Now let’s consider the impact of not just a few moments or days in which complaints cause your chemicals and attitudes to work against you, but all of the moments and days added together.

Even one minute of complaining can play havoc with our minds. And if an individual who has not yet learned that complaining – or not complaining – is a choice, spent no more than fifteen minutes a day causing himself or herself to complain or be upset about normal difficulties of the day, those few minutes of self-imposed aggravation would add up to more than 5,000 irreplaceable minutes of powerfully negative self programs in just one year.

 And it is not only those thousands of minutes of complaint or negative feelings that affect us. Those simple moments of complaint create hours of supporting attitudes which are just as negative. Many times after the complaint itself is long gone, and perhaps even forgotten, the feeling lingers on – it affects everything else about us.

That is why when one small thing goes wrong, everything can go wrong. We have adjusted our attitude to respond in a negative way – not just to the problem that created the attitude in the first place, but to whatever else happens next.