Don't speak ill of another

I saw a tweet the other day that said “Don’t speak ill of others – write it in the sand by the water’s edge.” Which I paid attention to for reasons that become clear if you visit the #landscaping your life facebook page which the photo above was taken for.

What interested me on Sunday, as I took the picture and posted it on Twitter, was how apt it was for twitter that day. My twitter feed was full of people speaking ill of those that were making the headlines over the weekend.

I was reminded of a video from 1992, which I only recently saw, where a 12 year old reminded us that adults tell children not to do things and then promptly do them all themselves. On twitter and even here on HRZone I can see adults doing what they tell children off for doing and that’s ‘calling others names’ or labelling them as this or judging them as that. How can we know these words to be true, what reason is there for doing it and what’s the positive outcome?

My suggestion today is if we wouldn’t let our child say the words about someone at school don’t say them about someone else.

Alison

Alison Smith

Helping teams realise their potential

PS: Authentic Power’s blog yesterday on not judging her mother is another great reminder about the impact we have when we attach judgement to others. Another piece by Julia Hill perhaps more related to the landscape metaphors I mentioned earlier said ”I thought to myself, how in the world do we think we can end the clear-cutting on the planet if we’re so effective at clear-cutting each other”