, but I loved its mahogany neck and shell. I decided to oil finish it, sanding against the porous grain to fill it particle by particle. My father came into the basement to help, but could not fathom why I was using such a laborious method. I wanted to feel the mahogany grow smooth in imperceptible increments, and watch it take on luster one lumen at a time. He wanted to finish it in an afternoon. He left muttering and shaking his head.

My ego could not get a toehold either, and left me in peace. Eventually, I had a fine-sounding 5-string banjo all tuned up and ready to go. I had no goals for it. I told no one at school about it. Since I wasn’t concerned about learning to play it, I’d pluck on it a little before I went to sleep, just to enjoy the sound. Lights-out got later each night, but I always went to bed grinning.

I don’t know how I knew to do it, but I’d built my ego a vacation home, right in the midst of all that pressure. A place my ego could wear plaid and do a terrible job splitting logs to burn in the big, smoky fireplace. A place where I could reach new depths as a banjo player. I loved it there.

I’ve been noticing the pressure building in my life over the last couple of years, so over the holidays, I built another vacation home for my ego: I’m using a kid’s book, Mark Kistler’s Draw Squad, to learn to draw. The rules are simple: 1. No erasers. 2. No pressure. 3. No results. When I get too wrapped up in drawing a perfectly straight line, I draw with my other hand. When I start going too slowly, focusing on getting it right, I switch from pencil to pen and draw twice as fast.

Just thinking about it makes me smile.

Happy New Year. It’s good to be back on my weekly schedule.

Does your ego have a vacation home? Tell me about it.

Once upon a time I went to a monthly meeting with my boss and her peers where we mostly sat around and ate cookies. The cookies were homemade and rather good, but they could not compensate for the meeting, which was the most painful I’ve ever endured. Long silences, meandering conversations, no one in charge, one person or another trying - and failing - to get us back on topic. In this way, 90 minutes would
s l o w l y pass. It was like practicing for hell. Each month after the meeting, I’d beg my boss to fire me so I wouldn’t have to go back. Each month she’d say: “If I have to go, you have to go.”

So I started suggesting the usual things: outcomes, an agenda, meeting processes, facilitation. “None of those work,” was her reply. In this way, six excruciating months c r e p t by. In a final attempt to save my sanity, I asked if I couldn’t please just conduct a meeting evaluation. “Five minutes, a quick plus-delta at the very end. That’s it - I promise.” Exasperated, she agreed.

The delta (or, what we should change for next time) column ran down hal the sheet of chartpad paper, then looped back around until it filled most of the sheet of chartpad paper. On it were things like: Have an agenda, have timeframes, have a facilitator, have a purpose, more structure, shorter meeting, what are we doing here, anyway? In the plus column was a single word: Cookies.

I said “Let’s decide what to do about this list of deltas.” My boss shot me a look which I chose to interpret as supportive. In the end, I agreed to put together an agenda and facilitate the next meeting. We kept the cookies.

Two much shorter meetings later, the team agreed to disband, as they had no actual work to do.

What if it’s this simple? What if the meeting you dread could be improved with this simple technique? I think it can. I’ve never seen this fail to make a meeting better.

Here are the keys to making it a success:

List the pluses first. Linger here. Divide a chartpad into two columns and list the pluses on one side of the chartpad so everyone can see the list. The group will want to rush to fixing what’s broken, missing the chance to encourage themselves with what they’re doing well. Over time, they come to feel beat up on, and their enthusiasm wanes.

Agree to continue doing every plus you can. Brava - it’s working! Acknowledge it and keep doing what works. This is tremendously encouraging for your team.

Solve for each and every delta on the list Every. Single. One. After you finish listing them down the other side of the chartpadk decide what to do about each one, right on the spot. Then, make the change and let everybody know what you did. This means that you bring the list to the next meeting (no, don’t rewrite it or type it up) and say “Here’s what we’re doing differently as result of your feedback.”

