What are people saying about you?

Why are they saying it?

We all get talked about. If our response to gossip or commenting about us is always “I really don’t care what people think about me”, something’s wrong.

We should care what people say about us.

We should take this matter seriously. It does matter what people think and say about us- and underneath our tough exterior, I know we do care.

When I was much younger, I tended to assume that negative comments about me were the fault of the people who were making them. I chalked it to prejudice, persecution, jealousy, or their bad attitude. I would sometimes even assume it was the devil motivating people- like some vague form of spiritual warfare.

Now some of that may be true and does exist in life. This is not a world free of malice and jealousy and there is a devil.

However, more realistically, our words and actions are almost always the basis of how we are treated and talked about. We choose how we act. We choose what we say and the tone in which we say it. Most of the time, we are treated exactly as we deserve to be treated.

The Golden Rule of life is, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

We need to remember that for every action, there is a corresponding reaction. How much of our trouble with people is caused by our own actions? This too is the law of reaping and sowing. What we plant we reap. There is a direct connection between our actions and words and what happens to us.

The point of this is not to make you feel guilty about your life and its current troubles, but rather to suggest that if you consistently are gossiped about or treated negatively, you look at it seriously and honestly rather than dismissing it as something weird or demonic that happens.

Then- do something about it.

If you don’t like the harvest you are reaping, change what you are planting.

Sometimes we feel that “nasty” thing about us is necessary. We feel that to be the boss or to get people to obey, we have to be obnoxious.

I remember a friend of mine who had been in leadership for many years saying the following when instructing his secretary, “We always get what we want, but we do it in a nice way.”

For most of us, change is difficult. We may not even know what to change. I have a few thoughts about this.

First step: Get the truth about yourself from an honest objective friend.

If a lot of negative is swirling around your life, you need a friend to help you honestly understand how you are perceived. Ask them, “What am I doing wrong here?” That may take some real fortitude to be that honest. But sometimes we need to know the truth about how we come across.

Second step: make a plan of action.

You may have to change something in order for people to say different things about you. Sometimes a small change can make a big difference. Sometimes taking a course on human relationships helps. Or learning about conflict resolution.

Third step: think of this whole thing positively.

Say to your self, “If I change the way I treat people, they are going to change their behavior towards me.”

Finally: In essence, we have control over the way we will be treated in the future. It’s never to late to change…even a little.

Treat others as you would like to be treated. Talk to others the way you would like to be spoken to. You’ll see a big change! The Golden Rule works. Our behavior does affect the way we are treated.