Kay:
Hey there family and welcome back. We talk a lot here on the Kay & Shi Show about what to do in order to live your best life. But today we’re going to talk about things that we don’t do.
Shi:
In this series of installments, we’re looking to bring you some of the actions and activities, and behaviors that we intentionally do not partake in and engage in.
Kay:
Now, a lot of these are things we do not participate in now but that we have participated in in the past and that have come to bite us to the point where we have removed them from our lives.
Shi:
So, all four of the things in these series are things we used to engage in, and we want to start off with one that we probably did the most, and this is something we no longer do and that is talking smack.
Kay:
Now talking smack is a really fun thing for many, many people also known as sh*# talking…
Shi:
Or judging.
Kay:
…or judging but it can really honestly make you feel good in the moment.
Shi:
Right. Being able to criticize or raise an eyebrow at someone else, instantly bonds you with whoever you’re raising that eyebrow to. We like to think of this as that lowest form of social currency, that easiest way to connect is by making yourself feel included with someone else which means identifying someone else as an other and in a world where everything from fashion to hair choice, to music choice, to the shoes and socks you wear can be judged or criticized. You can make an “us versus them” out of anything and this is what is the trap of smack talking is because it allows you to bond with somebody but in a pretty negative and low vibrational way.
Kay:
Well, one of the sneakiest things about talking smack about other people with other people is that as that becomes a part of your vernacular, eventually it wiggles its way into your own mind until you’re talking smack to you about you and the world around you.
Shi:
And what you focus on expands. So, if you’re focusing continuously on criticizing and judging others, you’re just training your brain that that’s what is acceptable and what you want it to do. And boy, we let our brains get trained down that direction for a long time and there are lots of nefarious ways that this comes up, not just in that, oh, I want to be hurtful to be hurtful. But we have an instance that we want to share with you that was really, I think the turning point and that clarity epiphany moment for us that this was something we needed to address in our lives, and it happened on an airplane.
Kay:
Back in 2018, we had just landed in; I forget what airport it was, or I think probably Orlando.
Shi:
Yeah.
Kay:
…and as is customary on an airplane, you know, people got up really quickly and instantly flooded the aisles. Now, a woman particularly got into the aisle and rushed forward and immediately rushed maybe three seats in front of our seat from the back of the plane. It didn’t really seem like she had any place to go and just rushed to that point of rushing to get ahead of the crowd.
Shi:
Yeah. You can imagine this. You’ve probably been in this situation before, right. We all know the protocol is that we’re going to single file exit from the front rows towards the back. So, when someone stands up in the back immediately upon landing and rushes to the front of the plane and inevitably gets stuck by other people. She happened to get stuck in front of our seat and the level of indignation that we felt about not being able to deplane and deboard in the way that we think and agree is socially acceptable really had us fired up about it to the point where we were commenting on it, pointing to her, talking to each other loudly about it. In fact, loudly enough that she could hear us.
Kay:
We talked so much smack about this particular woman that she actually ended up slowly taking steps backward until she was almost at the seat that she had originated at and when we were finished with this encounter, we deplaned. She actually did deplane right before we did and we were in the airport lobby kind of waiting on our baggage and Shila and I looked at each other and said, do you know what? I don’t think we want to be those kinds of people.
Shi:
I do not feel good about… Sure, I got the behavior change that I wanted, and we shamed her…
Kay:
Yep.
Shi:
…into stepping back, but we felt so gross about it, and we realized that we had come from this place of self-righteousness and total indignation about our expectation of what the world needs to look like. Now, of course, there’s something to be said for how we hold people to social norms and expectations, but that wasn’t what this was about. This was about the fact that the characters that we want to be aren’t the kind of women who act like that in a trivial situation where somebody surged forward a few seats and we would let our emotional status get hijacked to the point where we were talking so much smack and focusing so much on it that we did affect the behavior but we probably also affected her psyche and self-esteem and was that really worth the cost to do that to another human being? We ultimately decided it wasn’t.
Kay:
Now you’ll be happy to know that since that instance, we have worked very hard on not being quite so vocal when those situations happen, particularly the airplane example. Now we fly quite a bit and the flight that we had right after that flight, somebody got up and surged forward and Shila and I kept our mouths shut, but we gave each other a big look.
Shi:
Big looks.
Kay:
Right. And now it has evolved to this point four years later where I barely even know when it’s our time to get off the plane because not paying attention to the people in the aisles has become the new way of doing things and we’re more relaxed. We are not focused quite so much on others, and it saves our internal experience from getting riled up and then projecting onto someone else in a way that you’re not proud of.
Shi:
So, the first in our series here was of things we don’t do is talking smack. Certainly, we at least do this far, far less, and bring a lot more intention and attention to what we do. But the next one up is one I’m really excited to talk about, and that is the behavior of drinking alcohol.
