A revolutionary approach to improving every relationship in your life, Complaint Free Relationships picks up where the internationally successful A Complaint Free World left off, with all-new methods to help you overcome toxic habits and build strong, successful connections with others.
The original Complaint-Free movement has exploded into an international phenomenon, with 5.5 million people in more than 80 countries taking the pledge to create a complaint-free life, as well as national media attention. As this movement expands, it is clear that the real focus of achieving true complaint-free living lies in our relationships. People complain to bond with others. It's easy to feel connected by common annoyances. But most complaining is about people, and this leads to negative and unhealthy foundations for our relationships with others--from family, lovers and friends to our more casual connections with people in our daily lives. Complaint-Free Relationships provides insight and helpful tools to see, understand, and engage in our relationships through the lens of complaint-free living. It incorporates new studies about complaining, inspiring and illuminating stories from Will Bowen's experience both as a minister and founder of the Complaint Free movement, and practical exercises at the end of each chapter. By providing the tools you need to escape the trap complaining creates--feeling unfulfilled and inadequate--Complaint-Free Relationships offers new clarity and encourages you to create happy, stimulating and mutually satisfying relationships.
Will Bowen is an author and speaker who has been featured on/in "Oprah," NBC's "Today Show," ABC's "World News Tonight," CBS "Sunday Morning," "Fox News," "The Wall Street Journal," "Newsweek," "People," "O," "Self," "Chicken Soup for the Soul" and in hundreds of media stories around the world.
His first two books, "A Complaint Free World" (now expanded and updated) and "Complaint Free Relationships" are international best-sellers having sold more than 2 million copies around the world.
A Complaint Free World, the non-profit organization Will founded, has sent more than 10 million Complaint Free bracelets to 106 countries.
Bowen speaks to organizations helping them shift their focus from negative complaining and fault-finding to positive problem-solving leading to happier employees and even happier customers. Clients include:
*The Million Dollar Roundtable's "Top of the Table" * Volvo Motor Company * PriceWaterhouseCoopers * The Human Resource Professionals Association (HRPA) * Pratt & Whitney * Kimberly Clark
Bowen's newest book, "Happy This Year!" demonstrates the power we have in setting and achieving higher levels of happiness regardless of what life may bring. The book is being packaged with a free Smartphone app allowing the reader to set a happiness level goal and measure his or her progress toward that goal.
The app is called "HappyStat" and is available for Iphone, Android and Kindle at www.HappyThisYear.com.
Highlights: Yellow highlight | Location: 97 Extensive research shows that unhappy couples are distinguished from happy ones by the extent to which
Yellow highlight | Location: 97 they reported their partner being argumentative, critical, and nagging—in other words, complaining.
Yellow highlight | Location: 179 Now, you might think that the women complained because their relationships with men were unfulfilling. But studies show that the opposite is true: their relationships with men were unfulfilling because they complained. Their focus was on the negative aspects of their relationships, and their commiseration about their challenges magnified their problems.
Yellow highlight | Location: 187 Late in life, Sartre explained, “‘Hell is other people’ has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell.”
Yellow highlight | Location: 246 “The only way to change someone is to change what you think about them.”
Yellow highlight | Location: 468 Discern if someone’s presence in your life helps your soul grow, helps you experience more joy and more of the goodness in the world, helps you to discover your own
Yellow highlight | Location: 469 innate beauty and wonder. If not, bless that person and release him or her with no need for judgment.
Yellow highlight | Location: 643 I was confusing our differences with incompatibilities.
Yellow highlight | Location: 645 Beautiful and melodious vocal harmony is created when singers each sing at a different pitch, not the same one.
Yellow highlight | Location: 954 And if the other person acts in a way that seems to say he or she is angry or resentful toward you, remind yourself, “Oh, yes, that’s a picture that person has hung about me. That’s all it is. It’s that person’s reality, not mine.”
Yellow highlight | Location: 972 “Out of sight, out of mind” came back as “Invisible, insane.”
Yellow highlight | Location: 973 there is no reality, only perspective.
Yellow highlight | Location: 984 The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands. —ALEXANDER PENNEY
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,010 Every problem is a communication problem.
