You are probably thinking “Words can’t hurt me, if I am strong and confident enough.” Well, sure they can.

There’s a lot of power behind the words we use everyday. We often don’t even realize what the consequences are (negative or positive) to the extent that we might lose sight of the big picture. The words we use in our sentences influence the reactions we get, and in turn determine how others perceive us.

Essentially, words can be used for hurting others or they can be used for good. When we bad mouth someone, whether the person is there or not, it is hurtful and mean. This happens quite often, especially talking bad about others behind their backs. Some people justify this as venting about someone in order to feel better about themselves, however, ask yourself if you would say those things in front of the individual, where you could actually see them getting their feelings hurt.

What if you had to watch their feelings … their expressions turn to sadness. Would you still be saying these same things about them? Probably not.

We all really don’t like people talking bad about us and hope they don’t do it. So, then why do we do this ourselves all the time? People tend to rationalize things by telling them, that the person is never going to find out what they’ve said about them. Maybe not, but how does that justify what has been said? It doesn’t make it okay for us to be mean.

We tend to instinctively trash talk and vent about others when we are feeling angry. A good thing to do in this situation is to take a couple steps back while we try to calm ourselves down. It would be a lot easier at this point to just bite our tongues. It can still be possible to vent but cut back on the cruel words that we use. This can make a very big difference.

We often don’t realize how mean we sound when we are talking bad about someone. The inspiration for this article occurred while commuting to work in the train, when I heard some strangers saying mean things about so-called “friends.” They were using very superficial words. When friends trash talk amongst themselves it isn’t necessarily bonding. Actually, it can turn into a bad habit.

Whenever the same friends get together and a certain name comes up, turning to hate gets switched on automatically. What is even worse, if there happens to be someone who doesn’t even know this person that everyone is bad mouth and then actually meets the victim one day, they already are biased against them. The victim doesn’t have a chance from the start.

It also provides us with a very narrow outlook on life. An individual who is constantly hated on isn’t ever given another chance. Your heart gets closed off to any possible good intentions that the person might have. It doesn’t matter if you are wrong or right about the person. You need to give others the opportunity to see things for themselves. You need to learn how to keep your comments to yourself and be a better person.

Try your best not to get caught up in all of the trash talk or group thinking. Try to be the one who persuades the group to talk about something else instead. The more you can stop yourself and the group from spewing mean things about other people, the less chances there are that all your conversations will be trash talking.

Words are very powerful. Sometimes we don’t realize just how powerful they are. It is a constant presence in our day to day life. Make a promise to yourself to cut down on your trash talking. Help to make the world a nicer place. Maybe the ripple effect of your behavior will travel farther than you could possibly imagine.