High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 725: Break the Complaint Habit with Will Bowen, Keynote Speaker and Best-Selling Author

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

In this episode of The High Performance Mindset, Dr. Cindra Kamphoff sits down with Will Bowen—founder of the global Complaint Free® movement—to explore how habitual complaining quietly erodes confidence, performance, leadership, and culture. Will shares the origin story behind the now-iconic purple bracelet and how a simple 21-day challenge became a worldwide movement impacting millions. Together, they unpack why complaining feels so automatic—even for high performers—and how awareness is the first step toward real behavior change. The conversation dives deep into the psychology of complaining, including Will's five types of complaints and his powerful GRIPE framework, revealing the hidden motives behind why people complain and the true cost it creates for teams and organizations. Will also explains the critical difference between constructive problem-solving and unproductive complaining—and how leaders can model accountability without suppressing honest feedback. This episode is a masterclass in personal ownership, confidence, and intentional response, showing how reducing complaints doesn't mean ignoring problems—it means choosing responsibility, agency, and growth.     You'll Learn: Why habitual complaining undermines confidence, mindset, and performance The five types of complaints and how to recognize them in yourself and others How the simple act of awareness (like the bracelet) accelerates behavior change The GRIPE framework and the real reasons people complain How leaders can address feedback without creating a culture of blame The difference between problem-solving and complaining—and why it matters How becoming complaint-free strengthens confidence, ownership, and agency     🔗 Episode Resources: Learn more about Will Bowen and the Complaint Free movement: www.WillBowen.com Download the 2025 Confidence Crisis Study: https://confidencestudy.com/ Request a Free Mental Breakthrough Call: https://freementalbreakthroughcall.com Learn more about the Mentally Strong Institute: https://mentallystronginstitute.com/ Love the show? Rate and review the podcast—and you might hear your name on the next episode!  

Today, I'm excited to welcome Will Bowen, the founder of the Complaint Free Movement. In 2006, Will launched a simple idea to go 21 days without complaining, using a purple bracelet as a mindfulness tool. And that idea turned into a global movement with over 15 million bracelets distributed worldwide. Amazing, Will. And Will is the author of five international bestselling books translated into more than 35 languages. His work has been featured by Oprah, Maya Angelou, The Today Show, My Brain is Exploding, Will, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal. His books have sold over 4 million copies around the world. And today, Will, helps leaders and organizations understand the hidden cost of complaining

and how to replace it with accountability, ownership, and intentional action. Will, thank you so much for joining us here on the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'll have you on. Thank you. Thanks for having me. You know, I looked up your book and I actually bought it in 2015. So I've had your book for 11 years. I remember you telling me that.

That's amazing. That is so cool. Tell us to get started. You know, back in 2006, what was happening in your life when the complete free idea was born? I was actually at that time the minister of an interdenominational church. And by that, I mean, we literally welcome all faiths, agnostics even. We, you know. And I was doing a talk on prosperity based on Edwin Gaines' book, The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity.

And in it, Edwine said that basically you're not emotionally, spiritually aligned to attract prosperity if you're putting out negativity and complaining in the world. people do. So she encouraged people to go 21 days in a row without complaining because there's that some would say mythological concept that you do something over and over for 21 days. It'll become a new habit. And so I decided to challenge the people that Sunday to do exactly that, to go 21 days in a row without complaining. But then it occurred to me, how would you know what day you're on? You're not going to make it 21 days. You had the goal. is start over, start over. And everybody in 2006 was wearing Livestrong bracelets. So it occurred to me that if you got a Livestrong bracelet, and we use purple instead of yellow, same idea, put it on

your wrist, and every time you catch yourself complaining, no, you don't snap it. You don't do violence to yourself. Everybody wants to do that. No, you switch it to the other wrist. Your goal is to go 21 days in a row without complaining. You just simply take it off, are mindful of the concept that you complained because the average person complains 15 to 30 times a day and they have no awareness they're doing it. I joke in my presentation is that complaining is like bad breath. You notice it when it comes out of somebody else's mouth, but not when it comes out of your own. And so the purpose of this is to be a mindfulness tool. And what happens is the more aware you are of complaining, the less you complained. And it, it,

literally just exploded from there. The next week, our phones were blowing up with requests for bracelets for real estate offices, car dealerships. They wanted these magic, no-complaining bracelets. And this was before smartphones. This was person-telling person. We had emails, but texting took forever. So, yeah, it just took off from there and continues to this day. I love it.

