Pissing on Parades

Alternate title: Your Negativity is Like Social Sandpaper

Girl 1: “I just got a promotion! Man I’m so pumped!”
Girl 2: “So what are you like mid-level manager now? Only one more rung to level 3 ‘Associate Director!”

Everyone knows someone like this. The guy who always finds the negative in every situation. The guy who is the first to comment on someone’s accomplishment and belittle it as much as possible. Of course they’ll find some excuse when questioned like, “What? It’s the truth! It’s barely a promotion!”

The funny part is that they’re also the first person to complain about have little-to-no social life at the team lunch.

Guy 1: “Guy 2, what did you do this weekend?”
Guy 2: “Nothing, it sucked. My best-friend stood me up at the 3D IMAX so I just went home and played with my cats.”

This person hasn’t learned a valuable life skill. A skill that took me a long time to get. In a world full of egocentrics, it’s a skill I’m afraid isn’t being development as much as it used to. It’s simple really.

Find the positive in every situation, and only bring up the negative to correct bad behavior.

People don’t like people who always talk about the negative. It’s not that they don’t like hearing the negative, it’s that they like hearing the positive much more. In fact, in my experience, people are far more likely to be receptive to the negative if you can mix in a positive as well.

So how do you fix this?

Always lead and close with a positive.

It’s all about the serial position effect. When presented a serial list of items, people are more likely to remember the fist and last item, than those in the middle. It’s not that items in the middle are not heard, it’s just that the first and last one are remembered more easily.By doing this you’re still getting your potentially negative point in, but also making sure the person remembers the positive points in their long-term memory.

So the next time you want to say something negative. Stop. Construct your sentence to follow this simple pattern. {Positive,Negative,Positive}. Overtime I think you’ll start seeing a considerable difference in your relationships and perhaps even make a couple more friends.

If you found any value in this piece, it would mean a lot to me if you scrolled down and recommended it.