Remember: This is not a consensus activity. It’s fine to hear “too much activity” right after you’ve written down “not enough activity.” Let the group members sit with their own differences. They’ll come up with a great solution when you start solving for the deltas.

I’d love to hear about how this works for you, or what you do that works better.

I’ll always remember my first day of work after college. There I was, a newly Registered Music Therapist, sitting in a room at Sonoma State Hospital with all the other new employees, watching a training video. The video showed scene after scene of a staff person doing their level best to work with a patient. The patients in the video were similar to the patients at the State Hospital: Adults with profound developmental disabilities.

The first scene in the video went something like this: The staff person walks into the room where a patient sits at a table, looking down. The staffer and speaks the patient’s name - “John,” and gets no response. The staffer moves closer to the patient and speaks their name more loudly, perhaps adding a phrase like: “look at me.” No response. Next, the staffer would speak even more emphatically and wave his arms, “JOHN, LOOK AT ME.” Nothing. Becoming visibly agitated, then apopletic, the staffer would continue to escalate his demands to the patient who continued to sit there. I began to question which of them belonged in the State Hospital - surely it was the crazy guy jumping around the room and not the calm man sitting at the table. At that point, the action would freeze and a booming male voice would say “TRY ANOTHER WAY.” In a new scene, a different staffer would enter the same room with the same patient, squat down in front of him, make eye contact, touch their arm gently and say, “Hi John.”

John would look up and smile.

In scene after scene, the pattern repeated: A staff person would try a strategy. It wouldn’t work. They’d repeat the same thing, only louder and with gestures. Then the voice over, and the new staffer with a successful approach. The effect was mesmerizing and the message powerful: In every case, the right strategy worked easily, instantly. It was like watching two different species perform the same task; one was always successful, the other, never. I knew which species I wanted to be.

Not much has changed for me. I still want to be that species. I’m still learning how. I know there is a connection between effective and easy; between pleasure and success. I’ve had some success finding that sweet spot, and I’ve loved every minute spent there.

Which is why I said yes when Christine Kane threw down the gauntlet and invited her readers to not complain, gossip or criticize for 21 consecutive days. It looked like a strategy right out of that training video, a direct line to the sweet spot. Going complaint-free was started by Will Bowen, the Pastor at Christ Church Unity in Kansas City, MO. Will and some of his congregation took the pledge in July 2006; now over 4.4 million people worldwide have made this commitment. You’ll recognize them by the Barney-purple rubber bracelets they wear and switch to the other wrist each time they - that is, I - slip. Which is often. Unbelievably, hilariously often at first. After 6 days of trying to get through day one, I finally succeeded. First thing the next morning - we’re talking 7:00 at the gym - was another slip. Now I’m back to day one.

By the third day, I reached this unavoidable conclusion: I’d become that other species without even realizing it. Species creep, you might call it. I’d become the crazy one jumping around the room wondering why I wasn’t making progress. I’d had no idea. I only knew that my life had gotten more crowded, more tiring, less joyful.

The last six days have been revelatory: The less I allow the nasties to come out of my mouth, the less they cross my mind. The less they cross my mind, the quieter my mind becomes. My mind is having a little vacation. It likes being this peaceful. I feel lighter - and I haven’t yet gotten past day one. I’ve gone through several stages already, from “how hard can this be, I almost never complain!” to “Do I do anything besides complain?” to “I can’t possibly do this” to “I want to do this - was that a complaint? Great, I want to get this.” Going back to Day One doesn’t feel like failure anymore, it feels like learning. And, I love learning. It’s fun. Thrilling, even. Who knows - perhaps a love of learning is what distinguishes the species I want to be from the one I don’t.

I can’t recommend this highly enough.

Who wants to join me?

A client asked me for feedback about an promotional campaign they are planning to use in this year’s SF gay pride parade. IMO, it was culturally tone-deaf bordering on deeply offensive. Given that this client has a long history of supporting the GLBT community, I wanted to stop them from this misstep. The jury is still out on whether I’ll be able to do that, but it has given me opportunity to reflect on how something born of such good intentions can go so wrong. And, of course, how to prevent it.