And how did it become a global movement when you really think about were there points in this journey that maybe it was getting on Oprah or the Today Show or, you know, some of those things. But what made it become a global movement in your opinion? You know, I was, I consider myself very fortunate in this. And I had a lot of luck. And luck prepares people who work. And so as I saw this doing and as our volunteers were coming in to. sit in the church basement on Saturdays. And I kept thinking, I want to let more and more and more people know about this.

And so I started sending out press releases to the Kansas City Star. And the religion editor there just, she thought it was a good idea, did an article on it. But that was it. About a month later, I reached back out to her again and said, this is continuing. I think you need to know about this. And at that point, I think we're at about 9,000 bracelets. And we were giving them away. We were just saying, send us a donation, et cetera.

And she wrote another article, which started on the front page of the Kansas City Times and then bled into like a three-quarter page article in the middle of Section A. and Kansas City Star is owned by McClatchy News Service, which is kind of like AP, et cetera, NPR. And so they uploaded it to their wire

and it was picked up by Stars and Stripes. Stars and Stripes is the military newspaper around the world. So that's where it became global. That's when we had to figure out how do we ship four of these to Thailand? You know, how do we ship them to, countries we have never. And we, at one point, we stopped counting, but we got to 106 countries.

Amazing. That's amazing. You know, when I think about Will, like, why, why has this message really hit home for people? I think for leaders and executives, you know, they don't want their people complaining and we know the impact that complaining makes. But also, I think about, you know, just the negative energy that gets spread. How do you define complaining, which I think is, is an important point to kind of start with. I do, and I'll give you the dictionary definition, right? It's a good thing. I'm a professional speaker. Definition.

And then I also want to make something very, very clear. And that is that the dictionary defines complaining as to express grief, pain, or discontent. Okay. So by its definition, a complaint must be expressed. all that stuff that goes on in your head, that's free. You get to hang on to that as long as you want. We have found, though, that the people who have completed the 21-day complaint-free challenge, which we've had thousands of people do it, takes about four to eight months,

they actually begin to think less negatively. It's amazing how your brain retools. I lost my point. Where were we heading with? Oh, how it affects leaders. No, but and the definition of complaining. So it must be expressed. Grief, pain, or discontent.

The thing is, there is also what is called a request for accountability. Okay. A request for accountability is speaking directly and only to the person who can resolve your issue. And this is one of the things I help leaders understand. Your job is to be a lightning rod for requests for accountability. Request for accountability is you didn't meet my expectations in this area. If, and it happens because we have countries that we've never heard of where we're shipping complaint-free bracelets, if people don't get their bracelets and then reach out to us saying, hey, I didn't get my bracelet,

no matter how they phrase it, that's not a complaint. It's a request for accountability. Okay. Now, in addition to a request for accountability, people also complain to get their social needs met. And you had brought up an interesting question before we got online, and that was the difference between venting and everything like that. Would you share that and let me address that?

Because I already, it ties in real well here. Yeah, I was telling Will that last night, as I was laying in bed, my husband and I were actually talking about this, and we were talking about something that happened during the day, and I thought, I don't know, is that a complaint? And then I was talking to him about how sometimes I need to stay. to vent. Like one of the things, I'm a verbal processor. And so when I'm frustrated about something, if I just say, hey, if it's to him or it's to my sister, if I say, listen to what happened a day,

you know, I'm trying to figure it out. And it might be a complaint. It might seem like a complaint. You know, but I'm figuring it out, you know, by just talking to somebody. So I'm curious, like, when is it just venting to feel better? And when is it a complaint? I also think, like, myself as the coach, I hear maybe a lot of complaints throughout the day, you know, obviously trying to help people work through those complaints and figure out what they want to do with them. Mm-hmm. Yes.

