My gratitude backstory guest-post, complaining vs negativity and Piglet

Yesterday I had the extreme privilege of being a guest poster (for the 2nd time!) on Elisabeth’s amazing blog!!!

As many of you know, Elisabeth has been running a F.I.G. Challenge this month (F.I.G.= Finding Joy in Gratitude), where people all over the blogosphere are collecting “figs”, or little moments of joy, happiness, or gratitude every day. Many fellow bloggers have been doing lovely FIG posts, outlining their happy things/ gratitude entries each week.

As part of this series, Elisabeth asked me to guest post because I obviously have a special interest in the topic of gratitude (if you’re new here, hi, welcome- you’re reading Grateful Kae. 😉)

I decided to focus on her interview question asking about WHY I started a blog called Grateful Kae. In other words, what’s the deal? Why did I start a gratitude-themed blog?

You can pop over to Elisabeth’s blog to read the whole post, but I want to touch on one point here. In the post, I explain (in a lot more words) that the main “why” was that I discovered that I had developed a very bad habit of chronically complaining. In an effort to flip that habit on its head, I started studying up on gratitude practices, positive thinking, etc. The blog was originally sort of an extension of that, in part- a place to explore this gratitude/ intentional living journey more deeply.

(*The second part was to have a place to geek out with like-minded people on my other favorite topics like time management, planning, routines, etc… and the third part was to have a fun writing outlet to document my day-to-day life and our family travels!)

Negativity vs. Complaining?

Anyway, in the comments on Elisabeth’s blog a few people noted things like, “I have always thought that Kae was just a happy-go-lucky person!” or “I thought Kae just seemed to be always grateful!”

I want to maybe clarify something here, that perhaps I didn’t get quite right in the post: They’re not wrong. I don’t actually think that I was a super negative person even before all this started. I jokingly compared myself to Eeyore, but that’s probably a bad comparison. (Full disclosure- I don’t know the Winnie the Pooh personalities well enough!)

I have never been a sullen, or sarcastic, or cynical, or gloomy, or critical, or bitter, or even chronically crabby person. I’ve never had a sad or depressed, Eeyore-like personality. I think people would mostly describe me as friendly and good-natured, with a good sense of humor (and a little sharper “edge” that comes out occasionally…).

But what I describe in the post, this complaining habit, is a side of me most regular people (i.e. all of you) would never see. Also, my tendency to worry way too much also typically gets kept pretty tightly under wraps. The only people who could easily (and quickly, lol) name these two traits would probably be my mom, my dad, my sister and Ivan.

Obviously these are the people in my utmost INNER circle. So, lucky for them, they get a courtside view to my true personality. Hahaha. 😁

I think most outside people I might complain to wouldn’t even really notice, because a lot of my external complaining was sort of “social complaining”, if that makes sense? Like the sort of collective complaining we all tend to do together (about the weather, how busy we are, how tired we are, etc.). My negative response to a gym employee about the snow wouldn’t really be a blip on their radar, unfortunately…probably would just be one of a million similar complaints they’d hear in a day.

But in the privacy of my own home, and with my personal complaint-punching bag (aka Ivan.. haha), I do think it was getting out of hand. It was becoming a default mode which was souring my life instead of lifting it up, and that is what I wanted to work on. Hence this whole gratitude journey thing.

So even though I still think I am a generally happy-go-lucky, overall positive person and am not a “negative person”, I guess what I’m saying is that we still all have our trouble spots. (For me, complaining about dumb stuff and worrying too much.)

If you’re just sort of confused now what I’m exactly talking about, go and read my post on Elisabeth’s blog. 😉

Oh, and in the comments someone left a link to a quiz to find out which Winnie the Pooh character you are! Turns out I am PIGLET!! Who knew.

(I just googled Piglet because I don’t exactly know what traits Piglet even has. Has been forever since I’ve read/seen anything Winnie the Pooh. Apparently anxiety?!?! lol! 😂)

And here’s another screenshot (from psychologyjunkie.com):

Huh! Actually…. really accurate!

Also, I love that quote in the middle there:

“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?” “Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought. 💗

Do you know what I mean between the difference between someone who complains vs being a negative person? Did you take the quiz? Which Winnie the Pooh character are you?

Daily Gratitude: I am grateful for RAIN in the forecast today. We’re having mild temps in the 40s this week and a “warmer”, rainy day sounds very cozy and spring-like to me and I’m in the mood for one.