I have the app Marco Polo, which, if you aren’t familiar with it, allows you to record videos that go directly to an individual—or group—and won’t take up endless space on your phone (though I’ve found that it will eat through data quickly if you aren’t careful). I only communicate with my sisters and one good friend through this app and it can be fun to exchange little bits about our days. It is convenient because we all have different things going on in our lives and can’t always connect on the phone. I can listen to the message at my leisure and can respond when I have the chance.
While the messages between my sisters and me are usually quite short, the messages between my friend and me are sometimes quite long. We are both big talkers and if we get started, sometimes it can be hard to stop us.
Now, I am grateful for technology and the ability to communicate with friends and family in different ways. Long ago, communicate took place primarily through snail mail or the phone—growing up, I remember talking on a corded phone that kept me rooted in one place for the duration of the call. (How long ago that seems!)
But I also realize that it is possible for anything—even good things—to be a hindrance in our journey toward accomplishing incredible goals.
When I think about how much time I have spent using this app to talk about myself—my stresses, my frustrations, my problems—it causes me to step back and question if this is contributing to the future self I want to be or if it is causing me to focus too much on things that will keep me right where I am.
As with everything else I am learning about growth, it all starts in the mind. If I allow my mind to be focused on the negative, that is what will find its way out of my mouth. Instead, I need to make a conscience choice to focus on positive things—or at minimum, not focus on negative ones—and then talk about those.
For example, when I am on the phone or receive a message from a family member or friend and they ask how I am doing, I am often tempted to launch right into every bad or frustrating thing that has happened in the past two days.
The baby was up three times last night. I am so exhausted that I couldn’t get up early this morning.
Our pool pump broke down and now we have to call a repair guy—what is that going to cost us?!
My dog knocked over the lamp in the living room and spilled my water all over the carpet this morning.
And on and on the list could go. It is actually amazing how quickly I can zero in on a negative event, no matter how minor, and then talk about it at length. If there was a competition for how to find the negative in anything, I could have taken home the gold medal more times than I’d like to admit.
Ever since I began to shift my mindset, I have been able to improve this bad habit, but it is still a struggle. In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about triggers that can cue behavior, whether good or bad, and how we have to learn to recognize these triggers. The Marco Polo app I mentioned above has, at times, been a trigger for me that cues negative talk and pity parties.
Certainly, it is okay to sometimes talk about events in our lives that are frustrating or negative in nature. If I only slept four hours last night due to a colicky baby, it is understandable that I might mention it when asked how I am feeling. Or if my friend’s boss berated her at work yesterday, it is natural that she might want to walk through her feelings on the situation.
But even these events can be discussed without delving into long-winded complaint sessions. And, as with any event that happens in our lives, we can choose what lens we will use to frame it. Yes, I might have had a bad night but it does not have to affect my entire day unless I choose to allow that. Yes, my friend might have gotten yelled at by her boss, but she doesn’t have to believe that means she is a bad employee.
Getting out of old patterns and into new ones takes time. This is normal with anything we have been doing for years—usually it takes a good amount of time to reach that ideal new normal we set for ourselves. But the key is learning to be aware, learning to examine areas in which we can improve, and then taking action steps to do just that.
I have been using this video app with my friend for almost a year now. It is only lately that I have made a conscience effort to avoid complaining and ranting about the same thing over and over.
So often when we start focusing on a new habit or skill we want to establish, it leads to additional positive changes.
Fist, making that one decision to NOT complain as much challenges me to think about positive things going on in my life that I can talk about—and they are more abundant than I deserve.
Second, it has led to me making more effort to be a good listener and respond to topics that my friend brings up in her message. When we get too focused on our own problems, we tend to not be fully present for those around us.
Third, it has pushed me to be more selective about what I say in general, and thus, keep my messages shorter. There is nothing wrong with talking, but, as with everything, there should be a balance.
I am grateful for this form of communication because without it my friend and I would have rarely connected over this past year (we both have babies that are just over a year old now and with our different schedules, phone conversations were rare until recently). But I don’t want something good to become a hindrance to my growth (or hers, because if I spend more time focused on the bad than good, I am contributing negativity to her space and her life as well).
I have found our exchanges to be much more fulfilling since I have decided to shift my focus. Just yesterday we had an exchange about some of our future goals and it energized rather than drained me. It felt good to be sharing positive goals and hopeful desires for the future and only helped to reiterate why it is so important to reach for new challenges on a regular basis.
