Kibitzer

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Uman hilabtonon man sija? This thought often comes to mind as you notice that there are persons who ENJOY minding others’ business. As observant as we can be, it often dawn on us that their “businesses” are more foul and vile as those they gloat on.

Some theories from a multitude of literature are published. One is this: People don’t mind their own business because they honestly don’t know what else to do with their time. They are so bored with themselves and their lives that they’re looking for ways to bring some excitement and exhilaration into theirs. And unfortunately for those around them, interfering in the life and affairs of others helps them forget how bored they truly are (Saviuc, 2018).

This could be alarming since people who do not know how to manage their resources (like time) will lead to become unsuccessful ones. Management of the things in the mind is also another thing to consider hence, the alarming rate of people who are edging towards mental illness is escalating. There is really a need for the individual to check and revisit the things s/he is doing to be able to monitor personal well-being. One effective thing to do is list down what one feels and evaluates them.

Paul (2019) said: People who don’t mind their own business are people who don’t believe in the concept that everybody is allowed to make their own choices and that the way they choose to live their life is by no means affecting anyone’s life. Every choice has a consequence and all individuals have to face them on a personal or private level.

People often have hidden insecurities. They think that they need to do something or say something so that they feel significant and find themselves worthy to be praised. They constantly complain that things are not good enough or according to their set standards.

People who intrude without due cause or permission are interlopers. If the purpose of the intrusion was to deliberately interfere, then they could also be called kibitzers. Kibitzer" is usually applied to a person who watches other people playing a game (usually cards, but could be chess, etc.) and offers unwanted advice. It's distracting and annoying, but a kibitzer would generally not interrupt the actual game.

There is a need for us to mind our own business. Let us monitor our own growth and accumulate good things for the greater good. Nothing beats a person who can improve one’s self to become an instrument of change for the betterment of the ecology s/he belongs.

We learn by doing, trying, and facing the consequences of our own actions. When you meddle in other people’s business, you are involving yourself in a situation where the outcome doesn’t fall on you. If you don’t have to face the consequences of your advice, how can you ever know if it was good or not? How can you ever realize what you may have gotten wrong? Minding your own business is the best way to grow in ways that will actually benefit you, because the lessons you learn will come from real-life application (Hadeed, 2020).

Personal growth is a continuous process. You will have to develop a daily habit to learn new things. Your learning experiences and learning desires are important to ensure an optimal result. Personal development is an effort to improve your skill and thought as well as to make your struggles easier with a better understanding.

Personal improvement, according to Petrie (2018) cannot be achieved in a single day. You will have to make the process gradual by enriching your thoughts. It is possible when you will try to come out of your comfort zone. There are many ways to ensure your growth. You can use social media, attend conferences and listen to podcasts to know more about your profession, business or personal growth.

Let others do their things. Keep busy. Aim for self-growth. MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!

 

 

 

They Belittle

 

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Hilom pero layom! Makalaong kaw na bootan ambaja… There are those people who seem to fade on the background. These are the quiet ones when in a gathering. They seem to be contented being the wallflowers but when they are by their group, they are like bombs exploding with criticisms and gossips.

Some researchers argue that gossip helped our ancestors survive. Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar first pioneered this idea, comparing gossip to the grooming primates engage in as a means of bonding. Instead of picking fleas and dirt off one another to bond, Ludden explains, we now talk, which is “where gossip comes in, because chit-chat is mostly talking about other people and conveying social information.”

But what about those people who are feeding on malicious gossip? Is it a result of poor mental or intellectual capacity? Or they are natural born back-stabbers…

The Collins dictionary defines malicious gossip this way: If you describe someone's words or actions as malicious, you mean that they are intended to harm people or their reputation, or cause them embarrassment and upset.

The journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that the typical person spends about 52 minutes per day gossiping. Mark Leary, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University who specializes in social and personal psychology, explains it this way: Gossiping is a fundamental human instinct because our lives are deeply rooted in groups. We not only live in groups, but we also depend on the people in our groups to survive.

But for those whose intentions are vile, Ahad (2015) mentioned, one of the reasons why gossiping is bad is because it can ruin the other person’s reputation. No one is born evil; we are good people on the inside so everyone should be given the benefit of the doubt. However, if you’re one to maliciously spread rumors about someone, it can really fog their reputation thus affecting them when trying to meet new people or land a new job.

