Often we speak to friends or people we are normally close to about lots of things. We could be talking about the last vacation, our new house or job, the latest show or cinema program and some other stuffs. However, in the middle of normal talk, one thing leads to another and you find yourself being pushed to talk bad or even lie about someone. You may not really want to speak negatively about the person but that is where the conservation has turned to and everyone seems to enjoy the negative speech. If you find yourself being dragged into such negative talk, what should you do?
Watch this whiteboard animation and see some helpful tips on how to handle the urge to gossip about another person. While we may not enjoy being in the midst of negative speech, this presentation shows some practical steps we can take to protect our image and avoid saying terrible things about other people. When we try hard to avoid harmful gossip even though its not so easy for us, we protect our image and preserve our relationship with other people.
Video source

Share your experience or helpful suggestions
You may wish to share with us how you handled negative talk. Or you can suggest other practical ways to deal with harmful gossip. Either ways, your relevant comment will earn you a small Steem bounty when this post pays out.

@focusnow has set 1.000 SBD bounty on this post!
Bounties let you earn rewards without the need for Steem Power. Go here to learn how bounties work.
Earn the bounty by commenting what you think the bounty creator wants to know from you.
Find more bounties here and become a bounty hunter.
Happy Rewards Hunting!
Congratulations to the following winner(s) of the bounty!
Find more bounties here and become a bounty hunter.
Awesome thanks a lot!!!
Posted using Partiko Android
Owlesome thanks a lot!!!
I am a bot. I turn comments into owl related puns.
What lol?
Posted using Partiko Android
Awesome sounds like Owl-some :D
I think the best way is either just to leave the conversation, change the conversation or try and bring a wide view point to put everything into perspective.
Posted using Partiko Android
As a university student, there's always gossip happening. You can usually tell right away if it's fun and harmless or if it's happening at someone else's expense. If can be tough to sacrifice popularity for someone that you may not like, but it becomes easier once you believe that everyone deserves respect. In my experience, I can usually just say "that's not really nice", and the whole group will be like, "yea oops". I think we really need to start paying attention to the value of other people's feelings and acknowledging our role in their experiences. We can be the change that we want to see.
If you feel that the environment among your friends becomes negative due to bad comments and that bothers you, it is best to get away and not fall into another person who hurt, who speaks things that are not. It is also advisable to evaluate if these people are really your friends or companions.
@focusnow, It happens many times, in reality many don't have anything about others, most of the times but in excitement they speak their mind really shattered way and definitely it's unfortunate because they have lack of control towards their thoughts and words.
OH man, the desire to gossip for some is HUGE. I work with artists and sometimes, I think its all they do. lol. Gossip sucks however, I have been on the receiving end of some that was started from someone I had to fire, it spread and caused a lot of harm. This would not have happened had any of the people spreading the gossip just stopped to ask me the truth... Humans... love them or hate them.. you got to deal with them. :D
What I do which often works is I will just take my phone out and start recording, and ask them, If the person they are talking about sees the video, will they be okay with it? They immediately stop and I stop filming too
Walk away (leave)
So many times I have experience this and I would say that I've been handling the situation really well by just walking away or leave the discussion.
It's a common thing to face with females and my experience with them has thought me never to try to win an argument over a lady. Once I noticed things are getting wrongly interpreted, I decide not to explain myself and just be the loser while walking away or close the argument ;)
Posted using Partiko Android
You can always make use of diplomacy: just tell your opinion with kind words and use two or more view points to make it more vague. In the end the people get used to your view point and that you are not the one flaming torches to everyone.
I never let myself push to say things I do not like to say.
Why not?
Because I do not feel the need and never felt the need to join a club, felt miserable to be an outsider.
I stay for what I say or said and that is why most people don't like me. I am not sneaky or a hypocrite and do not like backstabbers. I also do not care about what people say/gossip about.