Human beings are social creatures, which is what leads to all of our complaints. And we'll get into the five reasons people complain in just a minute. But the aspect is that we do need to share what is going on in our lives with someone. We all have what is called a primary attachment figure. Okay. When we're young, it's always, and when I say this to the crowd, the whole crowd goes, mom. And then I go, yes, we'd like to say it's dad, but it's not. In almost every case, it's mom.

If there's a mom, we attach to mom. As we get older, we may attach more to dad. Then we can attach to our friends. We can attach to boyfriends, girlfriends, girlfriends, ultimately spouse, et cetera. and that person we want to share everything with. Eckhart Tolley defines complaining is basically having negative energy attached to it. How dare this happen to me.

Stating the facts, he says, which are always neutral, fine. You and I both travel a lot doing what we do. We have travel stories. I'm single. My daughter is, my primary attachment figure. So at the end of it, she'll say, how was your trip? Now, I can say, who, who, and which makes me the victim of the story. Or I can explain, well, this was delayed,

so I did this, and then this happened, and that happened, and everything like that. So we all have what selling coaches teach is called telling tension. We have that need. Now, I, I, I, And I'll also help you with another thing, and that is that the difference between venting, by the way, is complaining. Venting is this happened to me and I'm ticked off. And you know how you can tell the difference? Because I'm going to vent to you and then I'm going to go vent to her and then I'm going to go vent to heat. And I go into my book in great detail. They've done studies to prove that that does not lower your upset.

It raises it. and it also gets other people involved. Now, what you're describing that you do with your husband in which I do, probably because we're speakers, is, and coaches, is we speak out loud to process things. There's a big difference between venting and processing. Venting is, I'm the victim, agree with me about this. Okay? processing is this is the experience that's going on.

What's your idea is the best way for me to handle it? I'm thinking this. You think this will work? That is processing. And again, that is never done with any shaming, blaming of yourself or anyone else. It's working the problem, as they say in the military. I love that distinction, because also when I hear you, I think about venting where there's a lot of like maybe emotion behind that, typically more disempowering emotions, the blaming, the frustration.

Whereas if I'm, if I am processing, I might even say up front, there's something that happened today. I'd like to talk it through with you to figure out how to move forward, right? That's more problem solving to me than complaining. That's exactly what that is. And again, people complain, and we're going to, I love getting into, to get their social needs met. We are social animals, so we complain to be distinguished or vent to be distinguished from processing to maintain or elevate our social status. Whereas processing is asking another person, because we all have what's called the Jihari window. There's part of us that we see, part of us that others see, part of us that others see, part of

of us that, you know, nobody sees, but that part of us that we don't see, it's like sometimes when I'm having to address a situation, my daughter would say, eh, you might want to leave that sentence out. You know what I mean? So we all need that kind of person in our life. And we want to rely on those kinds of people. And just like, if someone's talking to their coach, they're not complaining because you are the person who can resolve their issues.

in their mind, they're paying you to do that. So if you're speaking directly and only to the person who can resolve your issue, it is not complaining. Now, I do say it can sound like complaining. I mean, you can get 60-year-old men who, when they're upset, they sound like this, or they get angry. And it's because when they were kids, they discovered if I get, if I, uh, or get angry, mom or dad will let me do what they're saying, I shouldn't do. And they go through life thinking

that's how they have to be. Not realizing as an adult, you just have to ask. Thank you so much for that distinction. That really helps me, just as I think about my own life. And I'm curious, Will, I know you talk about this in your book, but tell us a bit about the impact of complaining. from, you know, a workplace standpoint, maybe related to our own success, even our families. Complaining costs money. Let me just flat out start with that. If you are a leader and if you have people around you, oh, and by the way, and when we get into this, you'll understand it more. I'm not about shut up and suck up whatever the world sends your way. I'm about healthy communication. I'm about speaking directly and only to the person who can result.

your issue. But if you have got a lot of complaining within your organization, you are going to have higher turnover. You are going to have higher absenteeism. Your morale is going to be in the floor. And your customers and everyone else are going to sense this. It literally drains money from organizations. And the latest thing I saw was to replace someone in this country in an average role is around $30,000 in replacement costs. That's marketing to find that person, interviewing them. So one of my big reasons to say, let me work with you is that I can help you retain valuable employees. The second thing is that complaining is a competitive sport. Um, um, A lot of people don't realize this, but you never under-complain someone.

