How to Not Let Gossip Ruin Your Friendships

How to Not Let Gossip Ruin Your Friendships


By Cynthia Pulse
 

Have you ever had a friendship ruined by gossip? If the answer is yes, then you understand how important it is to learn how to control conversations containing gossip, and how to respond to such relationship busters. How much gossip one should listen to is personal, meaning each individual has his/her own level of comfort when it comes to listening to other friends gossip. The problem lies in how you handle what's being said, and how you respond to the things that are being said.

There are ways, however, to head off gossip without coming across as rude or inattentive. The best way I have found is to gradually change the subject. Another way is to politely say "well enough of this talk, lets plan our outing for next weekend" or something like "I guess she has her reasons for...., now lets get to cooking dinner." This would be more of a diversion approach, which I find works really well for me.

Gossip is a normal part of life I guess, but I'm here to tell you, less is more! If you control the drama that gossip creates, you will find your life more peaceful, less worrisome and stressful. We all know stress is not good for your health, and this is just one way we can help ourselves stay healthy. We were not put on this earth to scrutinize one another, I'm pretty sure.

How well do we like it if the gossip is about ourselves? I'm not to fond of others gossiping about me or my family. I'm pretty sure no one really likes to be the center of a gossip ring much. When we are enticed to add our two cents to a bunch of gossip, we need to ask ourselves "if the tables were turned how would I feel" then I bet there wouldn't be as much gossip going around. We need to all be thoughtful of each other.

Is there such a thing as good gossip? Sure there is! A gossip about a good restaurant boosts business. Gossip is basically the spread of news, be it good or bad. One way to control bad gossip is to use good gossip. When you get the urge to gossip about someone or something, and it might be hurtful, think twice. Go with the good gossip, and talk about the new restaurant going in down the street or what a great cook your friend Susan is, or how it is a beautiful relaxing day. Stay away from negative gossip and, if you just must gossip, spread the good kind.

Are You a Lousy Friend? Here's What You Can Do to Be a Better Friend


By Militsa Georgieva Militsa Georgieva

Have you ever felt like no matter how much you try you still can't always be there when a friend needs you? Have you asked yourself if you are actually a good friend, in reality? Or if it's just in your mind thinking that you are but in fact, not? Well, the only person that can actually give an answer to such a question is the friend himself. It's really hard to evaluate oneself because often we can't see how we really are. We might have one picture in our minds about ourselves but in fact, to be totally different in the opinion of other people. Not being a good friend to somebody doesn't mean though that you don't want to, or that you can't be. If you have the wish to be that good friend for somebody then you can.


It's really important that you learn to keep yourself calm and not explode to every little thing. That's a common rule in all relationships. Fighting and screaming have ones of the worst effects on people. If you want to have a real deep friendship with somebody it's essential that you also learn how to listen to other people without interrupting them. Getting to know somebody truly means listening to them talking and absorbing all they say, all they do. If you cut them off while they talk sooner, or later they will just stop talking about themselves completely and that results in ending of the process of getting a better relationship. If the other person is not opened to you anymore or just have stopped showing you more of their character then that means that person does not trust you anymore. Like everyone knows a relationship without trust has no future.


Really important is also that you spend time having fun. Making good memories is something, which is really essential for keeping people happy and being a good friend to somebody means trying to make them happy. By making them happy you automatically become happy too.


Friendship is a lot like romantic relationships. The only difference is that the love you feel for your friends is not the kind of love that you feel for a loved one. In both types of relationships is important to maintain good talking with mutual understand without putting your anger on the other one.All of that helps building trust and that's the base for all kinds of relationships.

7 Criteria for Having Sex Without Love Getting in the Way


By Tiffany Perkins Munn Tiffany Perkins Munn


Better known as 'friends-with-benefits' (FWB), this phenomenon--defined as a part-time, limited-time or even monogamous friendship between two people who enjoy physical intimacy with each other, but are not interested in being together long-term--is becoming more publicly-discussed and acceptable with the 2011 release of No Strings Attached with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kucher and the soon-to-be-released title with the namesake Friends with Benefits, starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis.

Same as Casual Sex?

No. The friendship aspect implies the opportunity to experience mutual support, affection and enjoyment and often fulfills romantic or emotional needs.


Same as a 'One Night Stand'?


No. One night stands are typically purely for sexual gratification.


Do Men and Women See Eye-to-Eye?

I was not surprised when my Facebook poll indicated that men are all for FWB (no big surprise there), but I was shocked and amazed--to put it mildly--to discover that at least 50% of women also indicated that with the specification of the boundaries and limitations (i.e., rules), they could see a friends-with-benefits relationship working.