Spreading gossip can offend people and rightfully so. As a result, you can be confronted about your bad habit. Not only is this embarrassing and awkward for you, but you usually will end up looking like the bad person for spreading gossip or rumors.

For us, we eject these people from our ecology. They do not allow us to grow but hamper our being and becoming. These people will become hurdles to our success since they always put us down. They are not motivators since they enjoy putting more darkness in to our life. We embrace the light by pushing them out of our paths.

They are like that because they take their confidence from hurting others. Their only way to feel superior is to spread vile rumors. Actually, this is a manifestation of inferiority. They do not have the courage to speak their thoughts up front since they know who they are. They will then bloat their egos when the source of their inferiority is not around. They gossip.

Don’t associate with people who find such great joy in belittling others. Be very careful about what you choose to tell these people. They might be gossiping about you soon. Remember, they LIKE belittling others and that doesn’t exclude you.

We continue to better ourselves. We improve and gain what we deserve. We acquire more knowledge and use them well. The envious ones will have MORE to gossip about. They will eventually spend more time with this task and forget about their own well-being. They will be left behind.

Let us give them OUR efforts and simple successes. These things are their sources of malicious efforts to bring us down. Eventually, since we will be having more and them less, the rest of their lives will be spent looking for the loopholes of others’ success.

 

The Silent Killers

 

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Pinta mangatik, ambaja kun ya kaw pinta manlibak! Beware of the people who patronize you. They are doing it for something to feed their own SELF. These selfish individual has only one concern: that is to bloat their SELF. They do not feel guilt once they stab you at the back since they are engrossed with flattening their PERCEIVED GREATNESS.

Patronizing is the act of appearing kind or helpful but betraying a feeling of superiority. This is a behavior to be avoided as it can make others feel like you look down on them. A subtle form of bullying, patronizing behavior in the workplace can take many forms including making belittling comments or more talking about people behind their backs (Gervais, 2012).

People act patronizing for different reasons, but usually it boils down to insecurity and/or arrogance. One of the main causes was theorized by Piaget called egocentric behavior. Egocentrism refers to someone's INABILITY to understand that another person's view or opinion may be different than their own. It represents a cognitive bias, in that someone would assume that others share the same perspective as they do, unable to imagine that other people would have a perception of their own. Although this was focused on children, developmental psychologists theorized that there are adults who are stuck on this stage.

There are people in the ecology who make their tactics of egocentrism as if they like you. They give you compliments and they even praise the minute things you do. But deep in them, they are actually doing this to gain your affection and attention which will later be used for their own benefit. They are doing the same to others. Those who dislike you will also be patronized by them. They will agree on your seemingly “perverse” ways but praise you up front.

These are dangerous people.

The Institute for Safe Medical Practices warns against the negative impacts of disrespectful behavior as it has been known to “chill communication and collaboration, undercut individual contributions, undermine staff morale, increase staff resignations and absenteeism, create an unhealthy or hostile work environment, and cause some to abandon their profession.” When patronizing behaviors are present a person’s ability to think clearly, make sound judgments, and speak up regarding questions or concerns is diminished.

Since we cannot change them since it is in their power to do so, we can only change our behavior towards them. We can leave them to themselves and the people they deserve to be. Since they do not want to be corrected and will stick to their own beliefs, let them be. Their own success is determined by their actions. One might wonder what kind of success that would be! We can move forward and let them rot with their insecurities!

Everyone knows what it’s like to be around someone who just doesn’t make them feel great about themselves, do the rest of the humanity a favor and actively work to not be that person and help to pour into others to foster a positive space for collaboration and communication.

Do not stick to these people. They are just roadblocks to your dynamism. They always pull you down because you’re on top of them! They always talk at your back simply because they are BEHIND you! Move on. Life is better without them.

 

 

Those Who Blame

 

                                                          

Ikaw na may hinoon pakasad-on! There are those people who do not understand that they are their own enemy. Since they are selfish and the world seems to revolve around them, they will look for someone to blame about their inadequacies. Even if you are doing the right thing, they still find time looking for petty mistakes just to keep their pathetic lives intact.

