This is Turia Pitt (on the cover of her recently released memoir).
Her story’s remarkable (for a good version, read this), it’s one that’s necessary to understand who she is and and it’s also one that everyone could benefit from hearing. But I doubt she wants one bushfire she got trapped in, back in 2011, to define who she is.
As she told My Weekly Preview, ‘Growing up, my dad had two rules. Number one was no whinging and number two was no bloody whinging.’
And from the sounds of it, those two rules have played a part in her, 1: still being here today (she considered suicide after falling into depression after her incident), 2: becoming the successful and motivating role model she is today and, 3: living the life she wants to, despite what happened somewhere in Western Australia over 5 years ago.
I’m experimenting with not complaining out loud about anything, at all for a week¹ (the mental complaining will be harder to silence, but I’m hoping getting rid of the verbal will get rid of the mental²). And it’s really hard to write about why I want to stop complaining without actually complaining, but let me try…
When I, or you, or anyone else complains about something that’s either out of our control or something that doesn’t matter, the tendency is to mirror that person’s complaint, empathise, or at least sympathise with them. It reinforces our hapless internal dialogue, makes us feel that ‘Yeah I am right – this thing that sucks, it isn’t my fault. There’s nothing I can do about this. It’s just my luck.’ So one person complains, the other piles more complaining on top of the pile and the negativity and complaining then just gets stuck in this loser loop of losing. And the result: absolutely ZERO action is taken to try improve it.
Garbage.
Turia Pitt’s dad had it right.
Rule #1: No whinging.
Rule #2: No bloody whinging.
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¹ I just found out this is a thing already. August 12 is No Complaints Day.
² Is it possible and realistic to permanently stop verbally complaining, both inside your own head and out loud? I don’t know, but I’m going to try it out.