You always out-complain this someone. And that's why long before COVID, I said complaining is a pandemic. It spreads from person to person, killing an environment from within. Because if someone starts to complain about something going on at work, someone else will typically begin with, oh, yeah? And it's higher. It's never lower. You know? The boss made me work 18 hours last Thursday. Oh, yeah. Well, the boss gave me last Friday off. What is wrong with you? Don't you know how complaining works? You've got to out-complain me. You can't under-complain me. So it spreads. It also really destroys relationships. One of the most interesting, and my books are full of these, these types of studies, but one of the more interesting ones, because I think it's universal, even at work, was they studied a group of high school girls at the cafeteria, and they found a group of girls that got together every day, sat together, and complained. And all they did

was complain about school, about the parents, about, you name it, right? And one day, the girl that was the ringleader was absent from school. What do you think the other girls complained about? Her and how negative she is. So even complainers don't like complainers. Complainers attract people, but at a very basic level, they also repel people.

And the mind-blowing thing to me is people come home from work and they complain to their spouse, about everything that happened at work. Then they go to work and complain about their spouse and their kids and that they can't understand why things don't get better, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

So I also, go ahead, Lou. Well, I was going to say, what I appreciate about your strategy is to have the bracelet, as I'm watching you, I'm watching your bracelet and then moving it when you do complain. So it allows you to be aware of it, you know, and I think most of the time we are necessarily even aware of our habits and what we do and that we are complaining. And that's what I appreciate because you're moving it to help you become aware and then make a choice based on your movement of that bracelet. Yes. And not only is it makes you mindful of it, which is very important, but we human beings have a negativity bias. And we need to accept that and we need to realize that that is there for our own survival and evolution. It is safer to say no to certain people than it is to say yes.

It is safer to say no to a certain mushroom and to eat it. And so we are better at saying no. But the thing is, and we won't go too far down this rabbit hole. But the media then has learned to engage us, I call it in red, rage and engage, and that's one of the main reasons people complain, is it's the reason we don't, when we're driving down the road and we see a row of beautiful flowers, we don't slow down as much as if we see a wreck. You know what in here?

Yeah, sure. They have a negativity bias. And the complaining accelerates that, and it causes infighting. and there's just there's so many different things that complaining does turn over it just also it perpetuates the problem that's the thing you're not talking about solutions you're talking about problems and i'm actually working on a book and i don't want to talk too much about it but it has to do with leadership and it's basically stating and showing how when things get really bad in the corporate world. Successful people don't go, ain't it awful, ain't it awful, ain't it awful,

you know, as my mom used to say, when in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout, you know, they sit down and they go, okay, this is what I have, what can I do with it? And they always come back. Yeah, they always come back. Hi, this is Cinder Campoff, and thanks for listening to the high performance mindset. Did you know that the ideas we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing? If you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively and get to your goals quicker. Visit free mental breakthrough call.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches.

Again, that's free mental breakthrough call.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon. One of the things I wanted to ask you was, and you just mentioned this, you've identified five types of complaints. Can you walk us through those and why it's important for us to distinguish between those five types? Yeah, it's really important because here's the thing.

If you look at it, first of all, if you begin as a leader to contextualize a lot of what's coming to you as poorly delivered requests for accountability, it takes away a lot of that, all I ever do is listen to complaints. And if you can remember to do that old thing of, I'm happy to hear anything you have to say,

what is your recommended solution? Add that to anything anyone comes and says to you. I'm happy to hear any problem you have what, and I also want to hear what your recommended solution is. Okay. So once you then are left with real complaints, and you put them under the umbrella of getting people's social needs met, then you can subdivide them in your mind,

and this sounds far more complex than it is. You're just going to, you're going to check your phone, you're going to look at your email, and you're going to say, oh, I know what that's about, and I'll also give you responses. So let me tell you what they are. The acronym is gripe, G-R-I-P-E. A, awesome.