People’s perception of their competence often diverges from their true level of competence. We argue that people have such erroneous view of their competence because self-evaluation is an intrinsically difficult task. People live in an information environment that does not contain all the data they need for accurate self-evaluation.

From the perspective of self-perception theory (Bem, 1967, 1972), we get to know ourselves in much the same way we get to know others. Just as we might observe someone’s action to make inferences about their desires, we may try to understand our attitudes by observing our own behavior. In Jamesian terms, self-perception theory posits that the perceiver self learns about internal attributes by observing external aspects of the perceived self.

Research supports the hypothesis that self-knowledge can be derived from behavior (Festinger, 1957; Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), but people perceive their internal thoughts and feelings to be more diagnostic of themselves than long-term observation of their overt behavior (Andersen & Ross, 1984).

Poor self-evaluation mixed with pride can be fatal. This often causes friction among family members and the people around the person. A vicious cycle of mood swings, conflict with others and the feeling of emptiness will overwhelm the person that the constant longing to feed the self is felt.

These people can be dangerous since they will make moves to destroy those who threaten their SELF. They spread vile rumors and perform character assassinations to those they consider as “the enemy”. Even if their “enemy” has good intentions, they need to destroy that “roadblock” to allow the selfish motives to continue.

Self-perception theory explains one way we can evaluate the self in the absence of other people. Yet most of our lives are spent in social settings; so it is reasonable to wonder whether other people play a role in how we come to know ourselves. That is why feedback is now accepted as a tool to look deeper into the self.

The problem is this: most of these types do not listen to others. They continue to do what they please and consider themselves as correct all the time.

Self-esteem is used to refer to the way people evaluate their various abilities and attributes. For example, a person who doubts his ability in school may be said to have low academic self-esteem and a person who thinks she is good at sports may be said to have high athletic self-esteem. Selfishness can oftentimes be a by-product of low self-esteem.

The terms self-confidence and self-efficacy have also been used to refer to these beliefs, and many people equate self-confidence with self-esteem. We prefer to call these beliefs self-evaluations or self-appraisals, as they refer to the way people evaluate or appraise their physical attributes, abilities, and personality characteristics (Brown, et.al, 2006).

Instead of being selfish, why not work on becoming self-confident by looking into our own strengths and weaknesses and make it as our lifestyle rather than blaming others who are just trying to make themselves better?

Cleaning the Backyard

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Mag-una gajod ta panilhig sa kauglingon na lagwerta! Do you still remember the story about a woman who constantly commented how her neighbor hangs “dirty” laundry on the clothesline? She often mentioned how her neighbor’s unclean habits may affect the health of the family members. Then one day, her husband cleaned the glass on their window and the woman realized that it was the window which is dirty all the while.

Deflecting is a psychological defense mechanism that people use to take the blame off of them. When they are deflecting, they are trying to make themselves feel less bad for their wrongdoings. This likely happens due to past experiences of being in trouble for things.

Most of the time, they do this so that they will not confront their own realities. They might experience some turmoil and they are seeing that their personal lives are in a mess, they want to deflect the attention to others. In this manner, they are protecting the SELF at the expense of others.

Deflection according to Horn (2020) is one of the many defense mechanisms. When someone deflects, they are trying to feel less guilty, avoid negative consequences, and put the blame on others. It is a learned defense mechanism, typically starting from early childhood. Most people have heard children blame their siblings for something they did. Usually, this behavior is diminished as the child enters other development stages. However, the habit doesn’t always go away when someone enters adulthood. This can be a serious problem and can have a large effect on their relationships.

Since it has become a habit, there are adults who are still trapped on this mechanism to the point that they are not focused on themselves. They probably did some efforts to correct their mistakes but they feel that they were exercises in futility. To cope, they deflect.

Psychological deflection is somewhat similar to blame-shifting and it is a narcissistic abuse tactic that is often used by narcissists but more respectively, Covert narcissists in order to move attention for their bad behaviors away from them, and then redirect it towards other people they may use as their scapegoats. With this tactic, a narcissist is able to control the mind and the emotions of everyone around them (bricefoundation.org).

A Covert narcissist is a type of person who is very manipulative and self-centered, he/she doesn't care about other people's feelings or well-being and doesn't think about how their behavior or actions may affect other people. Other people who are not narcissists have used it also as a form of coping mechanism strategy in order to mask their own impulses (guilt) by denying their mistakes and projecting them on the people around them.

