If You Don’t Like It, Change It

I just heard someone complain about how much she disliked her current place of work. I suggested – very gently – that if she so hated it, then she needed to change it or change her way of thinking. Sadly my advice went down like a lead balloon.

So I offered this fine statement instead:

“Sister, there were people who went to sleep last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. And those dead folks would give anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of plowing. So you watch yourself about complaining. What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.”

–Maya Angelou (African-American Poet, Writer and Performer, 1928-)