And the first reason that people complains, is to get attention. Nice. Notice me. Talk to me. We are social creatures, but we are awkward social creatures. I'm one of those people that's great on stage, but awkward socially. So I was a person who complained all the time just to get attention. Every conversation I would start to be, have you heard? Can you believe it, here they go again. But what that does is it connects me in you. So we're then able to get. You've given me attention. And it works. So it's self-fulfilling and repeating. With people like that, you first have to identify them. Who is a person that just comes up to you and tells you the

worst news, trying to just stand out, get attention. And then what you want to do is have a very simple something to say. Some version of what's going well, and you need to start the conversation. Okay. What are you grateful about today? What are you happy about today? What's the best meal you've eaten? You know, we were just having a conversation.

What's the best meal you've eaten all week? you know we were just talking about that new Frankenstein movie on Netflix. What's the best movie you've seen? The goal is to get them to tell them the best, something like that. My grandfather had a man who worked

in his hardware store that everyone loved and his name was Willie and I used to follow him around as a kid. I'm not named for him but he would always greet people instead of saying, were you working on how can I help you?

Willie said, what's the good word? What's the good word? What's the good word, my friend? Nice. It's just so easy. If you can identify somebody who's a potential, just get attention, what's the good word? What are you grateful for?

So that's get attention. The R&Gryt stands for Remove Responsibility. Okay. This is before someone has even attention. tempted a task, but they want to lower your expectations as to their deliverability on this task. But you're the leader. So they don't want to look at you and say, I'm not going to do this. Or I'm going to do it, but I'm going to phone it in. So they begin to complain about the circumstances, you know? You ask your assistant for a compiled report of next quarter of the next quarter of

sales projections and fulfillment, and they say, this one, this is an easy one to spot. They'll usually say something like, you know, I would love to do that, but. But, I'd love to do that. There's the word but. But, which is an erasure word, right? So I would love to do that, but, you know, first I would have to go and talk to accounting. And, you know, half the people in accounting are on vacation down in Florida this year. but if I am able to get the numbers,

then I got to bounce that off marketing. And you know what the people in marketing are like. And they're probably going to send me to advertising, who will send me back to marketing? So I know you want this Friday, but I'll have it for you next Tuesday afternoon. And then you say yes and find out they just really want to leave work early.

You know what I mean? So they're complaining to remove themselves from responsibility. What we do is, leaders is we tend to address the issues that they bring up. We're helpful of how we got to be leaders. So we say, well, if that happens, try this, or this happens, try that. But they'll keep adding. So instead, we want to say, if it were possible, how might you do it? Okay, got it. if it were possible, how might you do it? And you just, I do this, I have a staff of five.

And now they'll roll their eyes and go, I know if it were possible, how might I do it? Because the key word in there is you. How might who do it? You. How might you do it? I'm not going to take this back over. You have this job to fulfill certain roles.

Happy to help you, happy to guide you, but how might you do it? So that's the R. We're up to inspire envy. I feel like I'm doing all the talking. We good? Do you have anything you want to ask me or should I just plow on? Well, keep going. But what I appreciate and what I want to point out to people is that you're giving them what to do instead, right? Or as a result. So when you're hearing like, I want attention, you're saying, like, what are you grateful for and start with that? Or if they're not, you know, they're removing a responsibility, you're saying, if it were possible, how might you do it? Right. So they're, so I'm hearing some strategies that. to combat these five reasons. And I just want to point that out so that people are listening to like, okay, here's what I can do when I interact with somebody who might be using one of these reasons for complaining. Cool. Good.

And you know, it's funny. I'll tell you now, I did a speech for, I don't know, four or five hundred customer service people. And when I finished, one came to me and I came up and I said, what did you think? And he went, duh. He's like, if you're in customer service, you need to know this. And we and certainly. Anyway, it was great.

