At work in her real-estate office, Rachel Van Schooneveld periodically fiddles with her homemade “no complaints” bracelet.
No surprise if her wrist looks more chafed these days, what with record foreclosures and plummeting home prices. When she hears herself complaining, she has to switch the purple bracelet from one wrist to the other. If co-workers complain, Van Schooneveld merely toys with the bracelet and tries hard not to join the pity party.
Van Schooneveld made her own bracelet as part of a no-complaints movement that is burgeoning worldwide, despite an abundance of complaint stimuli.
From Cherry Creek to Taiwan, millions of people are buying or making the wristbands to counter pessimism of the economic or more generalized kind.
“Your words create your reality. If you say you can’t sell a home in this market, you’re not going to,” Van Schooneveld said.
“But if you say, ‘I’m going to be productive in this economy,’ you draw that to you. It is a bit infectious, just like the negativity is,” she said.
Kansas City, Mo., pastor Will Bowen pushed a long-standing behavioral concept into the mainstream two years ago with his book and wristband kit, “A Complaint Free World.”
The idea is to wrap your wrist and then switch arms every time you complain. Twenty-one days without switching is supposedly long enough to instill a new attitude.
Bowen says his nonprofit has sold 6 million of the bands around the world. Others, like Van Schooneveld, made their own style and turned it into a local fundraiser or a personal quest.
“Confidence is just attitude”
Denver engineer and home inspector Stephen McSpadden believes that months of wearing the purple have largely cured him of external complaints. Occasionally, though, he’ll hear negative news on the radio or see it in the papers, and an internal dialogue of indignation will power up.
“I don’t always flip the bracelet, but I’ll reach down occasionally and snap myself,” he said with a laugh.
When he hears stories about 8 percent unemployment, he prefers to think about 92 percent employment.
The economy “isn’t a monster out there; you can’t look in its cage,” Mc- Spadden said. “The economy is us. We are the economy. It runs on confidence, and your confidence is just your attitude.”
Skeptics often ask Bowen how anything will ever get fixed, from a flat tire to a sinking economy, if people don’t complain. His response lately is that a month ago in Denver, he stayed in “one of your finest hotels.” From across the street, a rooftop heating unit roared relentlessly into his window.
Before the wristbands, Bowen said, he would have stayed in his room, called his wife and complained to her. Instead, he went to the front desk. He didn’t go on about how luxury hotels weren’t supposed to be like this. He politely asked for another room.
“That’s informing them of something that could be made right. That’s a fact; that’s not a complaint,” Bowen said. “One reason people complain is to remove themselves from responsibility: They are the town crier, and now they’re done; they don’t have to take an active role in fixing the problem.”
Complaint-free evangelism
Christine Zeiler of Denver bought a whole set of the bracelets a year ago to pass out at Sunday school. Instead, she was leading a Bible study for adults and was tired of hearing members’ prayers degrade into complaints.
She ran out to her car, got the bracelets and passed them out. Before the study let out, “70 percent of us had already switched over our bracelets at least once,” she said.
“I would be talking on the phone with someone, and I’d start to complain, and the person didn’t know it, but I’d have to switch my bracelet over,” she said.
Not everyone at her Keller Wil liams real-estate office wanted to stick with the sunny side of life, Van Schooneveld said. But she and a few outside friends have donned their bracelets with renewed energy.
With so many people around her hurting from the economy, she’s modulating the complaint-free evangelism.
“I have several friends who have been laid off. I have a friend who lost his house,” she said. “It is challenging. No one wants your happy-go-lucky attitude when you just lost your job and your home. You just have to be positive support without being so obvious about it.”
Michael Booth: 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com
Obviously you can make your own no-complaints bracelet, but to see how one program works, go to www.acomplaintfreeworld.org
