complaining

I recently found myself in the company of a complainer and to my horror found that I was letting myself get sucked into it. Do you ever find yourself getting sucked in by people who like to complain but don’t really want to solve their problem? Well don’t.

Instead of joining the complaining party, use your precious time to solve your own problems or to enjoy your life as intended. Even 10 minutes given to a complainer (family, friend or colleague) is bound to sap your energy. Those are 10 precious minutes you could’ve been doing something for you and your legal nurse consulting business. Minutes you’ll never get back. Rather than waste them in a negative manner, do something fun for yourself. Take a relaxing mineral-salt bath, drink a glass of wine or go ahead – do both! You can also put those minutes into your CLNC^® business by working on a report or calling an attorney on your prospect list.

The next time you find yourself snared by a complainer, detach and interrupt the complaining. Before you give 10 precious minutes away to someone else’s soap opera, ask yourself if you’ll really be making a difference by listening or joining in. Or would those 10 minutes be better spent on you or something more positive?

For the next 30 days be a conscious observer of complainers in your life and conscientious of your own commitment to detach from them. When you do, your life and your legal nurse consulting business will soar.

Success Is Inside!

Many legal nurse consultants have either been sent off to camp as a child or, as an adult, sent your children off to camp. Today I’m thinking about starting a new camp and I’m calling it Camp Buck-Up! This camp will be for all the people out there who have to be told to “buck-up” on a regular basis. This includes more than just the people who continually forget their responsibilities (Why are the laryngoscope batteries dead?), the whiners (You want me to help you lift which patient?) and the complainers (This is the second night this week they served okra in the cafeteria and I didn’t get any.).

What’s the point of this camp? It’s to get people to do their jobs, without complaining and to act like adults while they do their jobs. I’m sure you all know a couple of candidates for Camp Buck-Up (I can think of several already) and to tell you the truth, I need the occasional visit to Camp Buck-Up myself.

At Camp Buck-Up, we’ll start the day with healthy green tea followed by PE drills such as shouldering and carrying a heavy load of responsibilities, pulling your own weight in meetings, running an obstacle course of objections when completing a project and walking a tightrope of responsibility, all without complaining. Easy activities like fire-walking are for those feel-good camps – not Camp Buck-Up. At Camp Buck-Up, everyone will spend one week without complaining about anything or anybody. It’s easier to complain, or to moan and groan than it is to put our noses to the grindstone but we’ll straighten that out. If someone is heard complaining, they’ll get a second week at Camp Buck-Up at no additional charge.

At Camp Buck-Up, there won’t be any gossip about any issues other than why there’s no gossip. There won’t be any second guessing or criticism without offering an alternative and we won’t talk about someone if they’re not there to defend themselves.

At Camp Buck-Up, we’ll learn that the best way to eat a whale is one bite at a time. We’ll learn to plan projects, set goals and timetables and stick to them. Sometimes getting started is the hardest part of a project so we’ll all practice taking that first step. Our legal nurse consulting businesses will never be the same after Camp Buck-Up.

At mealtime at Camp Buck-Up, you won’t find any processed or fast foods. We’ll learn to eat cruciferous vegetables and plenty of Omega-3s and how to make the healthy choice over the fun choice (Goodbye fried oyster po-boys, hello salmon and broccoli!). We’ll each do a tour of KP (kitchen patrol) so we can practice prepping and cooking fast, healthy meals that create leftovers we can take to work the next day.

At Camp Buck-Up, all nurses will eat meals sitting down and be forced to take a 30-minute lunch break. They’ll also be forced to give up their catheters and go to the bathroom on a regular basis. We’ll drink 8 or more glasses of water daily to help this process.

At Camp Buck-Up, everyone will be forced to have at least one good belly laugh each day and it won’t be from schadenfreude, it’ll be from the genuine pleasure of people having fun working and laughing together. Don’t ask about the thread count on the sheets, just be happy we won’t have bunk beds!

At the end of every day at Camp Buck-Up, we’ll have a sundowner of healthy red wine and thank our lucky stars we’re at Camp Buck-Up before we drink it.

