Dealing with negative people

In today’s connected social world, we find a diverse range of individuals classifiable as positive and negative personalities. Positive people tend to spread happiness, enthusiasm, energy, motivation and kindness.

Negative people spread gloom, demotivate everyone, cause irritation and tension. Sometimes it becomes a part of our daily routine to interact with such people because of our work, education or any other commitment. This is a difficult situation to be in.

You might have to meet these people everyday, but there is no reason to tolerate them and keep them in your lives. It is said that you become the average of five people you spend most of your time with. So be careful not to waste your time with negative people. Dealing with them will take up your time and effort and serve you no good except wasted energy. Over the years, I have come across this. I have a few ways of dealing with them:

• Identification: The first step is to identify the negative people in your life. This is the most difficult step and most of us do not even identify their influence in our life. Look around and ask yourself, who is that person who talks things that irritate you the most? Who is the one who always discourages you? Who is that person who thinks he is above everything and belittles your view? There will be a name that just popped in your mind now. Yes, you have identified that person!
• Compassion: Every negative person is a sad being inside. So next time they bug you, feel pity for them and pray for the sad human being trapped inside their body. Do not tell it out loud as it will cause their temper to explode! But this remains the truth. Ignore their antics and feel sorry for them that they cannot enjoy life as much as you do.
• Earphones: Get a pair of earphones or have an imaginary earphones over your ears which filter our all the negativity coming towards you. If you are getting irritated when someone talks to you, cover your ears and play your favourite tune. Will bring your joy!
• Confront: The best you can do to yourself and for them is to confront them and inform them that their actions are affecting you. Tell them that this behaviour is unacceptable and that you’ll be forced to move away from them as they continue bringing in negativity in your life. Some of them do not realise their mistake until you point it to them. Upon realisation, they might change their stance and become more understanding and less negative.
• Offer Help: Almost all the negative people are themselves suffering from various issues like low self esteem, lack of confidence, insecurity etc. When you do something that they cannot, they start acting weird. Sometimes this can be fixed by just talking to them and making them understand this. Offer to help them in anyway you can and assure them that you want to help them. This might just change things.
• Be Yourself: Make a promise to yourself that whatever someone else does or says to you, nothing is going to bring down your motivation and energy. This comes with real good practice and it took a long time for me to perfect it. But it is doable and after a while, you will become completely immune to negativity.

Always do remember, our time here is limited. We cannot waste it for someone who is doing us no good and is jeopardising our chance of success in life. Drop them and move on. You don’t need to carry baggage. Be optimistic about the future and sing along!

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