Deakin University researchers say that women 18-35 years of age are as likely as men to enjoy casual sexual arrangements, but for different reasons. Women say these arrangements give them sexual confidence whereas men are more likely to say they enjoy the intimacy of the friendship.

Women and men over the age of 35, who are coming out of long-term relationships or have recently gone through a divorce, are also more interested in engaging in FWB.

An increasing number of people are entering into friends-with-benefits relationships so instead of telling you not to do it, which quite frankly is DEFINITELY (bold, underscore, italics, ALLCAPS!!) my advice, here are my seven recommendations for how to do it properly!



The Criteria

1. Honesty -- With yourself. If you are secretly hoping that your FWB will turn into a long-term relationship, don't do it!

2. Discretion -- My great-grandmother used to say that if you want to keep a secret, tell a dead person.


3. Focus on the task -- Clearly the physical aspect is a key benefit here. Focus on it and do it well!


4. Trust -- In other words, don't be territorial. You don't have the right.


5. Soberness -- Need I say more?


6. Acquaintance vs. friend -- If you pick an acquaintance, you don't have to worry about losing a friend when it's all over.


7. Rules -- Clearly lay out the rules. For example, is PDA allowed (Public Display of Affection)?


And, most importantly, don't say I didn't warn you!



Tiffany welcomes your feedback, questions and queries at tiffany@thenonnegotiables.com

All Tiffany Perkins-Munn, Relationship Psychology Examiner articles © 2011 by Tiffany Perkins-Munn; Reposts permitted with link to original article. All other rights reserved.


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Anarchy as an Organizing Principle

Anarchy as an Organizing Principle


The recent spate of accounting fraud scandals signals the end of an era. Disillusionment and disenchantment with American capitalism may yet lead to a tectonic ideological shift from laissez faire and self regulation to state intervention and regulation. This would be the reversal of a trend dating back to Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in the USA. It would also cast some fundamental - and way more ancient - tenets of free-marketry in grave doubt.

Markets are perceived as self-organizing, self-assembling, exchanges of information, goods, and services. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is the sum of all the mechanisms whose interaction gives rise to the optimal allocation of economic resources. The market's great advantages over central planning are precisely its randomness and its lack of self-awareness.

Market participants go about their egoistic business, trying to maximize their utility, oblivious of the interests and action of all, bar those they interact with directly. Somehow, out of the chaos and clamor, a structure emerges of order and efficiency unmatched. Man is incapable of intentionally producing better outcomes. Thus, any intervention and interference are deemed to be detrimental to the proper functioning of the economy.

It is a minor step from this idealized worldview back to the Physiocrats, who preceded Adam Smith, and who propounded the doctrine of "laissez faire, laissez passer" - the hands-off battle cry. Theirs was a natural religion. The market, as an agglomeration of individuals, they thundered, was surely entitled to enjoy the rights and freedoms accorded to each and every person. John Stuart Mill weighed against the state's involvement in the economy in his influential and exquisitely-timed "Principles of Political Economy", published in 1848.

Undaunted by mounting evidence of market failures - for instance to provide affordable and plentiful public goods - this flawed theory returned with a vengeance in the last two decades of the past century. Privatization, deregulation, and self-regulation became faddish buzzwords and part of a global consensus propagated by both commercial banks and multilateral lenders.

As applied to the professions - to accountants, stock brokers, lawyers, bankers, insurers, and so on - self-regulation was premised on the belief in long-term self-preservation. Rational economic players and moral agents are supposed to maximize their utility in the long-run by observing the rules and regulations of a level playing field.



This noble propensity seemed, alas, to have been tampered by avarice and narcissism and by the immature inability to postpone gratification. Self-regulation failed so spectacularly to conquer human nature that its demise gave rise to the most intrusive statal stratagems ever devised. In both the UK and the USA, the government is much more heavily and pervasively involved in the minutia of accountancy, stock dealing, and banking than it was only two years ago.

But the ethos and myth of "order out of chaos" - with its proponents in the exact sciences as well - ran deeper than that. The very culture of commerce was thoroughly permeated and transformed. It is not surprising that the Internet - a chaotic network with an anarchic modus operandi - flourished at these times.

The dotcom revolution was less about technology than about new ways of doing business - mixing umpteen irreconcilable ingredients, stirring well, and hoping for the best. No one, for instance, offered a linear revenue model of how to translate "eyeballs" - i.e., the number of visitors to a Web site - to money ("monetizing"). It was dogmatically held to be true that, miraculously, traffic - a chaotic phenomenon - will translate to profit - hitherto the outcome of painstaking labour.

