Bitching.
Five inspiring human lives teach us their secrets to success through non-bitching.
Want to be successful? Cring shows us how simple it is to follow their example.
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TRANSCRIPT
Let me see, now:
“The Seven Habits of Successful People”
“Five Steps to Getting Your Million”
“Nine Ways to Discover Your True Self”
And even:
“Ten Commandments”
Self-help authors who feel the need to help themselves to your money because they play off your insecurities, your frustrations and even your greed.
Is there such a thing as self-help?
Is there any way that we could transform the pile of protoplasm that we are into a practical propellant of purpose?
And here’s an even better question: would it be possible to do it without alliteration?
Today I’m going to offer you a title to the best, the biggest, and most bountiful book that could be written on the subject. We shall title it:
They Never Bitched
I came up with this by going through my emails and coming across an article someone forwarded to me, listing the ten greatest men of all time. I don’t know how they derived this compilation and I would certainly understand women not being included in the tally. But this was an all-male representation.
I’m not going to deal with all ten, but I will grab five, and I am selecting these five gentlemen to explain how simple success truly is. Here they are:
Jesus
Abraham Lincoln
Franklin Roosevelt
Mahatma Gandhi
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
No matter your political persuasion, you would have to admire the footprint these five men left behind through their lives.
You can study them back and forth, in and out, and you will find very little culturally, intellectually, spiritually, emotionally or mentally that they all share in common.
Jesus was a carpenter turned itinerant preacher.
Abraham Lincoln was a backwoods lawyer who never really even visited Washington, D.C. until he was inaugurated as President.
Franklin Roosevelt was a politician of great promise until he was crippled by polio, which placed him in a wheelchair, which might have ruined the career of most men, but not him.
Mahatma Gandhi was born into a country involved in a religious war and under the rule and reign of Great Britain.
And Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. carried the color black in his skin during a time when people of his ilk were being lynched on a regular basis.
But what did they all share in common? They never bitched.
I suppose “never” may be a strong word. They might have had a bad day, but the accumulation of their years tells us that they refused to participate in bitching.
Now, you can immediately tell if you’re a bitcher if you object to me using that word instead of “complain.” And if you don’t consider yourself a complainer but instead would put forth the idea that you’re “concerned,” then you are in further deep denial of the problem.
Human beings bitch. It’s not the same as complaining. That word leads us to believe that at some point when the discomfort is removed, that the objection will depart.
And being concerned usually connotes that you’re trying to find a place to jump in and contribute instead of standing on the sidelines waiting for the game to be lost.
No—we bitch. And I say it again, “Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch.” And even though it’s a word that should never be associated with the feminine gender, it must be tagged on to those who have lost all perspective of understanding life on Planet Earth and have promoted themselves to the position of Judges instead of Participants.
But here’s the trick:
Just to merely say these gentlemen never bitched doesn’t help you unless you understand what they did not bitch about, which they might have decided to do if they chose to continue lives that were mediocre.
The first thing they never bitched about was:
THEY NEVER BITCHED ABOUT WHERE THEY WERE
Jesus was in a carpenter’s shop.
Abraham Lincoln was stuck in a small law office in Illinois.
Franklin Roosevelt was crippled and on wheels.
Gandhi was a ward in a commonwealth owned by the British Empire.
And Dr. King was the pastor of a black church in the middle of the segregated South.
None of them bitched about where they were. If you can’t stop bitching about where you are, you can’t possibly find the means and transportation to get you to the next place.
Jesus left the carpenter’s shop and hooked up with his cousin John the Baptist, started his own work, and the rest is salvation history.
Lincoln, even though he lost a job in Congress, immediately ran for President and saved the Union.
Roosevelt shifted his ass in his chair, wheeled himself around and helped save America from poverty and World War II.
Gandhi sat on the shoreline making salt out of saltwater because the tax was so severe. It was his way of starting a revolution.
And Dr. King got a whole bunch of people to boycott a bus line because they wanted everything that wasn’t white to go to the back.
You will never succeed if you bitch about where you are. Because where you are is the only place that is possible for you to begin to grow.
The second thing they never bitched about was:
THEY NEVER BITCHED ABOUT WHO THEY WERE WITH
Jesus was surrounded by doubting, denying and even betraying disciples.
Abraham Lincoln had a Cabinet that thought he was crazy and stupid.
Roosevelt was told he was going to bankrupt the nation and that Hitler was impossible to defeat.
Gandhi was certainly told that the British Empire was much too strong to overcome.
And of course, Dr. King was surrounded by those who wanted him to calm down and compromise.
Life will send you people to help, as long as you don’t bitch too much about the ones who won’t. It’s really that simple. But why should life send you good people if you haven’t learned to handle the bad ones?
When Adam fell he blamed Eve. He bitched.
Whenever you hear someone blame something or someone else, you know you’re talking to a failure or to one who is well on his way to getting’ there.
There is no one in the world who can stop you from where you want to go if you’ll just stop your bitching.
You will always outlast the critics—especially if you stop listening to the criticism.
They never bitched about where they were. That’s the first thing. And about who they were with. God just doesn’t like it when you tell Him that one of His children just ain’t good enough for you.
Because He just got done stickin’ up for you because someone was bitchin’ about you to Him.
So, here’s the third one:
THEY NEVER BITCHED ABOUT TOMORROW
An inordinate number of human beings worry about a day in the future which they are not even promised.
Some people plan fifteen to twenty years in advance. The American culture wants you to plan your retirement starting at age twenty. Yes, worry about it!
Jesus said, “Take no thought for tomorrow.”
Abraham Lincoln couldn’t think about tomorrow because he was dealing with too many lost battles today, and if he thought about tomorrow he’d have given up on the Union and the war would have been lost.
What if Franklin Roosevelt had decided that he didn’t have many tomorrows left with his broken-up legs, and had said “Phooey” to the country instead of taking on the problems of today?
Gandhi knew there was no tomorrow for India unless he challenged Britain today and kept the Muslims and the Hindus from killing each other.
Dr. King—well, he had a dream, you remember. And he wasn’t bitching about tomorrow. He was optimistically describing a day when we would no longer judge by the color of skin, but by the content of character.
TWO WAYS TO BE SUCCESSFUL
There are two ways to be successful in this world and you need to learn both:
First, don’t bitch. Don’t bitch about where you are, don’t bitch about who you’re with, and don’t bitch about tomorrow.
Secondly, don’t hang around people who do. America will make progress when all of us stop bitching. Until then, we will be the land of the spoiled and the home of the complaint.
So, here’s the good news: If you stop bitching, life will start taking you seriously as a victor instead of a victim.
And the better news is, non-bitchers who are victors will receive the spoils.
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