One school of researchers studying the evolution of our brains attribute our large brain size to our tendency to gossip. Human relationships are complicated and the fact that we can hold 150 relationships at one time is testament to our brain power.
Gossip, however, is inherently judgmental. Most gossip is negative and involves us taking the moral high ground. “How could he do that? I would never dream of it.”
Before I go ahead, allow me to digress here. There is a big difference between exercising good judgment and being judgmental. We are all called upon to exercise good people judgment when we hire teammates, colleagues, new employees in our departments. We need good people judgment to pick the right friends, right spouse, etc. However, we become judgmental when we attempt to apply quick judgment to every possible situation or person. Being judgmental involves constantly making assumptions and rarely involves giving the other person the benefit of the doubt.
I’ve struggled with being judgmental. I still struggle with it. I think I’ve slowly learnt to draw the line between exercising judgment and being judgmental in the past few years. And I’ve observed this happen thanks to two changes.
– Less gossip. This has been a consequence of living far away from most people I know for the past 3 years. Unintended but appreciated.
– Less insecurity. I think insecurity is what drives us to gossip. This is not a quick fix though. And suggestions to solve this deserve another post.
I appreciate that both these solutions are not easy ones. The first will probably be impractical and the second sounds vague. But I felt it was important to help explain the rationale for my suggested solution – focus really hard on your own problems.
I’m not advocating being selfish or self centred but I am suggesting we think of our own problems every time we are faced with an opportunity to gossip. This is a guaranteed solution because our problems ALWAYS loom larger than those of others. Focusing on solving the problems in our life keeps the demons of insecurity away as an added bonus.
I had a choice today to mentally pass judgment on hearing a story. Just as I caught myself doing that, I quickly thought about 3 pressing issues in my head. The old judgment thought vanished.
So, when you have an opportunity to gossip or pass judgment about someone else in the next couple of days, think about where your life/career/health/relationships are heading. Then repeat again at the next opportunity.
This works.
PS: Tuning out a gossip habit like the the Facebook news feeds helps too.
A Learning a Day 