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,051 If he says something, I can simply say, ‘What I’m hearing you say is …; is that correct?’ If he says I’m not getting his point, I ask him to repeat and then I paraphrase again until he okays my understanding.
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,123 A 1988 study by Lowell J. Krokoff, John M. Gottman, and Anup K. Roy found that “decreasing negative affect has more effect on improving couple’s marital happiness than increasing positive affect.”
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,139 complaint is “an energetic statement focused on the problem at hand rather than the resolution sought.”
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,167 People complain for the same reason that a baby cries: they are dissatisfied with something and lack the verbal skills to get their needs met without resorting to statements that are charged with negativity.
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,170 If our attempts to get our needs met are phrased in a negative, complaining manner (“You always do this”), the situation tends to perpetuate itself. If phrased in a positive way (“I would like this instead”), the situation tends to get resolved.
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,192 “You are probably not aware of this” is a magic phrase when sharing your needs with someone. It allows you to express your dissatisfaction without making your
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,193 comments personal. It acknowledges your understanding that the other person’s behavior is probably not intended to upset you.
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,205 For this to work, though, it must be done without negative energy, without blame or fault-finding.
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,210 You are trying to bridge the gap between your two realities and your words should have the impact of a dove landing gently on a tree limb rather than a brick crashing through a window.
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,221 He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. —CHINESE PROVERB
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,233 When we take responsibility for our relationships, we accept that we create them. We are not victims; we are cocreators. Asking creates the potential for the outcome we seek; complaining legitimizes our feeling like a victim and perpetuates the issue.
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,238 Speak directly and only to the person who can resolve the issue.
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,278 If the person continues to rant, consider saying, “I get that this is upsetting for you. What is it that you need?” If the person launches into more complaints, repeat as needed: “I get that this is upsetting for you. What is it you need?” Be open; listen. Resist the temptation to hang negative pictures of this person in your relationship.
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,538 “I’m glad you noticed this issue. What are you going to do to make it better?”
Yellow highlight | Location: 1,561 What can you do to draw out of the other person the respect and treatment you deserve?
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,022 acronym C.A.N. You CAN work through challenges and discover the best course of action for issues that are upsetting you by processing them with another person. Complaint Free About me, not someone else Neutral story told to a neutral party
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,042 “What can I do differently to cause an improvement in the relationship?” It’s realizing that you are 100 percent able to respond in the situation and delving into what you can do and how you can change to make things better.
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,208 It is important to believe that the person you are processing about actually had a positive intention behind his or her behavior. This is not easy to grasp, but to process the experience, this understanding is vital.
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,209 The person’s behavior may have been rude, it may have created conflict, it may even have been reprehensible, but at some level it was done in an attempt to create a good outcome for the person and/or others.
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,220 Of the three options, which do you think best lowered the child’s level of upset? It wasn’t talking about it. It wasn’t playing with toy guns—this made them more hostile and aggressive. The most successful way of dispelling the upset child’s anger was to understand why the other child had behaved as he or she did (for example, “She was sleepy,” “She was upset,” “She was not feeling well,” etc.).
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,223 By understanding that the other child had a reason behind his or her actions, the upset child was best able to let the issue go.
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,352 perhaps you might stop looking at the end of your relationship as a failure. Instead, you might consider that the relationship is complete and no longer needs to continue.”
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,354 I wasn’t a failure because our relationship ended. Our relationship had not failed; it was complete.
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,361 If, however, you go from relationship to relationship and discover the same problems, it simply means there is something that you have yet to recognize, own, and heal. And right where you are is the best place to do this.
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,685 An article in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reports that when you complain, the listener actually ascribes the negative traits you are griping about back to you. In their findings, titled “Spontaneous Trait Transference: Communicators Take on the Qualities They Describe in Others,” the authors write, “Politicians who allege corruption by their opponents may themselves be perceived as dishonest and gossips who describe others’ infidelities may themselves be viewed as immoral.”
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,759 And here is the interesting part: even though an overwhelming majority of complaints are about a person’s behavior, people hearing complaints directed toward them tend to hear these complaints as personal attacks. Recipients of behavioral complaints internalize these comments as disparaging remarks about themselves personally.
