Bracelets ban complaints

The Rev. Will Bowen tries not to complain.

He wants everyone else to stop carping, too – all 6 billion of us on the planet.

Last July, Bowen challenged worshippers at Christ Church Unity in Kansas City to quit complaining as a way to bring more prosperity into their lives.

The congregation is part of the Association of Unity Churches, which offers what it calls “practical Christianity” – a way of life leading to health, prosperity, happiness and peace of mind.

“When you’re focusing your attention on what’s wrong or complaining, you’re going to get more of what you’re complaining about,” Bowen says.

“You’re sending out this vibrational energy into the universe that you’re a victim, and the universe responds with more negativity.”

Positive thinking isn’t a new concept, but Bowen’s spin came with a contemporary twist: the silicone bracelet.

At the July sermon, Bowen handed out about 250 purple bracelets he wanted his congregants to use to remind themselves to stop complaining, criticizing or gossiping. Sarcasm was another no-no.

He challenged them to refrain from complaining for 21 days because, he said, that’s how long it takes to break habits. Whenever they found themselves failing, they were to switch the bracelet to the other wrist and start over.

Bowen thought the challenge would be easy for him since he’s a “positive minister guy.” But he broke three bracelets after moving them from wrist to wrist so many times before making his 21 days.

It took him nearly three months.

The idea was a hit with church members, who came back looking for more bracelets. Family, friends, people at their offices wanted them.

Then reporters came calling. Since Bowen’s appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in March, volunteers have taken orders for more than 4 million bracelets.

They’ve been coming in to the church’s Web site at about 1,000 a day, says Tom Alyea, a church board member who has helped coordinate the effort.

Alyea has contacted some Web sites that have offered copycat Complaint Free World bracelets but laughs about another site that he says “for $3 will send you a bracelet so you can complain all you want.”

Bowen’s bracelets are free, though the church includes a donation envelope in each packet it sends out. He won’t reveal what the donations amount to or how much the bracelets cost the church but says that so far contributions are keeping up with costs.

Schools, prisons and homeless shelters have taken up the no-complaint challenge, says Bowen. Alyea adds that some Pentagon employees began using the bracelets, which they kept on their desks because they weren’t allowed to wear them.

“When they find themselves complaining, they move the bracelet from one side of the desk to the other,” Alyea says.

Bowen attributes his campaign’s appeal to people “being tired of negativity,” and to the changes he says they experience when they move away from complaining.

“When you’re not articulating complaints, then they have nowhere to go, and your brain literally stops producing them, and you become a happier person,” he says.

“Complaining is saying, ‘Man, that sucks.’ What changes things is saying, ‘This is not the way I would like it to be. This is how I would like it to be.’

“It’s painting a picture or creating a vista to get people to look in that direction. It’s where you want to move toward.”

A book, “A Complaint Free World,” is due in October, and Bowen’s next goal is a nationwide No Complaining day, preferably the day before Thanksgiving.

But Barbara S. Held, psychology professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, says Bowen’s approach is misguided. Complaining is an important, necessary tool for some people, she says.

“If we lived in a world in which there was nothing to complain about, I think it might make perfect sense. But we don’t,” says Held, author of “Stop Smiling, Start Kvetching: A 5-Step Guide to Creative Complaining” (St. Martin’s, 2001).

The “the tyranny of the positive attitude in America, which the Rev. Bowen wants to spread to the entire world,” can actually hurt some people, she says, because people cope in different ways, and some people need to vent.

“The research is compelling. When you force people to use a coping style that goes against their nature, their functioning goes down,” Held says.

“I’m not pushing pessimism. I’m saying let people cope in the way they cope and don’t make them feel defective.”