How To Stop Complaining & Start Making Progress

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1:29that convinces you you're doing something that actually guarantees that nothing changes. Here is the honest truth. You can have excuses or you can have results. You just can't have both.

1:47Welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host Omar Zinhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week. And more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much. Today's episode might be a splash of cold water on your face or even a gut punch, but it's also a way out of this cycle that you might be going through where things don't go your way, you complain, you get frustrated, you get angry, and nothing changes.

2:36Complaining doesn't actually come from intelligence. It doesn't come from awareness. It actually comes from insecurity. When you complain, you're subconsciously doing a few things in your mind. You're protecting your ego, you're explaining away inaction, and you're actually outsourcing responsibility. You're saying that this is not my fault. And in the moment when you're complaining, it somehow feels good, so to speak. In that moment, it feels cathartic. What no one really tells you, and what I had to figure out the hard way, is that complaining actually has zero upside. There is no positives to complaining.

3:13It doesn't solve the problem. It doesn't make you feel better long-term. It It doesn't move you any closer to where you want to go. It doesn't build your confidence. It doesn't earn you respect by your peers or the people around you. Actually, you become like an annoying person in their life. In fact, it trains your brain to look for what's wrong instead of what's possible. And that is a killer because when you're always looking for what's wrong, you really don't give yourself a chance to succeed. And once it becomes your default mode to complain anytime something doesn't go the way you want it, Progress starts to feel really heavy, feels slow.

3:50It feels overwhelming. And it's kind of a loop that you get into. So I want to break that loop today. And if you are brave enough to admit that this is happening to you, you're in the right place because you're going to get some solutions. You're going to have a plan of action starting with this first step. And it's a rule that I have established and I want to share with you. It's one rule that can change how you operate from day to day and for the rest of your life. So when you complain, as soon as you catch yourself complaining, you know that you have to take action. It's like a debt you have to pay.

4:23No exceptions. You got to make a rule in your life that complaining without action is banned, not allowed, illegal. This rule works because it makes complaining expensive. It makes it really costly. Suddenly, victimhood, being a victim, is inconvenient. Responsibility really becomes automatic. You start to feel that I got to take responsibility when things happen. No one else will. No one's going to take action for you. And what you realize is that taking action and making progress becomes the easiest option. And that's where momentum starts to build. So you've established a rule. When you complain, you have to take action.

5:03It's like a debt you have to pay. That's the rule. Okay. So that was technically like the overarching rule. Let's move into like the real step one of the system. And before I reveal what step one is, I want to make sure you understand that we don't stop complaining by trying harder, okay, just by being more mindful. No, you stop complaining by installing structure in your life that replaces complaining. So the first step is we want to categorize the complaint. Every complaint is going to fall into one of three buckets. The first one is something you can control, which is most of the things you're going to complain about, because that's what I found.

5:41Number two, something you can influence, right? So the difference between something you can control and something you can influence, because you have total control over, and then something you can influence, like maybe you're not in total control, but you can really influence the outcome in a lot of ways. You could do something about it. And number three, something you don't control, something that you don't have any control over or any influence. Let's start with that one. So if you don't control it, if you don't control the situation that you're in, the problem that you have, you need to drop it immediately.

6:08It's really a waste of energy. Complaining about it is a waste of energy because there's nothing you can do about it. So actually complaining is going to make you feel worse. It's going to make everything worse and it's not going to change anything. So just try as much as possible to drop it. What a lot of people like to do is just like take a moment to just like recognize the fact that that happened and this is the situation and you have no control over it. And that should be a relief for you. You feel like, well, there's something I could do about it. So I'm kind of relieved of taking any action.

6:37If you do control it or influence it, you owe yourself an action. End of discussion. You need to take action now. Step two, you want to replace complaints with questions. This one is a game changer. So for example, instead of saying, this is so frustrating, or why does this always happen to me? Or this shouldn't be this hard. This feels impossible. You want to flip these statements into questions, curious questions like, what's one move I can make right now? Or what am I avoiding? What got me into this mess because I was avoiding something? Another good question is, what would progress look like in the next 10 minutes?

7:19In the next 10 minutes, how would I feel like I'm making progress? What would I have to do to have that feeling? What I love about questions is that they create ownership. You're throwing it back on yourself and realizing I need to take ownership. I need to do something about this. No one else will. The moment that you start recognizing this, the moment everything starts to change. One of my favorite lines in a book called The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz is that it's all your fault. He goes on this whole rant in the book about all these things that has happened to him in his business.

