I am reported to have said such a phrase at one of my leadership team meetings years ago, and I was reminded of it years later as a positive push-back phrase. At first it startled me, wondering if I had really allowed myself to say it, but then I realised that I still believe it today.
We whine because we are human. And that’s okay. You have to let the air out. But the question is – do we get stuck in, or do we take back our power and our strength (in corporate-speak, ‘responsibility’)?
Whining is energy – it either keeps on spinning endlessly or we channel it into creating something. As a leader, a colleague or working with ourselves, it’s important to make the distinction between just venting and being ready to take action? If venting goes on for too long, it becomes a default state, part of the organisational culture, a debilitating passivity and an energy drain.
Emotions are very ok and very natural and we can’t choose them, but we can always choose the reaction.
“So, very nice! We’re all fucked now. Shall we get to work?”
It’s not just a reminder that action leads to progress – it’s also an invitation to self-awareness. Am I whining because I’m tired? Under stress? Feeling unheard? Or is it just a habit?
If we dare to look inside ourselves at what is really going on, we may find that what appears to be a problem is actually pointing in a direction.
So let’s – let’s fuck off. Let the emotion be, let it be. And then decide – do we stay there or move on? The real work always starts after the whining.
And by work, I don’t mean going to work as usual, but work as a task of the soul, or ‘self-development’ if that exhausted word is more appropriate.