Privatization itself was such a leap of faith. State owned assets - including utilities and suppliers of public goods such as health and education - were transferred wholesale to the hands of profit maximizers. The implicit belief was that the price mechanism will provide the missing planning and regulation. In other words, higher prices were supposed to guarantee an uninterrupted service. Predictably, failure ensued - from electricity utilities in California to railway operators in Britain.

The simultaneous crumbling of these urban legends - the liberating power of the Net, the self-regulating markets, the unbridled merits of privatization - inevitably gave rise to a backlash.

The state has acquired monstrous proportions in the decades since the Second world War. It is about to grow further and to digest the few sectors hitherto left untouched. To say the least, these are not good news. But we libertarians - proponents of both individual freedom and individual responsibility - have brought it on ourselves by thwarting the work of that invisible regulator - the market.

Profit Shouldn't Be a Dirty Word in Material Handling

Profit Shouldn't Be a Dirty Word in Material Handling


Nobody benefits when profit is eliminated from the economic equation.

With the economy on the mend, a lot of people in the material handling industry are expecting good times without having to make any changes in the way they do business. Unfortunately, that means the continuation of one particular practice that played a major role in getting the economy in trouble a few years back.

When the "dot.coms" were flying high, they experienced rapid growth by the simple method of offering impossibly low prices and constant expansion into markets about which they knew nothing. They operated at a loss for years on end, promising investors that it would all turn around when they had achieved sufficient market share. Eventually, of course, this "lose a little on each deal but make it up in volume" business model blew up in their faces. The balloons popped, one by one, and the economy followed them down the tube.

In the material handling industry, this discredited business model is still very much in evidence. Too many companies have played the merger game, getting themselves involved in markets that they know nothing about. Too many have played the numbers game, moving money from one pocket to another to make themselves look good for one more quarter (this is called managing for stockholder value), totally forgetting about long-range planning.

Worst of all, too many companies have bought into the concept of forgoing profits in pursuit of market share, with the idea of becoming profitable once the competition is eliminated. It's called "buying a job," meaning submitting a bid that allows for little or no profit. Theoretically, this has two benefits. It gets you the job, which makes your sales figures (if not your profits) look impressive. More importantly, for some people, it prevents your competition from getting the job.

But let's look at the downside. Without profits, you have no money to invest in research and development, capital expenditures, etc. Your growth is all on paper, and will disappear as soon as you run out of money to buy jobs with.

With minimal profit margins, you have neither the money nor the inclination to service the sale after it is made. The result is an unhappy customer, and that is never good news for the long term prospects of your company.

Finally, let's say that your strategy of underbidding the competition works, and your nearest competitor goes bankrupt. What happens? Somebody buys his assets for 25 cents on the dollar and opens a new business. Since his initial investment was so low, he can undercut your prices. You haven't eliminated competition, you've made it worse.



Profit is not a dirty word. Nobody -- least of all the customer -- benefits when profit is eliminated from the economic equation. I'm not saying we shouldn't be looking for efficiencies that will allow us to keep prices down while maintaining a reasonable profit margin. Of course the customer benefits from lower prices, but the economy in general and the material handling industry in particular will be much healthier when we all admit to wanting our fair share. If you're satisfied with a 3% profit, I suggest you buy a government bond. It's safer.

The Way In Which Some People Abuse The Benefit Of Sick Pay

The Way In Which Some People Abuse The Benefit Of Sick Pay


This article describes how some people abuse the benefit of sick pay in the workplace. I am going to explain a couple of examples of this, which I have come across over the last couple of years.

There are many people who are in employment where if they are off work sick, they do not get paid. It must very much annoy these people to hear about the fortunate workers who are still paid when they are ill, abusing the system.

I have a friend who recently told me about a lady he works with. At times she will come to work with a really bad cold or cough, when really she should be at home in bed. By going to work she could be infecting other people with her germs of course. She would be asked why she had come to work when she obviously should be in bed. Her response would be that she did not want to waste her sick days when she was ill. She might as well come to work and be ill there, it would be no fun at home, she would continue.

This woman treated her sick entitlement as extra holiday days. The bosses who were unaware of her attitude presumed that when she did actually phone in sick, that she must be extremely ill, when in fact she would be perfectly fit and healthy.

Another example of abusing the sick entitlement system is a story I heard recently. The company involved had around fifteen percent of its full time staff in one of its buildings, on long term sick leave. The company then announced the closure of that particular building which would include all of the staff being made redundant. The office though would remain open for the next six months, however the only people who worked ninety percent of that six month period would be able to have full redundancy payouts. The amount of people who suddenly stopped having depression and bad backs was astonishing, they called it a miracle.

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