Rant Over.

I hope everyone had a great week. I’ll be working on the blog for the next few days so I thought I’d make a quick post before I start working on a banner.

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One of the reasons why I created this blog was because I wanted to work on myself and focus on being a better person. A big part of working on yourself means accepting your flaws and bringing awareness to the parts of you that limit personal growth.  I’ve decided to challenge myself by establishing a weekly goal, a thought, a quote, a picture or a lesson that I will pay close attention to. At the end of each week, I’ll make an entry about how the week went, if I stayed true to the intention and how the awareness made me feel. Hopefully, I will take away from each challenge so that those small changes become part of my daily routine. By bringing awareness to certain negative habits, you give yourself the opportunity to take action and start working on eliminating whatever is unnecessary.

This week’s challenge is inspired by this quote:

Try to say nothing negative about anybody for three days, for forty-five days, for three months. See what happens to your life –Yoko Ono

Although the intention is pretty simple, I feel like this will be a very rewarding goal. I recently realized that we find ourselves gossiping inadvertently almost every. Most of us do it because talking about others is a form of entertainment. Judging someone else’s actions keeps us from questioning our own decisions. Talking about others means we don’t have to talk about ourselves.  As much as I would love to stay away from rumors and speculation, it is part of human nature to be attracted to gossip. As horrible as it sounds, we find happiness in other people’s misery. So we talk about others as a way to feel happy, to feel pride in the fact we didn’t make the same mistakes, to partake in the excitement, to gain energy and to get a ‘kick’ out of agreeing on the same judgment of someone we barely know. Although rants make you feel better in the moment, the temporary relief is followed by more anger and aggression.  Venting to friends and family after a long day is definitely a common way to release tension and to blow off steam. Unfortunately, venting, ranting and going off on tangents aren’t long-term solutions. They prolong anger and don’t actually help settle the situation.

By bringing up the people that anger me, I’m causing more harm to myself than I am to them. Obviously, I would never want to physically harm someone but I feel pleasure when something negative happens to someone I dislike. It’s mean, cruel, and although I’m not the only one who does it, I refuse to be comforted by the idea that I share that flaw with millions. Speculation or speaking negatively about others contributes towards the hate and the annoyance I have towards that person. In order to be better, kinder and happier, it’s important for me to stop judging others. My goal for the week is to stop speaking negatively about others. I will let people make their own mistakes. I will focus on myself instead of making quick-undeserving statements about issues that shouldn’t concern me. I will work towards disregarding rumors, speculation and negative comments. I won’t judge people who gossip, nor will I completely withdraw myself from them. Instead, I will listen to their opinions without participating to the conversation. I will still value my friends and the people speaking but I’ll make up my own opinion of a certain person instead of adhering to the opinions of the majority.

Another big part of this challenge is having to be honest with yourself. It’s impossible to let go of all my grudges in only 7 days. I can’t imagine not being annoyed at one point this week. However, instead of complaining to others about my personal grudges, I won’t speak my mind if it’s just to make me feel better. Of course, this is a lesson I’d like to apply for more than just a week. I’m hopeful that what I will gain from it will motivate me to fully eliminate the nasty negative habit from my life.

Have a great week!