Fighting the urge to complain

In regard to my post about happiness I had a testing experience with British Airways this weekend because of the less than honest practise of overbooking.
Not moaning about it really helped me enjoy the 4 star hotel I fought to spend my night in Paris in, instead of being with my girlfriend Chili who lives and works in London.
I guess rationalising the whole situation and getting the better of it made it all ok but it was a challenge to avoid sinking into a string of complaints that would have totally taken down my moral.
Its always interesting when you believe you have developed a way of avoiding the horror of perpetual complaining, to have test like these thrown at you randomly as if someone up there said "hmm ok you think you got it all sorted out, now eat this"

Social Project

I've lived in Paris for a few months now and I travel to work everyday, like so many of us, using the capitals amazing mass transit network.

Since my girlfriend Chili moved to London, I’ve started a social experiment in the MTN and while driving around with the company car.

Now it’s important to know that in Paris, like in most big cities, people are not very inclined towards communication when using public transport, they are even rude as reaching home as fast as possible seems to be the local sport.

Every morning free newspapers are distributed around town and my fellow citizens appreciate them a lot.

My social project “would you like the papers with that Samosa?” is to gather those newspapers in the morning and in the evening and when I head back home and there are no more newspapers available I give them to the person next to me after having read them. Now you must be telling yourself “this is normal” but it isn’t here in Paris were people would rather put the newspaper in their bag than risk talking to the person next to them.

So I’ve been doing this for about a month and a half now, asking the person next to me if he would like the papers, most say yes as they look at me with envy while I’m reading it just before, some say no, some even accept it and then put it in their bag.

The idea is that at the end of the day, people will start sharing the paper with others instead of keeping it to themselves, since at some point I or one of my “victims” will have given it to them.

The same thing applies to my other social project Samosa’s own “let the damn car that’s stuck in traffic pass”

When I drive in Paris were traffic is like in Bombay, I let people who are stuck in the middle of the road or trying to take a turn pass, something that nobody does here.

I believe that the next time the person I let pass sees someone else stuck somewhere he or she will let them pass as well and that if he doesn’t he’ll feel bad about it.

I realise that these are very optimistic ideas but I find it important to break the loop in which we are all entangled, not communicating, fending for ourselves behind our steering wheel in a kind of Darwinian nightmare where it’s everyone for themselves.

My dream is that someday, someone I don’t know will ask me if I want the newspaper in the subway and that when I’m trying to take a left turn and nobody lets me pass someone will block traffic to let me take my left turn.

These are actions I take because they would make life simpler, it’s just being polite and generous when you can, and everybody knows that’s how it ought to be especially in stressful environments.

Happiness

I spend allot of time wondering what I truly believe in and what are the things in my life that make me a happy person.

As I got older and I got to understand myself a bit better I realised on of the main contributors to my happiness was the lack of energy I would direct at things that made my life complicated and frustrating.

I am no nihilist, nevertheless my experience with situations that cause me to worry or feel stressed has led me to device strategies to avoid letting these situations ruin my life.

The main idea here is that the more energy I’m going to feed into a displeasing situation the more the situation will reduce my general happiness.

Ignoring small everyday situations and not complaining about them breaks the loop in which I have found myself entangled in so many times.

I walk down the road and realise I forgot my subway pass and I’m late for work, at that moment two options open to me in how I deal with the situation:

1 I moan about it, I complain and I run back to get my pass believing this is the first of a series of events that’ll ruin my day as if I had gotten up on the wrong foot.

2 I laugh about it, I let the situation slide of me giving it no importance at all and I get my pass from my house.

Either way I'm gonna be late.

Obviously option 2 is the better choice because life is full of situations that’ll make it a hassle.

The idea is too ignore the situations that are of no importance and to concentrate with dealing with the ones that do matter at a deeper level. This approach has the advantage of giving me the necessary energy to concentrate on the important things instead of wasting it on unimportant events that I most of the time have no control over.

It is so easy to make our lives a living hell by letting small things condense into bigger and bigger issues and problems, cutting the grass under a situations foot pre-emptively allows me to go about my life in relative happiness.

We all have strategies to cope with life’s situations it would be great if we could share them here together.

I think the most important thing to remember is that many small problems lead to bad days, terrible weeks and at the end of the day a shitty life. That’s what I try to avoid.

Welcom to my blog

Hi everyone,

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