• Blog
  • Archives
  • Bio
  • Awards
  • Speaking
  • Book
  • Contact

Complaining is silly

Published: Thursday, 19 February 2009

Either act, or forget.

Talking about someone else behind their back makes no difference to them, and all the difference to you. Your friends have to put up with you, you get frustrated, and sharing with your friends only reaffirms your complaints and causes them to perpetuate. I.e., in order for you to be consistent with what you say, you will find more and more evidence (that someone is bad/wrong/evil/stupid) to back up your word and “prove” to your friends your point of view is correct. The vicious circle continues with you and your friends, while the complaint (the someone) lives happily in oblivion. They are indifferent, you continue poking and you get to “be right”.

It doesn’t seem fair, does it? They’re the complaint, and you and your friends are the ones that suffer. What’s that about?

Give it up! And clean it up! Tell your friends you’re going to stop talking about X behind their back, tell X you’ve been speaking about them behind their back, but that you’re not committed to that anymore, and just let it go!

Complaining is silly. Either act, or forget.

About Me

Marita ChengForbes named me a world's top 50 woman in tech & 30 Under 30. I founded Robogals and Aipoly and was Young Australian of the Year 2012. Currently working on robotics company Aubot. I'm the youngest Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and I give speeches around the world.

I tweet @maritacheng and I'm on Facebook.

Subscribe

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Random Articles

  • AI Most Influential Woman in Engineering 2000-2020

    This AI named me the 29th most influential woman in engineering from 2000-2020! It looked up frequency of my name being mentioned alongside an...

  • YouthActionNet Global Fellowship Day 6: Succession

      We spoke about our succession plans today.  We did a great activity:  if I were to leave Robogals on November 6, one month from now, what would I...

  • Choose Maths

    Choose Maths is an exciting 5 year, national project designed to empower and encourage Australian students (in particular girls) to pursue...

  • Sole founder or co-founders?

    I was starting up my new start-up and I was finding it hard to get my desired co-founder to commit.  So I thought back over my experiences of the...

  • Turn off the noise

    The world is so noisy!  Every day there's the breaking news through your multiple most trusted news sources; there's the buzz of your twitter and...

  • G20 Brisbane Global Cafe

    Spoke about my robotic arm at the G20 Brisbane Global Cafe.

  • The people I admire and how I use them for inspiration

    Most lists of inspiring people contain the billionaires, or world-wide success stories of people who have decoyed 20-30-40 years of service towards...

  • Pebble Beach Authors & Ideas Festival

    I was invited to speak at the Pebble Beach Authors & Ideas Festival (PBAIF) in Pebble Beach.  What a stunning part of the world!  Most other speakers...

  • Future is fuzzy

    I used to get anxious about the future.  Whether I could get a good job, where I would live, if I would have enough money to survive. But then I...

  • What's in a name?

    From August 2009 to August 2011, I was the "Founder and Director of Robogals Global".  Before that, my title was "Founder", and we hadn't created...

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Scroll to Top