Delays and irritations go hand and hand with travel, but what might happen if you simply remain positive?
Complaint Free Bracelets / Photo: A Complaint Free World
Seems the law of attraction is even hitting the church.
Will Bowen, a minister in Kansas City, Missouri, has set fire to a movement aptly titled, A Complaint Free World.
The purpose of the movement is simple: go 21 consecutive days without complaining. To help you along, wear the group’s signature purple bracelet, and every time you make a complaint, switch it to your other wrist.
Some people are able to make the 21 days in a month; others take a year. Bowen says that it takes an average of four to six months to complete the allotted three weeks complaint free, but that awareness of how much we complain just continues to build through the process.
Like the Law Of Attraction, the idea is that the more we complain, the more we have to complain about. Being positive brings positive changes to our lives, and frees us up in many different ways – emotionally, physically, energetically.
So I began to wonder, what would complaint free travel look like? Oh, lawdy.
Complaint Free Travel
One of my favorite points that Bowen makes is that most of us recognize how much other people complain, but not how much we ourselves complain.
Even thinking about all the things that have gone wrong in my travels, things like:
- Flying out of Oakland for a four month jaunt, hungover, not fully moved out of my apartment although my lease ended that day, and arriving at 5:40am only to find out my flight was the next day;
- Several pairs of underwear falling out of my backpack as they kicked us out of a bus in the dark of night, nowhere, Zambia;
- Balling my eyes out as I caught the last train out of my semester abroad in Florence with two huge suitcases that I could barely move and then realized I was on the wrong train,
All of these make me cringe at how much I’ve complained on the road.
And the truth is, most of those “things that went wrong” make for the best damn stories when you come back (especially to write about).
Change Your Experience
Just smile/ Feature Photo: JAIRO BD
Complaint free travel means you’d have to hold your tongue when you get to sit on a runway for five hours waiting to take off.
It means you’d have to smile and mean it when miscommunication occurs at a restaurant where you think you’ve ordered garlic tofu and instead you get garlic rooster balls.
It also means that coming back to your hostel and finding a couple having sex on the sleeping bag you so neatly laid out earlier for easy access after pub closing time would dignify only a request to move to another mattress.
And yet, not complaining may open you up to people, places, and adventures that would otherwise have been nixed.
Think about landing the perfect job because you met someone on an organized tour that your friends deemed not hip enough, seeing the most amazing landscape on Earth when you decide to visit somewhere that is “known” to be a criminals haven, or getting to know the love of your life by sitting on that airport tarmac for five hours.
Welcome to traveling with gratitude.
How would complaint-free travel affect your trips? Share your thoughts below.
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21 Comments... join the discussion!
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So, so true. I totally admire people who are complaint-free and aspire to be like them (so far, it’s not working out). Maybe I need me a bracelet!
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I definitely need a bracelet, but I think it might take me longer than 4-6 months to work on myself.
Seriously, one of the most valuable travel and life lessons I ever learned was from a woman who led a trip to China in which I participated in college. She taught me to think of 10 scenarios that could explain every single situation that frustrated me before I reacted– the very process of having to slow down to think of 10 reasons why something might not be going my way made me far less prone to complain about it– complaining is typically reactive, impulsive energy.
(Now if I could only remember to apply this in my daily life!)
Great post, Christine!
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Yeah, Julie, when I was watching the video about Will and his little movement, I started to think, what conversation would be left with some of the people in my life if we didn’t bitch about everything to each other?
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Hmmm… if you complain and no one is around, have you really complained? Is it only true if you mutter to yourself or say something to another person? I think I could do it while living on the Buddhist monastery in New Zealand – no worries, mate.
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Ah, breaking out Quantum up-on-it, Turner. Nice. Goes along well with the law of attraction…
But if you go from that point, one might say the universe always hears you, ahem…;)
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Bawling.
Unless, of course, you were using the word in the slang sense related to basketball and sometimes drug dealing
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Yep, she’s our drug-dealing hoops playin’ baller!
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I heard of Will Bowen and his 21-day Complaint Free Program; I think he was on Oprah.
I used to be a person who get upset and complain about idiot drivers on the road, delays, etc…Not anymore, I’m over it. I’ve adopted the “WHATEVER” attitude with a pinch of the “I Don’t Care attitude.”
I agree that complaining just brings about more complaining. You can’t control the outside world, but you can control your reactions and actions to it. Let it go, it’s not worth the stress.
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What a great post and idea! I definitely need a bracelet too. Would it help to get my wife three? (jokes people jokes). I actually do really want to try this, interesting experiment.
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I’m going to try this on muni today!
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Update: we’re now waiting for 5 bracelets. My wife didn’t really like that comment I made…but instead of complaining she got me one, her friend one, and three for herself.
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Nice, Carlo! You’ll have to let us know how it goes…
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Definitely – how about writing a status update after a month or so?
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As I await the bracelets, I ponder how difficult this will be for us. I’m fairly easygoing/relaxed, but at work, where I do IT support, I take phone calls and have to deal with some pretty annoying people. Anyone who’s done work like this will understand…when we finish with our calls we’re always complaining to each other…it’s an outlet and is therapeutic I think.
So…this will be interesting.
I’m planning on running a daily blog. Just quick little updates about how each day goes. I’ll do up a post after some time with our thoughts on the experiment!
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Cool, Carlo! I’m glad you are planning on doing a blog…I bet some juicy stuff will certainly come up!
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We used these bracelets with a big 80 person trip we did to Egypt a couple of years back. It worked great and really helped to set the tenor of the trip in a positive way.
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Wait a minute…back the truck up. I just re-read this. 21 CONSECUTIVE days?? Shoosh. This is going to be more difficult than I thought! What did I sign up for…
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Alright…last comment, I promise. Until I get my website up and running, I’ll be posting updates here:
No Complaints, Mate – http://nocomplaintsmate.blogspot.com/
Please follow along!
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“most of those “things that went wrong” make for the best damn stories” … Quite true. There’s no complaint free world, but we can change our attitude to enjoy the tour more, even with the “bad” experience.
When I was traveling Bangkok, got up one day at 4:30 for the floating market. But met a bad taxi driver, who took me to the wrong bus station and tried to charge 10 times the money. I arrived in the floating market 2 hours later than my original plan, and missed the busiest hours of the day. Yet afterwards, talking about the day, it’s fun trying to get to the right place with a piece of paper as completely illiterate.
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hahaha Rooster Balls!
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