Grumbling about something can feel as if it offers relief, but it spreads misery. Here’s how to break the habit and make everyone happier.
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In 15th-century Germany, there was an expression for a chronic complainer: Greiner, Zanner, which can be translated as “whiner-grumbler.” It was not a complimentary term. A popular tavern song at the time (which the great renaissance composer Heinrich Finck also arranged as an instrumental piece) had lyrics that ran, by my rough translation, “Greiner, Zanner, you know what? I’ll sit at your table and kiss your wife on the mouth! How do you like that?” In other words, quit your whining, or I’ll give you something to whine about.
Are you a bit of a Greiner, Zanner? If so, you’re not alone: Survey data show that American customers today are more than twice as likely to complain about a product or service as they were in 1976. People are grumbling more at work too. Nearly a third of employers in one U.K.-based survey witnessed an increase in employee grievances over a two-year period prior to autumn 2022, and according to an executive coach cited in the Harvard Business Review, a majority of employees either complain themselves or listen to complaints about upper management for at least 10 hours a month.
This epidemic of discontent is also reflected in our media. Researchers who analyzed some 23 million news headlines from 2000 to 2019 found that the proportion denoting anger, fear, disgust, and sadness had risen consistently—especially anger. The opinion section of almost every news outlet is like a Greiner, Zanner convention, with one editorial after another telling you that something is awful and you should be upset.
Of course, if you look around, you can always find something to complain about. But if you do so habitually, that is probably hurting you, bringing down others, and making you a less attractive person to be around.
So you might want to buck the trend toward a culture of complaint. Fortunately, you can do a lot to quit the habit and so get happier.
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Complaining is the act of expressing your dissatisfaction or annoyance. According to psychological theory, it is a fairly complex process that follows at least five steps, starting with a focus on your own desires. Next, you detect a discrepancy between what you want and what you are experiencing. This leads to negative affect—the discontent. Then you judge the utility of complaining. If it seems worthwhile to you, you let rip; if it doesn’t, you keep the complaint to yourself.
In addition, several categories of complaints exist. According to research on students in the 1990s (the most recent work of its kind that I could track down), about 25 percent of complaints concern the behavior of others, one’s own behavior, or the irritating effect of a “nonperson” (such as a dull event); about 21 percent reflect negative attitudes about the traits of other people, oneself, work, school, or policy; 19 percent center on one’s physical state (including, very commonly, how the weather bears on it); and 14 percent involve distasteful obligations (for example, work meetings, which most people hate). The remaining 21 percent of complaints are divided among the categories of disappointments, obstacles, and a desire for change.
Sometimes, complaining is “instrumental,” designed to gain redress for a specific problem, such as lousy service or annoying behavior from a family member. Complaining can also be “chronic,” a state of dissatisfaction in which grumblers ruminate on their woes and refuse to be mollified. More typically, however, complaining is simply to vent displeasure or elicit sympathy. On other occasions, you might complain to build a negative kind of solidarity (“Don’t you think our boss is a jerk?”). And some people use complaining as a dark form of humor—George Carlin was a master at this, as in his TV comedy special Complaints & Grievances.
The problem with all of this kvetching is that it can feel therapeutic—but it typically isn’t. Although complaining might offer temporary relief, it’s bad for your happiness in the long run. Polish researchers who in 2009 measured people’s mood before and after they complained consistently found a significant deterioration. Other scholars have shown that people who share negative emotions on social media—a very prevalent type of complaining today—experience lower levels of well-being.
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Some spiritually inclined writers have argued that to complain about suffering, whether large or small, reduces the meaning of that suffering and the capacity to learn from it. “Grumbling is like the autumn hoarfrost which, when it falls, destroys all the labors of the gardener,” the 20th-century Bulgarian theologian Archimandrite Seraphim Aleksiev observed; it “withers all the virtues of the soul and makes bitter and useless the fruits of suffering.”
As I mentioned above, complaining can also lower the happiness of the people around you. The same Polish researchers showed that simply hearing another’s complaint lowers one’s mood from about 5.7 on a seven-point mood scale to about 5.3. Even worse, in some relationships (such as those between customers and service providers), the negative effect can pass like a virus to those exposed, a phenomenon that scholars writing in the Journal of Business Research coined the “complaint contagion effect.” In research on social media, researchers found that when people see others’ complaints expressing anger, disgust, and sadness, they can, in turn, feel similar emotions.
Of course, contagion might be precisely the whiner-grumbler’s goal—after all, as they say, “misery loves company.” And research shows that misery attracts company as well: On social media, negative messages are far more likely to be shared than positive ones, especially from public figures. As a result, people and organizations that depend on audience size have a market incentive to complain—and to infect you with that negativity.
Read: You’re probably complaining the wrong way
Let’s assume, however, that your livelihood does not rely on spreading misery. Much more likely is that it will be in your interest, if you have a complaining habit, to break it. The people you care about will be happier too. Here are four, research-based ways to quit complaining.
1. Judge less, observe more.
Complaining is a fundamentally egotistical act—subjecting something about the world to your judgment. This is completely natural, of course, because we are all walking receivers of outside stimuli. However, as I have previously written, you can also decide to turn down the sensitivity of the receiver by trying to observe more about the outside world without judgment. Tomorrow, try to reframe what were today’s minor irritations as simple events. For example, instead of bitching about someone who cuts you off in traffic, simply observe that the person is obviously in a hurry. Be more of a play-by-play announcer of the game of your life, and less of a color commentator or pundit.
2. Consider the underlying problem.
If you have a habit of complaining, you could find it worthwhile to dig into why you’re so often going over your dissatisfaction threshold. We’ve established that grumbling probably makes you unhappier, but the causality can run in the other direction: Constant complaining—being hypercritical about everything—can be a symptom of depression. For my own part, I’ve noticed that when something big is disturbing me, I also get impatient about all the little things I don’t like. Perhaps if you deal with what is really bothering you, you’ll find that the weather and politics aren’t really worth complaining about.
3. Be a Stoic.
Most people think that to be a stoic means keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of misery, but that is a misunderstanding of capital-s Stoic philosophy. In fact, the Stoics, such as Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, managed their feelings about life’s trials through reason. In his Meditations, Marcus wrote this advice to himself: “If it be in thy power, redress what is amiss; if it be not, to what end is it to complain? For nothing should be done but to some certain end.” So when you are about to complain, subject your complaint to the Stoic test: Can you do something about the situation? If not, then complaining won’t help. If you can, then get on with that (and don’t waste time complaining).
4. Avoid the grumblers.
One reason you complain a lot might be that you keep negative company, online or in person. Curate your personal life to the extent that you can, and turn off the complaint machines in your media—the querulous celebrities on X, the crabby pundits on television, and the whinging columnists in print. Remember, your misery is their business model.
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One last idea to break the Greiner, Zanner routine is to make a commitment to stop grouching and ask others to hold you to it, much as you would if you wanted to quit smoking and asked a friend to help. Tell your family that you want to complain less and promise that you won’t fly into a rage when they point out your grumbling.
That’s my current plan, because, frankly, I’ve been bellyaching too much of late. So if readers want to call me out when they catch me being a Greiner, Zanner, they’re welcome to—as long as they don’t come around trying to kiss Mrs. Brooks.
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