Business Whining Isn’t Business Winning.

Make no mistake — business is tough.  Selling is a brutal full-contact sport.

Customers lie to you.  Competitors do shady things behind your back.  Your own team members drop the ball and lose you key business opportunities.

Whining only makes your situation that much tougher.

A lot tougher, in fact.

Because whining is your way of admitting that you’re a loser.  Whining is your best attempt at overcoming the weaknesses that hold you back from success.

Whining isn’t winning.

And you’ll know it when you see it.

It’s a big part of our business day.

• It’s when we complain about how unfairly we were treated.
• It’s how we point out how lucky someone else is for being successful.
• It’s the times we pout because our business plan isn’t working.

And these are just a few of the ways we weave passive aggression to our whimsy.

We make faces.  We pretend like we care.  We create sophisticated plans to put us in the place where we can point out the injustice of our situation.

And despite all of our plans, pouting, and self-pity, we forget a big, important lesson.

Whining isn’t winning.

It’s not.

Whining is when you make a big deal about the obstacles in your way.  Winning is when you blast right through them.

It’s starts with an attitude.

An attitude of gratefulness for the opportunity to do battle.  A simple delight for the chance of life and breath from which to sustain our conquest.

Just being alive for another day should be a reason to stop whining.

Whining isn’t winning.

But it doesn’t stop there.

More than an attitude of gratefulness, you need brutal honesty with yourself.  We’re pretty good at lying to ourselves. We’re amazing at convincing ourselves of a million different excuses about why we are being treated unfairly.

Don’t laugh.  Despite being savvy enough to detect bull-shit excuses in those around us, our built in”Whine Factory” shortcuts all the warning bells in grown-up logic and delivers Grade-A nonsense that we somehow accept as reality.

It’s just our built in defense system protecting us from disappointment.

Whining isn’t winning.

And let’s get a few whiny business misnomers straightened out. “

1. No one can take advantage of you. — Being taken advantage of is a decision you make.  It’s your choice.  When you give and care, amazing things happens.  You no longer feel like people are stepping all over you.  That thought doesn’t even enter your brain.  You’re happy laughing and loving those around you.  You aren’t selfishly counting favors and extracting “reciprocal” activity from your peers.  That’s amateur hour.
2. The value you deliver isn’t that valuable. – All that hullabaloo about “your services have value and you need to be paid for them” isn’t a license to be a selfish jerkface.  The expert who fed you that line wanted to make sure he got paid.  That’s why he made a big deal about teaching you that philosophy.  Success is about what you can give, not what you can take.

We all want to be winners.

That’s how we are wired.  Whining gets in our way and makes us losers.

Whining isn’t winning.

So how can you stop whining and start winning?

1. Be brutally honest with yourself about where you could be performing better.  You don’t need to fix anything just yet — just admit your screw-up.
2. Apologize to those around you when you whine.  Take uncomfortable ownership of your bad habits.  You’ll quickly train yourself out of this.
3. Take time throughout the day to pause and reflect in quietness.  Meditate.  Get exercise.  Mini-conquests keep you fired up and less whiny.
4. Refuse to criticize any situation.  Look only for positive things you can take away.  You’ll be amazed at all the good happening around you.
5. Trade moping moments for gratitude.  Talk to yourself out loud.  Share anything that you can be grateful for.  You’ll quickly return to winning status.
6. Get help.  Hire a coach.  See a therapist.  Ask a friend to keep you accountable on a weekly basis.  Write down your journey in a daily diary.

All of life is a choice.

So is whining.

And winning.

What are you choosing?