The world is filled with opportunities for making a difference — and as I journey deeper into this year and the subject matter of ‘making a difference’, I am realizing just how important it is to actually be that change/difference.

In Choices, a personal development program I coach in, one of the tools we teach trainees is called The 3 C’s. Do not Criticize. Condemn. or Complain.

It’s easy to gossip. It’s easy, in our Instant messaging, hot-wired world where bits and bytes of data reign down from the Ethernet in a never-ending stream of information to get our fill of gossip. Gossip is easy. We have newspaper columns dedicated to gossip. We have gossip magazine’s, television shows, radio talk shows all of which focus on getting to the lowdown on who’s who, who’s doing what, to whom and when and where and how much it cost and how little it took to bring someone down. Everyday we consume gossip packaged as news. Gossip is big business.

But it’s not my business. Yet, I catch myself indulging and wonder why is it so much easier to gossip than to stay true to living by the 3’s?  Do not Criticize. Condemn. or Complain.

Gossip is insidious. We package it up in ‘well it’s just my opinion but…. she said, he should have, she didn’t he did… but don’t tell anyone okay? I know I shouldn’t be repeating this but…’ commentary and slide down the slippery slope of saying about others what we hope no one ever says about us.

How we do one thing is how we do all things.

When I indulge in gossip, I am doing what I don’t want done to me.

There is a difference between critical analysis of what’s happening in our world and gossip. Gossip is always personal. Gossip is always about making someone else look small by making me look big.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s vital that we talk about what is happening in our world. It’s important to be discerning, to be critical of processes and policies that undermine our social fabric, that keep people in their places, that keep people from achieving their dreams, from rising out of poverty, from throwing off the yoke of dictatorship, or anything that would prevent them from being free.

It is not important that we gossip. About the people making up our headlines or standing in the sidelines of our lives. It’s not important that we talk about the girlfriend who just got married, again, or divorced, again, or a facelift, again, or a new diamond, again, or whatever else we find to criticize, condemn or complain about their lives.

So, here’s my commitment to making a difference in February. I will not gossip. I will not participate in feeding the grist that churns the chafe of all the things I see wrong in other people’s lives, or that I perceive they are doing that I’d like to criticize, condemn or complain about them for.

I hereby declare: February — A Gossip Free Month.

Care to join me? Care to watch your language and your thoughts? Care to be part of making a world of difference by not criticizing, condemning or complaining about your friends, family and neighbours?

This could be fun. To create a movement of letting go of the 3 C’s of negativity and embracing the 3 C’s of positively affecting our world, of being human with  all our creative force alive to the power we possess to Celebrate. Cooperate. and Create a world of difference in our own backyards!