Do you hate to gossip?
Do you sometimes find yourself gossiping even though you wish you weren’t?
Do you hate how social occasions tend to turn quickly to gossip sessions?
Do you wish you could just stop gossip in it's tracks?
We had to come up with a solution to idle, nasty gossiping because we used to feel so dirty afterwards, especially if we thought about what would happen if the person found out what we’d been saying about them.
It is hard though, to stop gossip once it has begun. It's so much easier to bitch about someone else's life than face our own, or listen to someone talk about their latest MLM scheme.
Our initial solution was to just fess up to everyone we had gossiped about (talk about an uncomfortable conversation!), but prevention is far more comfortable than cure.
To shoot down gossip, so we don’t have to apologise to anyone ever again, here are the magic words we’ve learnt:
“What are you guys saying about me when I’m not around?”
If you want to take it further, but border on the chance of being confrontational, you can add:
“In fact, what are you saying about each other?”
Some of the best, most meaningful conversations we’ve EVER had with people have come after these two sentences.
Why Stop Gossip?
Because without gossip, conversations HAVE TO be about something meaningful, positive and constructive.
The last time we had to stop gossip, the group of people we were standing with were gossiping about a guy who had just left the conversation to go to the toilet. We felt uncomfortable and Julius used the magic words.
You’d expect everyone after that to disperse embarrassed, but when the guy came back, we all apologised to him; and he apologised back because he was gossiping about us at the urinal!
After that, the conversation turned positive and meaningful, and both of us left that night feeling like we had truly connected with the REAL people behind the gossip.
We hate gossiping, and if we do catch ourselves gossiping, we know that it is to cover some kind of insecurity in ourselves…More about that in another post; but until then…
Try it out next time you’re feeling like you’ve been dragged into the net of a destructive ol’ gossip session. You’ll be amazed at how many people thank you for freeing them from something they themselves don’t like to do!
PS… the irony of this is that word will get around, and you’ll be know as the person who refuses to gossip, so given a bit of time, you’ll never have to!
What do you think?