Again, this soliloquy will then be centered on how to confront the SELF first than trying to “correct” others. It has been constantly mentioned that one cannot change others but the person can only change himself. The world, even the micro-communities like a family is in chaos since people like to change others. We can only facilitate the change. It is the person who will do it for his own.

Most defense mechanisms are fairly unconscious – that means most of us don’t realize we’re using them in the moment. Some types of psychotherapy can help a person become aware of what defense mechanisms they are using, how effective they are, and how to use less primitive and more effective mechanisms in the future.

Still, reflections and introspection can be very effective. It has been theorized by progressive thinkers that reflections can become bases of personal change and developmental planning. Academic institutions are now accepting reflections as tangible outputs of training and development. And reflective assessments have been used by big universities and colleges as learning gauges.

So, if we feel that we have already cleaned the front yard, we still have the backyard which others seldom see. We also have store rooms and closets full of cobwebs and probably some skeletons in them. It is always apt to consider General Cleaning during our thinking phases.

You Are Your Thoughts

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Sige man kaw gud naghanap nan sajop nan iban ugsa taghanapan kaw sab nila nan sajop. Simply put, the Law of Attraction is the ability to attract into our lives whatever we are focusing on. It is believed that regardless of age, nationality, or religious belief, we are all susceptible to the laws which govern the Universe, including the Law of Attraction. Whatever you give your energy and attention to will come back to you.

There is this motivational speaker who mentioned that to be able to steer your destiny towards the success you are aiming for, discipline your thoughts into creating positive patterns. She also suggested keeping a journal of Gratefulness. We have to write the small things we feel good for the day to linger on these positivity. People who complain will always receive something worth complaining.

Bestselling author Jack Canfield mentions that the universe, through the Law of Attraction, will respond enthusiastically to both of these vibrations. It doesn’t decide which one is better for you, it just responds to whatever energy you are creating, and it gives you more of the same. You get back exactly what you put out there.

Family orientation greatly affects the mindset of the children which later be developed in adulthood. There are parents who constantly look for the negative actions of the children but fail to affirm the good deeds of the kids. By habit, children will then see the world in a gloomy and negative manner. Worse, the products of such un-nurturing families will soon go out of the society and create more negative ripples to others.

A negative mindset focuses on the nasty side of people, experiences, situations, or judgments. Negative thinking sustains such a mindset. Negative thinking is something we all engage in from time to time, but constant negativity can destroy your mental health, leaving you depressed and anxious.

Rethink Mental Illness mentions: "Negative thinking refers to a pattern of thinking negatively about yourself and your surroundings. While everyone experiences negative thoughts now and again, negative thinking that seriously affects the way you think about yourself and the world and even interferes with work/study and everyday functioning could be a symptom of a mental illness, including depression, anxiety disorders, personality disorders and schizophrenia."

Smith (2019) said that not everyone who engages in negative thinking has a mental illness, just like not everyone with a mental illness has constant negative thoughts. However, negative thinking can be detrimental to your mental health and quality of life, particularly when you can’t stop. Luckily, there are ways to end negative thoughts, but you must first look at what causes them.

So why dwell on such dark and destructive thoughts which muddle your mood? Instead of looking for the bad, why not look for the good? You see, we value our humanity. We adhere to the belief that people could always have both the good and the bad side, so why not nourish the good and eradicate the dark spots by intensifying the white and bright parts?

Looking for someone’s weaknesses is a sign of insecurity. The person is making this crutch with the belief that “he/she is not alone of being imperfect”. Fault finding is a clever device of the ego. It serves a purpose as far as the ego is concerned. The ego does not like to bring attention to itself, and fault finding helps draw attention away.

Seshadri (2020) wrote that fault finding provides a subtle lift to our self-esteem by diminishing the value of someone else. To gain self-confidence, there is an easy way and a hard way. The hard way is to work for it, but finding fault with others is an easier way out. When we find fault with others, there is a silent inference that we are better. But that feeling of being better ultimately makes us feel insecure as it depends on the existence of a fault within another, whether real or not. Fault finding propagates this subtle psychological lift.

Still, we reap what we sow, right? So, prepare yourself for the backlash. We always experience what we allow ourselves to be exposed into.