At Vickie Milazzo Institute we haven’t started mandatory Camp Buck-Up yet, but I’m thinking about it. I’ve already filled the guest list for my first Camp Buck-Up with people I think need it most (and no, Tom’s not on that list). If you want to sign up for Camp Buck-Up, I’ll be happy to put you on the waiting list, just let me know! See you at Camp!

Success Is Inside!

On the way to Philadelphia to teach one of my CLNC^® Certification Programs, Tom and I went for our cross-airport trek to the Starbucks^® in Terminal E. When we got through the line, the young guy working at Starbucks looked (and sounded) like he hadn’t had his coffee yet. After repeating our order at least twice we received a semblance of our “black eyes,” a doppio expresso dumped into a vente Komodo blend. From there we stormed back to Terminal C and stopped for our standard pre-flight spicy breakfast (lunch really ‘cause we’ve been up since 4:00am) at Popeye’s Fried Chicken (nothing beats red beans and rice in the morning). The woman working the counter at Popeye’s was complaining in Spanish on her cell phone to a friend about having to be open at 6:00am and how unfair it was that she had to open the store three days a week.

When we got to our gate, three uniformed airline employees working there (including a “red coat” or supervisor) were complaining, somewhat loudly as only a group can do, about a systems problem with their airline, all within hearing distance of the customers. I was at least glad that I wasn’t overhearing a safety issue but the line of passengers waiting to board didn’t seem amused.

Even the waiter at the restaurant where we had dinner that evening got into the act, complaining about how the economy had reduced his tips (apparently his surly, complaining service had nothing to do with it).

I was trying to figure out if it was just my day to ride the complain train or if there was some other message, when it hit me. The people who had been complaining all day were doing it without regard for who was listening, or maybe they just didn’t care. Suddenly I started worrying about you and all of the Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. I worried that perhaps without thinking, you might be complaining about someone while in a public space, or even worse, using your cell phone voice and having a 72-decibel private conversation. Let’s face it, you never know who is listening to you. It could be the attorney-client you just marketed to sight unseen, it could be a supervisor or a family member of an injured party in a case you’re consulting on. The first danger is that you might harm a relationship, whether it’s with an attorney-client, with a client of the facility you work for or just a neighbor.

Negativity is damaging. Even more important, complaining by itself is counterproductive. It rarely has a purpose with an outcome in mind. The airline employees weren’t brainstorming the problem; they were just making sure each of them was as aggrieved as the other in dealing with it. What a waste of energy, not to mention brainpower. Although in my experiences most complainers don’t have much of either and can’t afford to lose the little bit they have.

I’m not advocating that we should shut our eyes to problems. We should be using our agility to recognize what’s not working and then work on getting it fixed. Someone recently told me my staff is perfect. I’m smart enough to know she’s way off base in her assessment but one reason for her positive experience is that when employees come to me with a complaint, I tell them, “Don’t criticize – strategize. Offer me an alternative, a solution or an idea I can work with.” I don’t expect the perfect solution, but I won’t indulge complaining.

Why do some people complain, even when they know better? Because complaining is easier than action, and it is much easier than personal responsibility.

There’s an apocryphal story about two dogs outside a butcher shop trying to get a pork chop from the butcher. The first dog, who’s entrepreneurial and genuinely excited about the bounty of meat in the shop, does tricks, barks and takes all sorts of action to get the attention of the butcher to earn a treat. The other dog lies on the pavement, whining and sniveling about the unfairness of all that food out of his reach and hoping that someone will take the action to feed him. Guess which dog gets the pork chop?

Twenty seven years ago I decided I would no longer stand around whining and complaining like many of my nurse colleagues about the bad state of hospital nursing. I wanted more for my career, more for me and more for my life. I decided that it was time to take action and start a legal nurse consulting business.

I stopped complaining and suddenly life’s opportunities started pouring my way. I was feeling better and stronger. People around me recognized the change. I recently severed a professional relationship with a complainer. Life is too short to be around one and a lot more fun without them. As Barbra Streisand said, please “don’t rain on my parade.”

I always say “Where you focus is where you’ll get your results.” What results are you focusing on and for what purpose? Where will you choose to put your time, energy and strengths in your legal nurse consulting business today? Choose wisely and you may change the course of your life.

Success Is Inside!