All Bellyache and Bluster: Why complaining leaves us tied up in “not’s" with Mark Scherer

We are joined today by Mark Scherer - Founder and CEO of Encompass Life. Mark is a life coach who has created a coaching strategy called the Quantum Leap Technique - a system which focuses on the energetic impact our chosen words have on our day-today experience of life. The program brings specific awareness to the significance within the word “Not” - and how repetitive use of this one word, is directly related to the amount of anxiety one experiences throughout their lives. At times - it can seem as if life is somehow destined to challenge us. And at times we question this notion, seemingly on almost a daily basis. Our motivated thinking and projected constructs aside, as we each address our daily circumstances, there are times when we turn towards coping mechanisms to address such feelings as anger, contempt, disgust, fear and sadness. Perhaps chief among these - is a desire to complain. Complaining is referred to as expressing discontent or resentment. While we may think we are just “venting”, in reality, complaining has significant impacts on our brains and our happiness. Input from this data shows that most people complain once a minute during a typical conversation. Complaining is tempting because it feels good, but like many other things that are enjoyable -- such as smoking or eating a pound of bacon for breakfast -- complaining isn’t good for you. Research from Stanford University has shown that complaining shrinks the hippocampus -- an area of the brain that’s critical to memory, problem solving and intelligent thought. The study found that engaging in complaining or simply hearing someone complain for more than 30 minutes could physically damage our brains. Your brain loves efficiency and doesn’t like to work any harder than it has to. When you repeat a behavior, such as complaining, your neurons branch out to each other to ease the flow of information. This makes it much easier to repeat that behavior in the future -- so easy, in fact - that you might not even realize you’re doing it. Words, being expressed as sound ; have an energetic vibrational frequency. Perhaps then, as we consider the frequency of the words we express, we can see the correlation between the feelings and thoughts we each share - helping us to understand our relationship with ourselves and others.