The sanest thing then is to dwell on the positive side of everything. A more rigorous method to reduce or eliminate fault finding is turning within through the eyes of introspection. For one fault we identify with someone or something, if we resolve to find ten errors within ourselves, we will become so busy digging up dirt within ourselves, that there may not be many opportunities to point fingers at others.

Keep a journal, for a start!

And the winner is...

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Umay baja gwapa? This is a question which has been asked from time immemorial. The cliché “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” reverberates yet society (or is it culture?) seems to dictate what is beautiful and what is not.

The Philippines is now alive as the Miss Universe pageant intensifies. Social media sites are full of screenshots from the ongoing preliminary rounds and people are so engaged in  the dichotomy of gowns, national costumes and swimwear of the contestants. Which, anthropologists and social scientists might pose these questions: What is it with beauty pageants? What is beautiful? And what is the reason on the obsession for beauty?

The media is a dominant means for transmitting and reinforcing cultural beliefs and values and, while it might not be exclusively responsible for determining the standards for physical attractiveness, it makes escaping frequent exposure to these images and attitudes almost impossible. Advertising, in particular, creates a seductive and toxic mix of messages for men and women (Mahoney, 2018).

It is in media platforms where people see whitening products, makeup, clothes and many other cosmetics which promise a beautiful outcome once patronized. Society then depicts beauty as skinny waistlines, big muscles, tan skin, full lips, large breasts and six-pack abs; dismissing the fact that true beauty originates from the inside.

In Beauty Sick: How the Cultural Obsession With Appearance Hurts Girls and Women, Northwestern University professor Renee Engeln calls this appearance-obsessed culture “beauty sick” — referring to “what happens when women’s emotional energy gets so bound up with what they see in the mirror that it becomes harder for them to see other aspects of their lives,” she writes.

The book indicts social and news media in helping to create beauty sickness by drawing on research and interviews with real-world girls and women. Engeln cites studies that show that women and girls who engage in social media report higher incidences of eating disorders, increased symptoms of depression, and more desire to have plastic surgery.

This is a classic example of allowing others or the media to define what is beautiful and what is not. And, what is the reason why Filipinos are so obsessed with beauty pageants? Is it a shallow, exploitative spectacle in an image-obsessed society?

"In the Philippine setting, pageants are an institution that will not fade away. Every sitio, barrio, barangay, local town and city holds and conducts its own beauty pageant yearly. It is part of our culture," Pawee Ventura, a pageant follower and frequent judge at international pageants, said in 2013.

"Our passion for beauty pageants could probably be traced back [to] the Spanish times. The traditional Santacruzan festival demands that the most beautiful lass in the barrio should be the Reina Elena. That in itself was a form of beauty pageant and that could be the roots of our love affair with beauty pageants," Ric Galvez, founder of leading pageant website Missosology.

But as international beauty contests evolved into redefining beauty, are Filipinos joining the bandwagon? Why was Miss Canada being bashed on social media due to her dark skin? Can they not see that the reigning Miss Universe is dark-skinned from South Africa? Is the colonial mindset brought about by the Spanish become genetically-embedded in our psyche that we limit our definition of beauty to the fair-skinned ones?

Today, marketing skin whiteners is more than just trying to appeal to Filipinos’ standards of beauty. For Filipinos, having a lighter complexion is desirable because it signifies social status, noble ancestry, and most significant, economic status. On television and film, there is also a disproportionate representation of people with whiter skin (Limos, 2019).

Human physical characteristics and their perception by the brain are under pressure by natural selection to optimize reproductive success. Men and women have different strategies to appear attractive and have different interests in identifying beauty in people. Nevertheless (Yarosh, 2019), men and women from all cultures agree on who is and who is not attractive, and throughout the world attractive people show greater acquisition of resources and greater reproductive success than others.

Studies agree that the key elements that go into the judgment are age and health, as well as symmetry, averageness, face and body proportions, facial color and texture. These elements are all Costly Signals of reproductive fitness because they are difficult to fake.

Faking it seems to be the objective of many these days. Besides, science and even Freud suggest that everything is all about reproduction. Probably, the obsession to beauty stems back to being attractive to be able to reproduce. Yet, can’t we all evolve and transcend?