One aspect of prevention is addressed brilliantly in Douglas Rushkoff’s book “Get Back in the Box.” In a nutshell, he talks about how inauthentic companies have become by pursuing branding as an end in itself rather than as an authentic expression of who and what they are. The brand gets disconnected from the company’s identity, yet the identity is directly experienced by its customers each day. The brand, and the campaign based on that brand, begins to bray like a donkey. It’s shriekingly out of synch. It’s impossible for the customer not to notice the disconnect. After you’ve hit this level of brand incongruity, trying to convey your brand to a culture the company doesn’t understand is a lot like watching Al Gore dance the makarena at the democratic convention: Discomfiting. A little embarassing. Even more scary: This sort of misstep is available to us all, ad infinitum

Part of the antidote - and one Rushkoff recommends - was given to us years ago on Saturday Night Live. Remember the psychologist who kept saying “Have you looked at yourself lately?” At the time, it was nothing more than the demented mantra of the navel-gazing boomer generation. At this moment in the corporate stew, it’s sounding more and more like wisdom. Too much looking outside for who you are and what to convey about yourself makes for a twitchy, cranky mess. You overreach and your customers can see strain. Too much looking within can make you a caricature of yourself, as in: “I’ve been spending a lot of time inquiring into why I don’t get off the couch.” The best brands are the ones that come from a company’s deepest authenticity and reach out to others from that place.

The key seems to be balance these two things: look within and respond to those you want to reach. Without both things working, you’re like a rowboat with only one oar in the water: you see the same scenery over and over and as you circle.

This isn’t rocket science, but it’s easy to forget. Plus, we’ve got all kinds of things in my way: ego, the fear of asking for help, of being ridiculed, or being left behind in the marketplace, all of which we cleverly disguise as time pressure. When anxiety strikes, the tendency to row in circles can be overpowering.

There is another choice: Have you looked at yourself lately? In an effort to be trendy and “competitive,” have you strayed from who your customers know you to be? Look, everyone wants to be the cool uncle visting from the distant big city, but the family needs the grump who lives down the block in the house stuffed with unread newspapers too. Which are you? How can you move from that authentic place to meet your customer? How can you compete without becoming something you are not?

Look at Al Gore now: The man who rode his passionate and deeply authentic obsession with the environment all the way to a relaxed, funny and passionate public presence. He’s making a difference. And isn’t that what we were shooting for in the first place?

Last week I was in L.A. teaching a favorite class, Consulting Skills: Bringing Your Authentic Selves Forward. It’s one of several excellent workshops designed by the consulting firm Gelinas James. The big topics are covered: saying yes and saying no. We go over the what and the how of it - when you have to say no to say yes to what you and your client want more, as well as how to recognize the difference between a crazy demand and a legitimate business need. The real trick is how to say yes to the need while saying no to the crazy demand, especially as they are often presented as one and the same. Which they are not.

An example we were batting around in class is the necessarily high quality for a piece of work coupled with a deadline that’s impossible. What my students often hear is: “That’s just what I want - but I need it faster and cheaper.” When invited to respond authentically, one participant said “Of course you do. Who doesn’t?” It had the effect that simply saying what’s so often has: After the briefest slience, we all laughed. For one thing, it’s true: I always want the best quality for less than it seems to cost. Doesn’t everyone? The pain comes when you realize you must choose one over the other.

The other reason her response had such power was that she said said something true without a trace of blame or judgement. Her tone was matter-of-fact, verging on empathetic. I call this leaving off the comma. If she’d used a tone that conveyed “Of course you do. Who doesn’t, you jerk!,” it’s easy to imagine how quickly she’d have been called in by her boss’s boss and reprimanded. Instead, her tone and delivery were comma-free - there was no way to add the “(comma) you jerk” at the end. This is so rarely the case. We think we’re clean, but our utterances drip with attitude and our clients react accordingly.