Ditch The Drama! How Gossip Holds You Back and How To Break Free

Welcome to A New Life podcast with Pamela Jean, where it's all about empowering women to empower more women. Get ready, friends, to create a new life. And here is your host, Pamela Jean.

Hello, my friends, and welcome to this week's episode of A New Life podcast. I'm so happy to have you here today. My name is Pamela Jean and I am your host of A New Life podcast today. I really love this topic because I think it's something that every single person on the planet can identify with. Our topic today is gossip. Yes, you heard me correctly. We are going to talk about gossip. Ditching the drama, how gossip actually holds you back, and how you can break free from this sneaky, crazy little habit that can seep into our lives and wreak havoc on our relationships, our self esteem. Yes, gossiping about other people really has an effect on our self esteem and basically our overall happiness. So, friends, the first thing I want to say about gossiping is we are the gatekeeper for what comes into our life and what we don't allow into our lives. We're the gatekeeper. Toxic people, toxic habits. Bad nutrition, no exercise, bad sleep. We are the gatekeeper. We are the ones who decide what comes into our lives and what doesn't come into our lives. It's up to you. It's truly up to you. So I think the first question to ask is, why do people gossip? Everyone knows someone who gossips. Maybe it's you. Maybe you're the person who gossips. Who at a dinner party is talking about other people or picks up the phone and says, I've got some juicy gossip. Do you want to hear it? Well, buckle up because things are going to get real. This is. This might sting a little, but it's okay. Sometimes the best lessons that we need to learn are the hardest lessons. They hurt a little. You see, gossip stems from a place of your insecurity and fear. Not somebody else's insecurity and fear, but your insecurity and fear. When we gossip about other people, we are trying to elevate ourselves by bringing someone else down. Have you ever done that before? Have you ever had that feeling of when you hear someone had a failure or someone had a setback or something's wrong in someone else's life? Have you ever had that feeling of joy where you actually celebrated a little on the inside because you're like, well, good, I'm not the only one who's miserable right now. Somebody else is going through something. Honestly, friends, this is a toxic cycle that only makes us feel Momentarily superior. You know, we'll feel good about ourselves for, you know, five seconds, but ultimately is going to leave us feeling really empty and disconnected. I think there's something really important for us to understand that every single person that you meet, every person is carrying a heavy load. That load might be, you know, problems in a marriage. That might be problems with their children. Maybe they just got fired, Maybe they are financially bankrupt. Every single person that you meet are carrying. They're carrying a heavy load, just like you are. You're carrying your own load. Every single person, whether, no matter what your life looks like from the outside, is carrying a burden. There's a cross that each of us are carrying a burden in our own lives. And sometimes our burdens feel pretty heavy. And talking about somebody else's burden makes us feel just a little less lonely, stuck in our own burden. But here's the thing. Gossip doesn't just harm the person being talked about. It also controls our own lives in a way that we may not even realize. Think about it. How much time and energy do we waste focusing on other people's business instead of our own? How much time if you just pause and think about your day, how often do you gossip or talk about other people? How many opportunities for growth and connection are you missing? Are you missing out on because you're too busy whispering about somebody else's shortcomings, somebody else's faults? I mean, let's be honest. None of us are perfect. We all have faults. Some of them are uglier than others. But, you know, look, we all, none of us are perfect. Gossip has a way of consuming us like wildfire. I think about the Oklahoma wildfires that we get sometimes, and man, they spread fast. That's gossip. It spreads so fast, before we know it, we are trapped in that cycle of negativity. And nothing good comes from being stuck in negativity. Negativity dictates who we spend time with, what we talk about, and how we feel about our ourselves. Again, friends. We're the gatekeeper of what we let into our lives. And sometimes it feels good for a moment just to talk about somebody else. But you know, I think if you can pause and step back a little bit and think about the empathy part of this. You know, I heard a story one time and this, this really, really hit me hard. There were a group of moms that had dropped their kids off, were dropping their kids off to school. Three moms were standing there, their kids had gone into school and they were just chit chatting on the sidewalk. Well, Then another mom, a fourth mom, walks in with their six year old and she's wearing like pajama pants and a sweatshirt. It doesn't look like her hair had seen a comb in weeks. She just looked a mess. And she's walking her six year old into the school building. And two of the moms started laughing and talking about, oh my gosh, look at her, oh my gosh, look at her. How dare her walk through. I would never come into school looking like that. Well, the third mom stops them and says, I think it's great that she's out and about because two months ago her baby died and this is the first I've seen her out of the house in two months. So sometimes when we're seeing fault in other people, the fault makes us feel good about ourselves because you know, someone's walking around out and about in their pajama bottoms taking their six year old to school. How ridiculous is that? Well, maybe there's a reason why. And if you can pause yourself from immediately finding joy and pleasure in someone else's faults and shortcomings, you can actually look through the eyes of empathy and have understanding that something is happen in her life that would cause her to make that decision. So pause when you think about the gossip. And I think about gossiping, like if there's something going on in someone's life that they would like me to know, they're going to tell me themselves that it's not somebody else's information to share, it's their information to share. But friends, fear not, there is hope. Breaking free from the gossip trap is entirely possible, but