Sometimes it doesn’t matter how mindful you’re about practicing a positive lifestyle, or going through steps about positivity. There are those people who will invoke their negativity on you.
No matter how hard you run away from these negative forces, they have a way of locating you.
Mark Leary, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University in North Carolina who specializes in social and personal psychology, explained to Health that gossiping is a fundamental human instinct because our lives are deeply rooted in groups. We not only live in groups, but we also depend on the people in our groups to survive.
“A study published in the journal Psychological Science found gossip improves a group’s cooperation and makes members less selfish. The problem starts when you allow it to affect you negatively,” says Leary.
Sometimes gossip can serve as a way of identifying and ostracizing untrustworthy members of the group. For some people it’s a way of life, to keep themselves interesting and to keep other people from looking into their lives.
A team building expert and international speaker Gale Emanuele says gossip, rumors, and bad mouthing are all under one umbrella and are a bad look for anyone who partakes in them negatively. It destroys your reputation, it is toxic to culture, and it’s cruel behavior. Don’t do it.
Ways you can dismiss or not let rumors or gossip affect you according to Emanuele:
- Do not have an opinion about it to whoever comes to you with gossip.
- The gossip or rumors are not who you are, even if something is true. Own it and move on.
- You’re not about that drama life, don’t engage, move along.
Circulating rumors can sometimes be damaging and dangerous, if you are talking about others behind their backs, do it to lift them up and not to assassinate their character.
Also see: What is a quarter life crises?
