My No Gossip Challenge

I am constantly trying to work on myself - always striving to become my best self. I have found in this constant quest of self improvement that sometimes I succeed and sometimes (well, a lot of times) I fail only to get back up and try again.

One of my biggest struggles is my mouth. Or more specifically, what words I allow to come out of my mouth. I ran across two instances in the past two days -both of which did not involve me, but pointed out how ugly and destructive gossip is - which let's be honest is my biggest issue when it comes to my mouth. (Even though I wasn't a participant in either of these two specific events I certainly have been involved in similar situations in the past where I was taking part in the gossip gang.)

I thought about sharing the details of what has me thinking about the power of gossip so much, but that would mean I would have to gossip to do so, right? So I have decided not to share the details, but will say that the talk was so ugly and were in open spaces where tons of people could witness and hear what was being said that it made me cringe both for the ones being talked about and also for the person(s) talking because it made all parties appear very unbecoming. It also was pretty destructive for those who were not there to defend themselves and had such ugly things said about them.

It got me to thinking about how many times I have participated in gossip and how hurtful that may have been. Why do I do that? What is the point? It really isn't necessary. It doesn't make me feel better in the long run - in fact - it makes me feel worse.

Just in case you need to know the definition of gossip is take a look below:

¹gossip

noun gos·sip \ˈgä-səp\

: information about the behavior and personal lives of other people

: information about the lives of famous people

: a person who often talks about the private details of other people's lives

(courtesy of: merriam-webster.com)

Taking the above definition into account for 7 days I will not:

1.) Say anything negative about another person - unless it is spoken directly to the person in question.
2.) Share anything about another person unless I have permission from that person to do so.
3.) Listen to anyone speaking ill will about anyone else.
4.) Entertain gossip websites such as people.com, usmagazine.com (or any other of my beloved websites - yes, I do love these websites.)
5.) Nor will I read any gossip magazines.


This list may seem simplistic, but I have an idea it is going to be a lot harder to implement than I  think. I also anticipate this to be a week in which I am a lot quieter than normal.

Wish me luck. I will certainly need it. I will report back my success/failure of this project next Thursday!