it requires a conscious effort and commitment and it just takes you living your life filled with love and authenticity and get rid of the judgment. It's easy to judge other people, but if you take a look at your life and know that, hey, I've got problems, you've got problems. Why would I gossip about somebody else when I've got my own stuff to deal with? I've got my own things to work on. But how do you do that? Well, it starts with awareness. You know, first of all, pay attention to your thoughts and your words. Are you lifting others up? Are you tearing them down? You know, life is hard enough. We don't need to be tearing each other down. Life can do that on its own. But before you speak, before you open your mouth, are you lifting someone up or are you going to tear them down? Are you rooted in love or are you rooted in fear and insecurity? Because gossiping really, really comes from our own fear and insecurities. And by becoming aware of our gossipy habits, you can start to break free from that grip. Now what do you do if you're out with friends and maybe you're sitting around having dinner and someone starts talking about someone else? Someone says, oh, I've got some juicy gossip for you all. How do you handle that? Because obviously you can't remove yourself from the table. It would be way too obvious. So what do you do in that situation? Do you just listen and not say anything? Do you try to talk about something else? Change the subject? How do you handle that? I have a really good response. If you're ever in that situation where someone is gossiping, one of the best things that you could say, listen with ears and eyes of empathy and you could say, wow, that's too bad. I'm sorry to hear what they're going through. I hope they're going to be okay. If you handle it that way, that stops the gossip right in the tracks. It stops it in the tracks because no one is going to keep talking about them in a rude and horrible way if they've been stopped in their tracks. And all you need to say is, is oh my gosh, I hate to hear that. For their family, that must be very difficult. I hope they're going to be okay instead of piling on the gossip and saying, oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Wow, what is that going to serve? Who's that going to serve? What good is that going to do? And at the end of the day, if whatever the gossip is about is something that I need to know, the person will tell me themselves. Other than that, I'm going to stay in my lane, be kind to other people and just stay out of that realm of gossip. Because quite honestly, I am so happy and content in my life, I don't need to be a part of everybody else's because I have that contentment and that happiness in my own life. So it starts with that awareness. Next, it's the compassion. And I've kind of alluded to that. Empathy and compassion kind of go hand in hand. But instead of judging others, let's try to understand them. Like the story I told you about the mother dropping her six year old off to school wearing pajama bottoms and messy hair and no makeup and all the things if those women standing there knew that, they never would have said anything. They never would have said, wow, look at her showing up in her pajama bottoms judging other people. But try to understand them with compassion. And empathy. And remember, everyone is fighting their own battles. We never truly know what someone else is going through. But by approaching others with empathy and compassion, we begin to break down that wall of gossip and build genuine connections instead. And finally, let's focus on our own journey. What is going on in your life? What are your shortcomings? Where do you need to do work? Instead of getting caught up in other people's drama, let's shift and focus inward and work on becoming the best version of ourselves. Let's set goals, pursue our passions, and surround ourselves with people who are uplifting and inspire us. You know, if you are stuck in a gossip group, and I think it's, it's, you know, honest to say, all of us know someone who likes to gossip. Is. Is that the person that you want to be spending a lot of time with? If you are the gossiper, reach out to your girlfriends, reach out to your tribe and say, hey, friends, I gossip too much. I want to stop that. Will you help me reach out to have people help you with your gossiping? Because it is a problem. And I want you to pause when you're out and about and you're having conversations. Think about before you speak. Is this kindness and love, or is this destruction and toxic gossip because no one wants to be around that person? You know, sometimes gossip may seem harmless. It's funny, it's light. It's just. It's time that you don't have to focus on yourself. But make no mistake, it has the power to control our lives if we let it. By becoming aware of our gossipy habits, practicing compassion, and focusing on your own journey, you can break free from that cycle. You can break free from the grip of gossip and live a life filled with love, joy, and authenticity. Oftentimes I'll have someone say, oh, did you hear about so and so? And I'm like, probably not. And most of the time I haven't because I kind of live in. In under a rock. I live my own life. I love other people, I care about other people, but I don't get caught up in. In the gossip realm. If I am somewhere and people start gossiping, if I'm not sitting around a dinner table, ob. I'll just remove myself from that circumstance, that situation. I'll walk away from the group because I don't want to hear the gossip other of other people. The problem with the gossipy story is that you're only hearing half the story. You don't even know what the truth is. And to be repeating something that you don't know if it's truth or not is really, really not a good thing to do. It's destructive and quite honestly, it's just not going to serve anyone. By removing everything in your life that is toxic, that it does not serve you or does not serve others will truly, truly make things so much better and build up yourself just as much as you have the opportunity to build up someone else. So friends, that's just a quick little talk about ditching the drama, getting gossip out of your life and have an understanding of how gossip is really holding you back and how you can learn to break free from gossip. My friends, if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with your friends. Pamela Jean A New Life on Spotify and Apple. We'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.

Thank you for joining us today on A New Life podcast. We will see you next time.

Sam.