How can we deal with gossipy or critical family members?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. Hare Krishna. Yeah, that’s true.
Yeah, in that situation it’s quite difficult. Now, generally if we tell people not to talk it becomes very difficult. They are not ready to listen.
But, you know, often conversation requires the art of divergence. So, when a conversation is going in a particular direction we may always stop it but we can divert it. And, generally, if there are some people with whom we need to talk then everybody likes to talk about themselves.
So, if they are finding faults with someone and we tell them don’t find faults they will not agree. But, we just ask them some questions about themselves. You know, they are happy to talk about themselves.
So, people who like to find faults with others like to talk good about themselves. So, that’s one thing which we could do. By which basically we need to divert.
But, more importantly, you know, if at the appropriate times, because you know, people who find faults with others, speak negative about others, they themselves are not very happy people also. Because that negativity doesn’t just affect others, it affects them also. So, at the appropriate times, when maybe they are in a more reflective mood or in a more understanding mood, if we try to give a more balanced perspective, not in a confrontational mood, but just in an assistive mood, then, it may go, I didn’t know this about this person, they were telling this thing, this person did like this, this person did like that, but then we help them see another perspective, some people are conditioned in a particular way, we don’t know what a person has gone through, sometimes some people may have been brought up in a family or environment where everybody was negative and that’s why they have become negative, but if we try to give a positive example to them, if we judge them and condemn them for the negativity, that is perpetuated, that they will become defensive, if we just passively submit to it, then that will aggravate it, but if we intelligently divert it and then intelligently give them an alternative perspective, things can change,