This is my first official whinge, or whine, or complaint or just sharing with you that sometimes I get pissed off and that’s ok.

Sometimes having a good old fashion whinge about something feels good.

I’ve been a life coach in one form or another for 20 years and I can tell you that we all need to just say what we’re thinking and feeling sometimes without needing to be “policitcally correct” and without the pressure to be positive and rise above it and all that personal development guru stuff!

See, it’s all those times that we never let out how we’re really feeling that it tears us up inside.

So a number of years back I heard someone say they were having a recreational whinge, meaning that they just wanted to have their say, have some fun with it and move on.  The person was making it clear that they had no intention of complaining forever about the point, just long enough to feel better.

I thought that was great and have been working with the concept of a recreational whinge ever since, for both myself, my partner and friends and with my coaching clients.

I’ve decided I really enjoy having a recreational whinge.

I also have learned that for me at least, it’s good to set a time limit, like five minutes.  If I allow myself to whinge longer than five minutes on the same topic, I just get whiney…and that’s not the same thing.  For me, whiney is pathetic and I start thinking/acting like a big victim.

So, at the five minute mark or sooner I have to stop my whinging and get on with things.  That might mean I start working on the solution to the thing I’m whinging about or it could simply be that I stop my whinging period and just do some unrelated other thing…but at least I’m no longer whinging.

That five minutes of a recreational whinge is almost always enough to get out of my system all the frustration, anxiety, anger, saddness and other emotional stuff/crap that I need to.

I’ve discussed the recreational whinge concept quite a bit over the years and have been encouraged by many people to do something bigger with this.  Time went by and I wasn’t doing anything, or the things I was trying weren’t working very well, and I started to whinge more about not getting recreational whinge off the ground.  Oooh that was pissing me off too!

So here it is.  Recreational Whinge has launched.

And I am officially giving myself permission to have a small or big recreational whinge every day (or whenever I want to!) because my opionion matters.

I also accept the responsibility though that if I’m going to whinge about something, all of you reading my whinges need to understand when the recreational part of my whinge is done and when I’ve moved on to something else…something productive, useful, inspiring, a call to action or maybe something entertaining.  I have no idea how this is going to turn out, but I do feel confident that my own values on social responsibility and ethics will come into play.

You are more than welcome to contact me personally anytime regarding Recreational Whinge.  Simply email me at 

Cheers, Noel – the Master Whinger