So the eye and gripe is inspire envy. Now, that's another way of saying brag, but brag didn't fit my gripe acronym. But it just means to brag, okay? People will complain. Here's what it means. When one person goes and complains to someone else about the boss, you know what they're actually saying?

if I was in charge around here, things wouldn't be like this. Things would be better. People complain to brag. And it works. They will also do what's called an invidious comparison. Let me give you an example. Let's say you schedule a meeting for 8 o'clock in the morning

and everybody's there, except one person. And let's say his name is... Her name is Julie and somebody's there and his name is Tom. And Tom goes, well, we could start this meeting, but Julie's late, as always. You know, it goes, ha, ha, ha, right? Tom's not telling you Julie's late. Tom's bragging that he's early.

He's bragging that he's on time. This happens a lot. And these types of people who complain to brag continue to do it until you should. them the appreciation that they want. So no intention of shaming, Tom, you just in front of everybody and say, thanks for letting me know Tom and you know what I appreciate about you. You're always on time. So the response to this one is almost always some variation of, you know what I appreciate

about you and then take whatever they complain about. I call it compliment the opposite. Okay. Complement the opposite. at the opposite. So that's our I am gripe, which is brag, inspire envy. The P is power. Human beings are social creatures run by power. We get other people on our side by upsetting them, not by encouraging them. That's why bad news sells. People build silos at work. They love to get people on their side and you will often get one person who has decided that they're against

this person. I've worked. I'm sure you have. I've been in corporate America for many, many years. And it's like my boss hates the head of this department, which makes it hard for me to work. Yeah, true. Right? This is all a power struggle, which they don't even see. So what a leader needs to do is if someone comes to them complaining to absorb some of that leader's power, because that's what they want, I'm coming to you now about Amelia over here in advertising, so you're going to be on my side, right? You simply need to treat the person like an adult and say, it sounds to me like the two of you have a lot to talk about. That's it. Now, if it's a legal issue, corporate functionality, values, you know what I'm talking about, okay?

Sure. Anything like that. Immediately and legally you address it. But if it's just a prima donna or two trying to build an alliance, encourage them to get in the same room. And if they don't put them in the room together with you and you let them talk. and it lets people know that siloing is not going to work in our community. So that's power. And then the E is really easy to remember.

It's excuse poor performance. It's the longest one. It's three words. Excuse poor performance. But the E is the past tense of the R. In remove responsibility, they haven't even tried, but they're already telling you, it's not going to go well. Don't be excited.

But with the excuse poor performance, I tried, I didn't do a good job. But it's not my fault. It's their fault. It's that person's fault. It's the Mars is in retrograde. It's whatever, right? Now, if we start pinning people down, why didn't you think about this? What did you plan for this?

Studies have found that people are less likely to want to do a better job in the future. So the better question is, how do you? you plan to improve next time? Okay. I like the next time. Yes, because no one's defensive about next time. You can literally take every issue that they did not do. Okay, you forgot to include the numbers from sales in this report you got me. How do you plan to improve next time? You neglected to do this. How do you plan to improve next time? Because you can't change. this time and then people are not defensive about next time and they're more likely to make a commitment. Well, next time I will do such and such and you now have a commitment so they don't have

a back door not to do not so good of a job in the future. So there are the reasons. Get attention, remove responsibility, inspire envy, power, and excuse poor performance. What I appreciate about those will is that you told us like what to do as a result. And I was thinking as I was listening, about leaders who are listening right now or athletic coaches who want to make sure their culture doesn't have complaining in it or at least reducing the culture of complaining. I like, you know, what you gave us to do when we're noticing this complaining, but what do you think leaders and coaches and parents can do to be proactive about complaining to make sure that it just doesn't become part of the culture? I'll give you two quick stories, and they're both

going to sound self-serving. When this really took off, not long after I was on the Oprah Winfrey show, I got a letter, real letter, handwritten from a 17-year-old girl in Iowa. I was living in Kansas City. She was on the flag team for her local football team, and she had gotten complaint-free bracelets, and they had decided to challenge one another. accountability partners. And because you're going to drop flags, you're going to step wrong, you're going to do this,

you're going to do right. And what they said was they're never going to complain to each other on the field, and they're never going to complain about each other on the field, off the field. This was their decision. They won the state finals for flag competition, and they had never even gone to state. So that was our story. The second one was a hair, it's a. is a hair salon in Houston, Texas.