Yellow highlight | Location: 2,950 Your relationships are always moving, always progressing, and as a result, you can direct their course. Forget how many times you have gone off the trail previously. You did so because you did not know you were able to choose your path. You had dropped the reins. You had twisted your body in one direction or another and the relationship had responded. Now take the reins in your hands and direct the relationship up the trail of your choosing.
Yellow highlight | Location: 3,105 Your relationship issues may seem huge; they may seem overwhelming; they may seem beyond repair; they may appear to be beyond your control. But this is not the truth. You can restore your relationships to health and sanity by taking the initiative to do so and following the suggestions presented in this book.
Yellow highlight | Location: 3,109 You must not only decide that you want happy relationships; you must set this as an absolute, unwavering intention and stay the course.
If you are having difficulties in life with relationships, if you find yourself complaining about others, or you are just unhappy & cant figure out what to do next, I recommend picking up thus book. I’ve been researching effective communication to better myself and this book had a lot of good strategies that I have found helpful.
One of the best books I've read in a long time with simple clear action steps you can take to change your relationships. Oddly enough I had been doing some of the things mentioned in this book, but I had pulled from multiple sources; other books, articles I'd read, videos I'd watched, and some wonderful advice given to me by some great friends. The thing is putting it together in this format with clear, concrete instruction on what you can do to begin changing your relationships today, is not something I had come across before. I will admit that I picked up this book a few weeks ago and read part of the first chapter and then put it aside to move onto something more interesting at the time. It is coming time for me to return it to the library so I picked it up to give it a second chance, and somehow I was more ready to absorb the information the second time around. As I began reading some of the steps I had already taken in a few relationships (and I had seen immediate results) I wanted to read more.
It seemed to me at first trying to have complaint free relationships would be something very difficult to do, out of my control and tedious; but as I read I realized my error. Reading over the reasoning behind each part made me realize that the relationships and types of interactions described in this book are the exact type of relationships and interactions I want more of in my life. I had been feeling like changing the relationships was out of my hands since I thought both parties would need to change to move forward in a more positive light, but the little bits I had tried before reading the book started to reshape the relationships immediately. I could see changes in reactions, simply by changing the way I was reacting. A wonderful book I would recommend to anyone who is feeling like they do not have control over their relationships, this can truly help not just in your relationships with others, but in your relationship with yourself.
There is definitely a little corniness to it, and I am going to skip the illustrational "stories" the next time I read through it, but I think there is a lot of good material in here about recognizing the stories you create about interacting with others in your life and taking responsibility for the way you choose to relate to them. Good stuff about not taking others' comments personally, and I was really surprised when he mentioned the Johari window - the most interesting pane being, of course, the things others know about you but you don't know. And how this relates to places where your past issues can be easily triggered.
Now that I've listened to the whole thing, I want to get the hard copy and read through some of the lists and exercises.
I'm actually listening to this on CD, and the fact that I don't love the way Will Bowen reads this is definitely coloring my view - a bit corny. This book was recommended to me among others, and it's definitely my least favorite book, and actually directly contradicts Why Marriages Succeed or Fail. I also think it's a bit optimistic and simplistic for the most part, but I DO think that the ideas in this book are, generally, great. Helps you to look at your thought process and relationships in a new light and to try to approach them in a more positive and productive ways. Good basic information here.
I think I got a lot of good tips from this book. I learned how complaining of any kind is counter productive. Even in the spirit of "venting". Often we think "getting it out" makes us feel better but if we are getting it out by complaining we are actually making things worse. I got this book from the library and I think I may need to purchase a copy to add to my personal library. The exercises are helpful but I did them mentally rather than keeping a journal. This will be on my "to be read again" list.
It definitely made me think about how much I complain and how much of a drain that is on my relationships. I recommend it to anyone who wants to re-evaluate the state of the current relationships and recurring trends of negativity.
basically life changing. Shines a light on the side of you the world sees...perhaps more often than any other, without your even knowing it. Well worth the time....AND the 21 days of introspection that Will is asking for. Tough challenge to pass that one!
He provides a view of conflict resolution from the pov of relationships. Key point was the colored threads in a tie as a way of seeing different perspectives of a personality.