People love to whine. Even in ther eevery-day conversations, people complain a great deal They grumble about life and other people, how they can be tedious and boring, or unpleasant and painful, and how it all isso utterly unfair. Some people will gripe every day of their lives until something happens to shake them out of this dreary state of mind. Alas, that thing is often a life-shattering tragedy.

I can tell you the exact day I took a pledge to eliminate whining from my life. That was the day my father-in-law died. He passing was precisely one of those life-shattering events.

I was having a particularly crummy day at work when I received an emergency call from my wife to drop everything and come directly to the hospital. She told me Paul has slipped into a coma and that the doctors believed that he was not long for this world. I hung up the phone, and, a while, I just sat there, stunned. Paul had been a great friend and a role model to me. The very thought of his death shook my soul to its foundations.

After as few minutes, I launched into action. I let my boss know the situation and bolted out into the street. I flagged a cab and forty minutes later I bounded through the door of Paul's hospital room. My wife's entire family was there, in various stages of grief. Paul was looking a bit like he was having a rough nights sleep. His breathing was laboured and you could hear the fluid in his lungs as they were filling up. He was literally drowning in his own body fluids. I consulted with the doctor and the head nurse who said nothing could be done. We had the Do Not Resuscitate Order, signed and witnessed. It was time for Paul, my 49-year-old father in law, one of my best friends and mentors, to graduate from Schoolhouse Earth.

I watched and cried as he drew his last breath. I was both very sad and filled with awe.

It has been five years since Paul's passing, but I remember it as if it was yesterday. I was, and remain a great admirer of the man. He affected my life like no other person. Then, on his deathbed, he gave me yet another great gift. As I watched him fight for his last breath, Paul showed me that every breath we take is a struggle. I saw in that moment that life is a great effort from the cradle to the grave. This was not a painful realization for me. There was something beautiful in his struggle to live out to end of his last breath, and I took it to mean that life is a struggle worth addressing with all of my courage and strength.

Even though there are times when life seems to take less effort, the inherent struggle of living never goes away completely. After Paul's death, I began to see people who complain about the daily grind as a sad and petty lot. They seemed to operate with childish expectations a painfree existence, and, as such, were constantly being disappointed until they caved in completely to their own bitterness.

I believe Scott M. Peck said it best in his book the Road Less Traveled:

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.
Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it- then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the
fact that life is difficult no longer matters”

The earlier we accept that life is a struggle, the sooner we can get on with living, and, ironically, the sooner we can be truly happy. So many of us are just too busy complaining about this and that, until one day we find ourselves complaining that life has passed us by. We end up on our deathbed haunted by unfulfilled dreams. The graveyards are filled with dreams that never came to be. Whiners must, by their very nature, live their lives out on the sidelines, and can never really get in the game. The true players of life, those in the heat of the action, accept the struggle that is life.

And so, the choice is yours. You can continue to engage in all that negative chatter about the things that go wrong and the people of whom you don't approve, or you can accept the struggle and leave that negativity behind. You can continue in the delusion that complaining in some way empowers you, or you can acquire true power and give up that whining for good. I strongly urge you to accept that the fight for every breath goes on until you breathe your last. Dig in your heels and start living!

Michael McGauley, B.A., ATM, is a national motivational speaker, coach and corporate trainer. For additional articles or to book Michael for your next event, visit www.thedreambuildersinc.com, email mike@thedreambuildersinc.com, or call 1-866-878-8289