7:55And he said that he started to improve and things started turning around when he started to realize that anything that happens to him is his fault. It's no one else's fault. It's my fault. I need to take ownership of that. Somebody quits. Somebody gets poached. The servers go down. Everything is your fault, he says in the book. And it really was an eye-opening moment for me. It really was like a gut punch for me because I was really blaming everybody else when I needed to start asking questions, started to take responsibility. And when I did that, I felt empowered. I was like, oh wow, by taking ownership, it means that I can come up with solutions.

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9:55Learn more, get started for$60 a month for 12 months when you add an advanced solution to a qualifying internet package. Limited time offer restrictions apply, new customers only, requires 300 Mbps internet, security edge, and additional qualifying service. One-year agreement, paperless billing, and auto pay with bank account required, taxes and fees extra. Step three, track complaints for one week. This is not to shame yourself, but this is so that you can become aware. Write down your complaints. Number one, the reason why I like this rule is because it's a little bit of work, right? And if you find yourself complaining, you have to now write it down.

10:34And now you're going to start realizing, maybe I shouldn't be complaining so much, so I don't have to write these things down. And what I found, and what most people find, is that they are shocked how often they complain and how rarely they act, right? My awareness alone starts rewiring behavior. Somebody cuts you off when you're driving and you start complaining. That's something that you need to write down. Maybe you need to dictate it or get your friend next to you to write it down on your phone. You're at a shop and the customer service is horrible and the cashier is treating you like trash and you start complaining.

11:06This is one of the things I complain a lot about and I have to catch myself. My friend, Ramit Sethi, who is a personal finance expert, he challenged me. He said, hey, I want you to not complain about prices. The funny thing is that this is very ingrained in my DNA because of my immigrant background. And my mom always complained about this is too expensive. And it doesn't matter what the price is. It's just too expensive always. So I want to kick that habit. And one of the challenges he gave me is like, hey, be aware. And you're not allowed to complain about anything that costs anything. So one of the activities I'm doing is I'm writing it down every time that happens to Either I make a note in my phone or I write it down in my notebook or in my journal in the morning.

11:48But it's a good way to kind of keep track of how often I'm actually doing this. And just being aware of it really makes you start to question, you know, why do I keep doing this? Let's take things to the next level. This is like level two of this game called Stop Complaining. And in this level, the way we stop complaining is we make progress. People who make progress don't complain. People who complain aren't making progress. It's actually that simple. And if you want to make it more complicated, that's on you. Progress eliminates negativity faster than anything else. When you make progress, it outbeats anything, motivation, anything you can think of, because progress is proving to yourself that you can control things.

12:29You can change things. You can make things happen. Progress is far more powerful than anything like affirmations or hyper or self-talk or any of that stuff. Progress lets you define what the future looks like. So even if progress is, you know, just dropping a kilo or a couple pounds on the scale after a good two weeks of working out and watching your diet, that alone, that progress is going to give you such a boost. It's going to also get you to stop complaining about whatever you're complaining about when it comes to this area of your life, because you're like, hey, I can't complain. I'm actually getting better.

13:07Things are getting better. I want to be clear here. Progress doesn't mean massive breakthroughs or perfection or some sort of heroic effort. Progress means small wins in my book. You want small wins stacked daily. You want to shrink action until it's impossible to avoid. Something that's super, super simple. If the goal feels heavy or it feels too big, instead, I want you to make it a smaller goal because that's going to help you feel the progress and it's going to reduce the complaining. So instead of saying, I want to build a business or I want to launch a product, I want to get in shape. These are very broad goals.

13:45Your goal today, this moment, is to write one paragraph in your next newsletter. Send one email asking somebody for feedback. Outline one idea for your product. Work out for 15 minutes. Just get your heart rate up. That is what I like to do because these micro actions, these small steps, will eventually add up and get me to where I want to go. The 15 minutes workout that will get my heart rate up, it's a small action that will get me in shape eventually. It's that first step in moving in the right direction. Momentum comes from consistency, in my opinion, and not intensity. People that treat their goals and their life and their direction and what they want to achieve as a marathon where they have to pace themselves are the ones that actually make it to the finish line.

14:34If this idea of progress over complaining is hitting home right now. You should hit subscribe to the show because I have an upcoming episode that you don't want to miss. It's called how to make your first million dollars in one year without getting lucky, no matter your circumstances. So subscribe now so it lands automatically in your feed when it drops. All right, let's get back to it. Here's another tip when it comes to achieving things at a higher level. Every day should end with this sentence. Ready for this? Today was a win because I did X, okay? You need to have a daily win. And this is why I like the five-minute journal, because this is actually a prompt in the journal.

