The No Complaining Rule

I have been a self help junkie for a long time and I am not too demanding of my self help books. I expect them to keep me interested and hopeful while I am reading them. This can be a bit of challenge with old warhorses like Think and Grow Rich, which is baffling in it’s ancient histories and team building strategies. But most modern self help writers have followed in the footsteps of Kenneth H. Blanchard, who wrote The One Minute Manager and several follow up books-all of which cost about twenty dollars and were about twenty pages long. Well, maybe a bit longer than twenty pages, but certainly not a weighty tome like The Power of Positive Thinking.

The current Self Help book I’m reading is called The No Complaining Rule, from Jon Gordon-author of The Energy Bus-I missed that one. It is another short book, about 150 pages, but not quite as short as the Fish Tale books.

I work at a Big Heartless Corporation that has been doing things the same way for a very long time. It worked then, it will work now seems to be the working motto on my employers. As with all large companies, from Wal-Mart to Starbucks to Sears, the people on the ground who know what is going on don’t have any say in how the company is run. So we all sit around and complain about how much it sucks to work for this particular Large Heartless Corporation.

Well, it isn’t that bad most of the time. If it was really bad I wouldn’t be working here, as the many other large heart corporations I have worked for can attest. I am not afraid of quitting and starting over somewhere else. We tend to spend our spare time talking about how much our jobs suck. I don’t think this is exactly an uncommon problem. Unless your a movie star or a Prince of Dubai, we all have stuff to bitch and moan about when it comes to working for a living. And I’m sure that even movie stars and Prices have days when they would have rather stayed in bed. But then, being Movie Stars and Princes, they probably do stay in bed.

I read one book where a company owner installed Pass Card locks on all the doors of his company to keep employees from talking to each other. He thought employees talking was a great waste his valuable time. And he might be right, just as Wal-Mart right be right in calling employees talking to each Time Theft-but they are not right. These kinds of draconian measures never worked with employees like me-we all just leave and find somewhere else to work. Not to mention that texting and cell phones have made most such measures obsolete anyway.

Rather than lock each employee into their own bubble and block all access to other employees, The No Complaining Rule takes the more simple approach of asking that no one complain, at least no complaining that is not constructive in nature.

The No Complaining Rule is the story of a woman whose husband left her and whose work and family leave her feeling overwhelmed and out of control. By the usual happy coincidence of Self Help books she meets people who guide her on the Path to No Complaining and her world is changed for the better.

I’ve been a hard core complainer most of my life and it has gotten me nowhere. But the times when I have tried to look on the bright side and see all the good, well, that hasn’t helped much either. But I do like some of the ideas in The No Complaining Rule. I won’t give away all the secrets, but one that makes sense is not to complain unless you have a solution to what you are complaining about. I like this idea. Not sure it would always work, as the solutions can be worse than the problems. But at least there would be some dialogue involved.

There are a few things to download at the No Complaining Rule, I like the posters and the lists. Can a blogger live without complaining? Well, a little complaining is allowed now and then.

---