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How To Respond To Malicious Gossip

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Click on the picture below to watch the short video:

Malicious gossip is negative and brings everyone down. This video includes several examples of ways to respond to someone rumor mongering and gossiping maliciously.

Malicious gossip can involve maligning another person and making hurtful negative judgments or the spreading of sensitive or confidential information. If you gossip a lot, you will attract other people who like to spread rumors and thus don’t have much of interest going on in their lives. Distorting information, talking “dirt”, and bringing other people down will affect your life negatively.

How do you respond to unwelcome gossip?

First of all, you don’t want to encourage gossip with curiosity and further questions. Nor is it necessary to become overly hostile and angry at the gossiper.

1. You can have empathy for the person being gossiped about. Take the other person’s side and show compassion.

2. Respond with humor.

3. Change the subject.

4. Turn the tables and focus your attention on the gossiper and what’s going on in his or her life. For example, “You seem to want to talk about who Susie is sleeping with. How about we talk about who you’re sleeping with!”

5. Be direct. Say you’re uncomfortable talking negatively about other people.

6. Finally, you can avoid persistent gossipers and leave.

While harmless gossip is fine, malicious gossip is not inspiring and does not enhance people’s lives. Freeing yourself from malicious gossip will give you more time to enjoy life or to talk about more interesting subjects.

by Dr. Alison Poulsen

Watch “How to distinguish between harmless and malicious gossip” https://www.youtube.com/my_videos?o=U.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Watch “Distinguishing Harmless from Malicious Gossip.”

The Positive Effects of Cheerfulness

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“Carpe Diem” by Mimi Stuart©
Live the Life you Desire

Cheerfulness is a powerful emotion, which is similar to gratitude but more forward looking. It is a can-do attitude of making the most of what occurs in our life. Research shows that cheerfulness materially changes brain chemistry helping enhance mental and physical health. The positive effects of cheerfulness on the quality of our own life and our relationships cannot be overstated.

Being cheerful does not mean refusing to acknowledge life’s difficulties. There is an important place for painful emotions. Thus, Pollyanna cheerfulness can be false and annoying in its naïveté. However, having a cheerful attitude involves a reasonable willingness to take on life’s challenges instead of sitting back and complaining.

No matter what struggles we face, we can still develop a cheerful attitude. This does not mean that we don’t feel the pain or are not aware of the challenges that exist. It means dealing with life’s difficulties with the positive expectation that we can overcome them, or at least that we will give it our best shot.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Facial expressions: She says I frown all the time. That’s just me.”

Does rewarding good grades with money motivate children?

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“Mastery” — Tiger Woods by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

When money is used to reward children for activities that should have inherent value, they tend to lose interest in the activity as well as long-term motivation. Also, monetary reward can reduce creativity and encourage unethical behavior such as cheating.

There is an exception. When a task is repetitive, boring and doesn’t require creativity, such as pulling weeds or vacuuming, then paying money can increase productivity (although paying for chores is another topic.)

Giving a child money for good grades reduces the child’s sense of achievement and ownership. Money becomes the motivation — not learning, meeting the challenges of school, or improving oneself.

Three Elements to Motivation

In his book “Drive,” Daniel Pink shows that there are three primary elements to motivation in all but the most repetitious monotonous work: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

1. Autonomy: Allowing people maximal autonomy in figuring out how, when and with whom to accomplish their work increases inventiveness and performance.

2. Mastery: Mastery is approached through engagement, effort and practice.

3. Purpose: Inspiration is personally acquired; it can’t be supplied by other people, though it can be diminished. When people find a purpose greater than their own self-interest, their drive intensifies.

The purpose of school and learning

When your child gets good grades, the learning and the grades themselves are generally reward enough. Much of the purpose of schoolwork is to teach a child how to plan, analyze, and think creatively. Schoolwork also teaches two of the most important keys to a fulfilling and happy life:

– the ability to delay gratification and

– the ability to tolerate frustration.

Schoolwork should convey knowledge and encourage children to set goals and achieve them. The inherent appeal of learning and achieving goals are undermined when the purpose of schoolwork becomes making money. In contrast, achieving good grades without being paid for them allows children to have ownership over their accomplishments and to feel pride in their own autonomy.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

*Recommended : Daniel H. Pink’s “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.”

Read “Inspire vs. Pushing: ‘Why don’t you just believe in yourself!'”

One Creative Way to Overcome the Fear of Rejection or Failure

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“Swing” — Ernie Els by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

I failed my way to success.

~Thomas Edison

People often lack the courage to take initiative because they fear failure or rejection. Yet to pursue friendships, romantic relationships, and work aspirations, we need to face potential failure and rejection without being constricted by the choke-hold of trepidation.

When you go out and pursue something you want, you are going to be rejected and make mistakes. You might as well expect rejection and mistakes and learn to handle them better.

In Coach John Wooden’s second to last game, UCLA was down 2 points with a few seconds to go. After the game, a reporter asked him why he chose to set up a play for Richard Washington. He replied,

Because he’s not afraid to make a mistake. He thinks he’s a pretty good shooter—and he is—but if he misses he’ll think, “Well, you can’t make them all.” He won’t be devastated. Therefore, he’s harnessed his fears. The others might be thinking, “I’ve got to make it.” If that’s their thinking, they’ll be fearful about missing. I didn’t want that.

Rejection Therapy

How do we harness our fear?

In a desire to desensitize himself from the pain of rejection and overcome his fear, entrepreneur Jia Jiang developed his own so-called “Rejection Therapy.” For 100 days, he set forth to make one rejection attempt a day, making sure his requests were legal, ethical, physically safe, and likely to be rejected.

For instance, he asked to borrow $100 from a stranger, he asked for a burger re-fill, he asked to play soccer in someone’s backyard, and he asked to dance with his waitress. Not only did he stop dreading rejection, he learned that if he accepted rejection gracefully or asked “Why” or “Why not?”, often the rejection had nothing to do with him, or it would turn into acceptance. What surprised him most was that he was not rejected 42 times out of 100, despite his weird requests.

We are all human. So rather than worrying about being perfect, we can embrace the opportunity to learn from our blunders and miscalculations. Accepting that we are going to get rejected and make mistakes can free us to move forward in a more relaxed and confident way and to live our journey more fully rather than agonize about reaching or failing to reach the destination.

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

~William Shakespeare

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Reference: Jia Jiang’s Tedtalk