Gossip: How to break the habit

Gossip can ruin friendships, loose lips sink ships, and thoughtless blabbing can ruin reputations. However, as much as we all know how wrong gossiping is and the devastation it can cause, sometimes it is bloody hard to resist sharing a juicy tidbit about a friend or colleague. 

Judith Orloff MD, author of Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself From Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life, says that although gossiping is a very human thing that most of us do, we can feel freer, happier and more energized if we remove the toxicity from what we say about others.

Why we blab

There are several reasons why we dish about other people, and they aren’t pretty: We say negative things to try and make ourselves seem better than others, because we are angry with others, or out of jealousy and envy.

Women often use gossip to bond with each other, but while it can be a shortcut in to a new clique, it ultimately doesn’t reflect well on the tattling interloper. “It may be a way of bonding with others who are in to gossip, but in terms of people who are more aware of themselves and how they treat others, it won’t attract those kinds of positive people,” Orloff says

(For more bonding rituals gone wrong, see Girlfriend getaways gone bad!)

Nixing the negativity

Orloff says that benign gossip is fine and part of human nature; you just have to decide whether what you are sharing is harmless or not. “As obvious as this sounds, ask yourself, would you like to have somebody else was saying this about you or sharing this information about you? That’s a good internal check,” she says.

In order to stop yourself from being a gossip, Orloff says you need to have a mindfulness that “this isn’t who I want to be.” Once you are mindful, you can catch yourself more easily before you do say something that you shouldn’t, and shift from that negativity in to a more positive place.

Did you share something you shouldn't have? Here's how to make amends.