2-3-4 Friday: Stop complaining

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1 thought

Singaporeans are known as the complaint kings. We complain about everything. The train breakdowns. The coffee rising 10 cents. The lack of sheltered walkways. 

Are we entitled to our complaints? Why do we still complain? 

I would like to put it to you that you might be complaining, because complaining allows the covert, unsaid emotions to rise to the forefront. 

In the work we do, how much do we know about the covert emotions that lie beneath the overt actions that people take?

We see it all the time.

Someone reacts strongly to something innocuous you said. At work, you notice someone slowly doing what you’ve told them to do, even though you’re their manager.

So how do you understand what people are resisting, not so that they will do what you want, but so that you can be more aware?

And how can we actually build better from the diversity of voices we hear? We know the dangers. Societies and institutions are fragmenting, and we no longer seem to trust those in power.

So we take to places like Reddit, and post long threads and comments, and hope something changes.

Here’s a counter-example.

REACH is Singapore’s government feedback unit. Some have lambasted their work as simply a ‘photo op’. It’s for politicians to show that they are listening to the people, but it doesn’t translate into any real change.

Over the past 4 months, they have been doing a project to understand the emotional moods of Singaporeans. It sounds strange. Why would a government want to commission a study into the emotional moods of its people? Some have said it’s to weaponise the research, and to give the government another tool in its arsenal to manipulate the people.

Okay.

But part of the study’s reason is also because Singapore sees the fractures that are occurring in society because of the 4 big emotions.

Credit: Tong Yee, from And

During the first time I went for their focus groups, it was a fresh experience. 20 people would first write down their emotions for 6 big buckets - covering emotions like anxiety, resentment, gratitude, and sadness. They would place them according to its intensity, from 1 to 7.

An example:

They would then sit in a spiral, and then have a conversation, entirely un-facilitated.

What struck me was how it was structured. The first was before lunch, where 20 of us sat in a radiating spiral. The facilitator would announce: the time has started, and all 20 of us were initially sat there, wondering what we would talk about.

It quickly spiralled into a debate about AI and its effects.

Then I did something stupid.

I raised my hand and told them that it felt like I was in a debate class, and I wasn’t sure that a conversation to understand Singapore’s emotional moods, would turn into a debate on the benefits of AI.

I shared about my entrepreneurial poverty, and the conversation got deeper.

In the session after lunch, we did the same. This time, it got worse. The conversation first spiraled into a flex session about how some people were playing their role in catching bad behavior like people who took upskirt videos, and then a debate, and if you looked around, you could see most people checked out, beyond the 6 that were actively debating.

This time, despite seeing what happened, I sat back. Said little. I was tired of fighting to be heard.

It was supposed to mimic civic engagement, or how much resilience there is in diversity. Because we can see that as societies fracture, we are no longer able to go across the aisle, and take someone else’s opinion, and make it even better.

And so we resign, sit back, and wait for someone else to do something.

That’s dangerous. Because when we keep expecting people to save us, and then we complain when those ‘saviors’ don’t do what we want, then we should really, stop complaining.

Perhaps it’s better to think about what you can do.

1 talk

Complaining is expecting someone to save us, handing that authority to someone else, and wanting them to do what we want, whilst our only effort is that our mouths move.

1 tip

The point here isn’t to stop complaining. But it’s to try taking some effort to understand the nature of the complaint.

So don’t complain to change things, but instead, try to be more aware of what the exact nature of the problem is. Just as REACH has done.

They tried to dig beneath the complaints, to understand the underlying, unsaid, unspeakable things that citizens were not saying about life in Singapore.

So if you can dig beneath your own complaints, and be more aware of the covert emotions that are driving your complaints, you might slowly find some positive change.

Example? For years, I struggled with friendships. I kept wondering why friends didn’t seem to put in more effort with me. But when I dug deep to understand the underlying emotions, I realised much of it had to do with the trauma of being abandoned. I’d thus want people to put in more effort to show they wanted to be with me.

It was all me, not them.

And maybe as you learn to be more aware of the emotions behind your complaint, you might come to realise that you might also have a role to play in your complaint, and resolving it.

John

Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love

Caveat: I don’t work for REACH.