Don’t Trip Over Your Tongue!

Few friendships would remain, if each knew what his friend said of him when he wasn’t there. – Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher, whose work strongly influenced the development of modern economics and social science.

I’m not sure why this comes to me with the surprise of an epiphany, but I’m amazed at how often we can’t stop ourselves from bad mouthing each other. There seems to be almost an addiction level response that when given the opportunity to throw somebody under the proverbial bus, we don’t even hesitate a nanosecond! As an emotional reactor most of my life, I suppose I never gave much thought to it because if I knew when someone had done it to me I simply went into attack mode, sought them out and unleashed a pointed verbal counter attack. I’ve never had a problem mincing my words so I’m sure I left many people fractured in my wake. Call it whatever you will but perhaps it’s maturity that has finally provided my personal smelling salts! I have noticed that from my kids, to friends, to business associates most people feel the need to verbally denigrate somebody else in order to feel better about themselves! Think about how many times you too have been sucked into this vortex of negativity…especially when someone else does something well that awakens the green eyed monster of jealousy!

But think about it…did you really feel any better about yourself after you were done with your verbal assault? Maybe a group of you got together for some fun and only ended up bashing someone that was not there. How about during a divorce…ever notice how both spouses even go as low as disparaging each other to the children involved? Can you believe it, there is now actually a syndrome name for it: Parental Alienation Syndrome! How about in the work environment where it happens constantly? Coworkers putting each other down just to get ahead or maintain a threatened status quo! It just all seems ridiculous, childish and a complete waste of time and productivity. So what’s the real problem? I’m not exactly sure, but I will tell you to a certain extent it’s laziness and lack of humility! Think about it, if you stopped bad mouthing achievers and instead used that same energy to figure out what you love to do and focused on working hard at it, you all of a sudden would not seem to care so much about what other people are doing and feel good about yourself. When you feel good about yourself, you tend to say positive things about other people…it’s contagious! Also remember as I wrote before that we have the commonality of humanity and by definition that means we are all not perfect…we make a lot of mistakes! So be humble about that and don’t use weaknesses to exploit others because it’s just as easy for them to do the same!

So we need to stop this madness! We need to teach our kids to focus on what they do best and make them feel good about that! Maybe kids aren’t wired to be the next baseball star, the next gold medalist or even the next rocket scientist…but they are special at something so let’s start there! Why? Because I’m sure you can remember being made fun of in school or you were the bully doing it…neither way made you feel good…did it? If you don’t have kids then watch your own words…you can break the chain. In my experience I have always quietly held the humble in high regard. They seem to just go to work at whatever it is they do and fly under the radar. You know those people too, they just never seem to be able to utter a cross word about anybody. They see the positive in everything and even when they don’t, they keep their mouths shut! So the next time you go for a walk with your tongue, say something nice about somebody instead of tripping over it, because the truth be told…nobody trusts a bad mouth!