A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the pub — a general area where students can eat and relax in between classes — when I heard someone harshly talking about a couple of her own teammates (I won’t repeat the exact words). I immediately thought, "Wow, this girl is being really mean."

And then I realized I was a hypocrite.

I know that I’ve sounded exactly like her before, maybe even said the same words as her. We all have. If you’re a human being, you’ve probably talked sh*t about someone you know, whether that person is your friend, a family member, a teammate, a roommate, a co-worker, a classmate or anyone else you interact with on the regular.

And what’s worse is that I judged her based off of a couple sentences of words that she said — a very small amount of words that definitely doesn’t represent her as a person.

Think about a typical day in your life. How often do you talk negatively about other people? If you rarely do so, then good for you. But if most of us were to keep tabs on how often we gossiped or made snarky remarks about someone, the results would tally up to a really sad number.

So, why do we talk about people behind their backs? I think we judge way too quickly — something that is definitely pronounced by social media. It’s so easy to look at a picture of someone that we don’t know and make snap judgments (we’re all guilty of Facebook and Instagram stalking) because we have no loyalty to their feelings.

But a lot of the time, we talk about people that we care about. Which makes sense, in a way, because if you spend enough time with someone, they’re bound to do something that annoys you. I’m sure everyone has a roommate horror story or a disgruntled co-worker incident. But talking about people rarely helps the problem. Instead, it usually just makes you angrier, and if word gets back to them, it will definitely make the situation worse.

If someone is doing something that frustrates us, we’re usually intimidated by the idea of confrontation. Confrontation — that’s a scary word. But it really doesn’t have to be. If you looked one of your friends in the eyes and said, “Hey, I really don’t like when you talk to me like that,” or “I think that you’re a great leader, but sometimes other people on the team want to voice their opinion,” what do you think they would say?

People usually respond humbly to someone that’s just trying to be honest with them. As long as your words are constructive and reasonable, people usually take them into consideration. And if you talk to people in a nice way about whatever is bothering you, their respect for you just might grow.

We all have that friend who’s a little too loud (guilty) or a little too bossy or grumpy or just talks too much about cats (definitely guilty). But if we make snap judgments all the time and don’t tolerate our friends’ quirks, then we will be a lot less happy with humanity then we could be.

In the end, talking about people in a mean way doesn’t make anyone feel good, and it actually hurts us. By being negative towards other people, we’re more likely to think negatively about other areas of our lives. We’re also wasting time criticizing people that we don’t know—or if we do know them, we’re potentially saying words that could hurt our friends’ feelings.

I’m not saying that we should never vent, because venting to someone outside of the situation is actually really healthy. But there’s a difference between saying, “Why is he being such a #!*&% ,” and “Why is he in a bad mood?”

Let’s all just stop criticizing people so easily. Maybe the girl that I overheard was having a bad day. Maybe your friend is going through a tough time and has been giving you attitude. Maybe someone just watched this video of Donald Trump's most idiotic moments and is feeling particularly hopeless about humanity. Maybe you genuinely don’t agree with someone’s opinions or values. You don’t have to be friends with them — just be friendly, and the world will be such a happier place.

It might sound impossible to stop giving people “the side eye” for that shirt they’re wearing, or to not complain about our family members’ incessant Facebook posting (you know who you are). But maybe we should re-think our judgments and complaints and try being more positive, not only for the sake of other people, but for our own positive mental state.