15:12Today was a win because I did X. Here's the kicker, though. If you can't fill in that blank, if you can't answer what X is, your day wasn't designed for progress. You didn't actually do something to move forward. Even tiny wins change how you show up every day. The shift in your identity starts to be apparent. You go from being stuck to being somebody that does things, a doer, a mover, a shaker, somebody actually gets things done. And movement builds confidence. As you take these small action steps, you start to build more and more confidence every single day. That leads me to this very important next part, which is you need to track your progress, not how you feel, right?

15:55Not feelings. Track progress, not feelings, okay? Feelings, they lie. They're not a good measurement for you to measure by. Progress doesn't lie. If you show up and move the needle and do what you said you were going to do, that's a win. Winners don't wait to feel good to act. You can't just do things when you feel like it because that is what's going to cause the inconsistency. You need to do things because you promise yourself you're going to do them and you do them regardless of how you feel. I can't tell you how many times I've showed up to the gym and I felt sluggish and I didn't feel like working out.

16:28And I felt like just turning around and going home. And as I'm working out, I get through my first set, my second set, I get through my first exercise, you know, and then my third and my fourth. And okay, when I'm halfway through the exercise or through the workout, I'm like, okay, I'm glad I'm here. I'm glad I made it. And then by the time I get to the end, I'm like, whew, that was pretty good. I enjoyed that. But if I just followed my feelings, if I just did what I felt like doing, then I would never work out. That's just the truth. Now it's time for the final level, the big boss of never complaining, gratitude.

17:01Yep, that's the final level, the final gear that you need to shift into. Gratitude is not some sort of fluffy word. Gratitude is a strategy, really. It kills entitlement. It sharpens your perspective. It restores your energy. I find that gratitude is like the remedy to a lot of things. When you practice gratitude constantly, when you feel grateful for what you have, even the simple things in life, you stop saying, I have to do this. And you start saying, I get to do this. Instead of saying, I have to work out, like the example I gave, I get to work out. I have my limbs. I have my health. I have the ability to go to the gym.

17:38I can afford a gym membership. This is all a privilege, right? And gratitude is the, I would say, the serum that you need to take on a daily basis so that you can remind yourself that things are not as bad as you think they are. So here's a simple daily habit that I encourage you to do. One thing you're grateful for every single time you wake up in the morning, and one thing you made progress on at night. It's a very simple thing you could do. You can journal it. You can even just ask yourself and think about it in bed. When you wake up in the morning, what am I grateful for this morning? It's a great way to start the day.

18:11It's hard to be in a bad mood when you're grateful. And then at the end of the day, what is one thing you made progress on? Just so that you can build that confidence and remind yourself, hey, I'm doing things. I'm making progress. As I wrap up this episode, this is what I want you to remember. This is what I want you to take away from today's episode. Winners, they don't complain. They come up with solutions. It doesn't mean that winners never feel frustrated or feel angry. It just means that they don't live there. They feel it for a moment and then they take action. So if you want to win in business and in life.

18:43This is the path. It's not perfection. It's not motivation. It's all about progress. It's taking action and moving forward. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. You already know what to do. You don't need more information. You don't need more permission. You don't need a perfect plan. You don't need to be a genius. You know this, right? You need to stop complaining long enough to take the next step. Complaining stops you in their tracks. It stops you from making that progress you know you can make. Because the moment you start making progress is the moment your life changes, right? The noise starts to quiet.

19:21The excuses that you have in your head start to fade. The confidence that you have in yourself start to return. You start to feel good about yourself again, right? And suddenly, you're not stuck anymore. You're moving. You're making progress. You're loving life. Things are great because progress, in my opinion, is contentment. progress is happiness. Growing and growth is, in my opinion, the secret to a fulfilled life. If today's episode resonated with you, I highly recommend you check out an episode I recently recorded, which was a must-read episode, an episode where I review a book. I talk about a book called Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield.

19:57Steven Pressfield is one of my favorite authors, and this book is all about crossing the line from being an amateur to being a professional and being a professional execution person, person to execute, right? I don't want to say executioner. And it pairs perfectly with today's message that we talked about. And it really allows you to understand that you need to take responsibility. His words are much more eloquent than mine. So go ahead and listen to that one. You're going to love that book and love that discussion. So go ahead and check it out. I hope to see you on that episode or the next. I'll check you then.

20:32if you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start grow and scale your business the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app the one that you're using right now whether it's apple or spotify or ever you listen to podcasts by hitting subscribe you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show it's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

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