Guy had six employees, was sick and tired of sitting in the customer service of the employee lounge, listening to the stylist complain about the people who are paying their salary, the customers. So he painted his break room purple, got books, copies of my book, dice lids for everybody. And he said,

anyone who goes 21 days in a row without complaining, I will give you a week's pay. Wow. His three top stylists walked out on him, said he was bare in his head and the scene. He now has two salons, 19 stylists. He and his son traveled the world full time. And I have just seen that time and time again. General Electric took on my complaint free challenge and actually used it in one of their departments

and said there were measurable increases. in morale, et cetera. So some sort of monitoring of complaints, but making it safe, because that's the other thing. With my program, I always, when anybody takes my challenge and you don't need to get my bracelets, just, you know, get rubber bands or something. But, you know, there's no shame in day one, we always say. Because if your goal is to go 21, days, it goes day one, day one, day one, day one, day one, day one, for months.

Then you get to day two, and then you're back on day one. So you've got to have some sort of a gentle process and celebrate positivity. That's one of my big goals is to help people understand what positive thinking is. Positive thinking is not being a bliss many. It's not everything works out perfect all the time. That's not positive. That's stupid. It's not true.

Positive is every day something is going to go wrong, but every day something's going to go right. What can we do with what we got to maximize what's going right? That's the best thing we can do. You know, what I most appreciate what you just said there is like to not to shame people for complaining to make it safe. And I think that's important when you think about workplace culture, right? and this idea that you're going to have to restart and that's okay. It's going to take you longer than 21 days, likely to take the 21 day challenge. So, Will, where can be?

Can I jump in real quick? Just throw on the whole thing people might want to do. I've actually had people do this and they love it, but it takes a little bit of guts to do it. Put a sign in your office. It says this is a complaint-free zone. That's all you have to do. Don't explain it. and we have one on my website that you can get.

Anyway, but you can just put your own up there. And that in and of itself will cause people, put it where they can see it, not you. And what they will do is begin to contextualize things in more possibility language, etc. And I actually had one person say, wait a minute, stop, hold on just a minute. Can you come with me? And the person followed them out of the office and he said, okay, go ahead. and the person said what? And he goes, I'm sorry. My office is a complaint-free zone, but you're welcome to complain. We just need to stand out here. And he said, that person never complained again.

I could imagine. Well, Will, what great information that you gave to us today. Congratulations on just like this incredible movement that you've created. Where can people find a complaint-free world, stop complaining, start living? Tell us where you can find the books. Tell us about your speaking. and where we can find more information about getting your purple bracelets. The easiest place is go to Acomplaintfreeworld.org. Remember the letter A in front of A complaintfreeworld.org. We do own the dot com.com.net, but that's the direct because we've had it forever. A complaint freeworld.org.

And if you're interested in learning about me at the top as a speaker, it says speaking. And that will take you to my will bowen.com, which has hundreds of video reviews. from every industry and lots of speeches you can check out. I did appreciate that about your website. I can actually watch your whole speech, so that was pretty cool. Cool. Thank you. Will, this is what I wrote down today is that the average person complains 15 to 30 times a day.

So that's why you've got to take Will's 21-day challenge. I appreciated what we talked about today is like what complaining actually is. And when we're focused more on telling the facts or processing with this idea of coming to a solution for ourselves, that's not the same as complaining. We talked about complaining costs, the five types of complaining with your great acronym. And then we talked about, you know, what to do instead. Thank you so much for being on the high performance mindset. I love talking to you. I love getting to know you more and spending some time in Phoenix with you at the CSP summit with a national.

Speakers Association. So thank you so much for gifting us today with your wisdom and your knowledge. And I know you made an impact today. So thank you so much. My pleasure. And right back at you. You're a high-performing person yourself. When I heard your story and what you do and what you offer, I was really impressed. So I look forward to continuing our friendship. And if anybody out there anything I can do for you, please let me know. Way to go for finishing another episode of the high-performance mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe, and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes, and enjoy my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset

each week. So again, you can add over to Dr. Cyndra. That's d R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.