Dealing with negative people

Are you looking to be happy? Well, here’s news for you. You’ll never attain the full level of happiness if you are surrounded by negative people.

Take it from me. I have a whole lot of experience when it comes to being surrounded by negative people.

Not only will you be unhappy day in day out, it will also affect your lifestyle and your ability to achieve your goals.

You may not realise how serious the impact of being surrounded by negative people is until it’s too late.

 

How could negative people impact your life?

• You’ll find that you are constantly unhappy when surrounded by negative people
• Your thoughts will pre-dominantly be negative. Spend enough time around negative people and you’ll become negative yourself
• As you begin to become negative, this will affect your life goals. Is there something you are working towards? It’s likely that you’ll not be in your most resourceful state to achieve your goals. Infact, you may give up on your goals
• As you begin to become negative, your focus, drive and motivation will diminish. You’ll start procrastinating more. You’ll go off-track with your goals
• As you spend more time around negative people, you’ll naturally also become negative and this will affect your relationships. Your friends and family may start distancing themselves from you
• Negative people will influence you in a way that may diminish your lifestyle. You may struggle to sleep, you may find it difficult to exercise, you may make it a habit to eat junk food and you may constantly stress
• Negative people have a way of making you feel bad about yourself and put you down. This may affect your self-confidence
• Negative people have a way of making everything look bad. You will forget how to have fun, you won’t remember what it feels like to celebrate something, infact, you may look for an excuse not to have fun. You may stop going out, you may not take up that hobby, you may distance yourself from friends. All of these will affect your happiness and in-turn affect your well-being

 

How do you identify negative people?

• They are never happy. Everytime you are around a negative person, you’ll sense that they are in a bad mood.
• They complain about everything. Nothing seems to go right for them.
• They’ll put you down and discourage you from achieving your goals. They’ll tell you it won’t work.
• Everytime you suggest doing something fun, they say no.
• According to negative people, there’s something wrong with everyone. They’ll find faults in every human.
• Negative people enjoy blaming circumstances, people and external events for their misfortunes. They never take responsiblity.
• Negative people are quitters. They’ll always find a reason to quit.
• Negative people frequently get into fights and arguments. They always seem to have a problem and are constantly looking to argue about something.
• Their lifestyle may not be the best i.e they may not exercise, they may eat junk food pretty much everyday, they may not have friends, they may spend a lot of time indoors, they may consume a lot of alcohol, they may smoke and take drugs, they may be violent.
• They exaggerate every situation and find the worst possible meaning of any situation.
• They feel that everyone is out to get them.
• They’ll constantly tell you what’s wrong with you.

As you can read above, being around negative people can be very dangerous for you if you don’t take precautions.

It’s very important to identify negative people early on and take measures so that they don’t affect your outlook on life.

 

How to deal with negative people?

 

Distance yourself from negative people physically

Trust me, this is the best solution. If you are able to, just cut that person out of your life or distance yourself from them.

The less time you spend around negative people, the more likely that your life won’t get affected.

Once you start being affected by their negativity, your own life will quickly spiral downwards. You’ll start thinking negatively and it will affect your work, your personal life, your mental well-being and even your physical well-being.

You may struggle to sleep which will inturn affect your immunity, increase anxiety and stress levels, diminish productivity, take you further away from your goals and happiness.

Cut them out completely or limit the amount of time you spend around them.

Find ways to spend time away from them without up-setting them if you can’t completely cut them out.

 

Distance yourself from negative people mentally

It’s not always possible to distance yourself physically from people especially if they are your family members, good friends or co-workers.

In this case you need to be stronger and distance yourself from their negativity mentally.

You, personally, need to have the mental strength, energy and confidence not to be brought down by negativity.

It will take a lot of mental energy which I am not happy for you to spend because you could be using that energy to do something more productive. But, if there’s no choice, you have to use it.

Distancing yourself mentally from negative people means that you do not get affected by their negative thoughts. When they complain about other people, you do not accept that. When they tell you it won’t work, you do not believe that. When they tell you that you are useless, you don’t take it to heart. When they refuse to partake in fun, you find other ways to have fun. When they look for reasons to fight with you, you walk away. When they put you down, you find ways to become happy again.

You have to be mentally strong to pretty much ignore anything that these people say or do and keep your own positive light shining bright.

It will be very difficult if these people are important to you. Even if you try hard not to listen to them, somehow, a little negativity will get to you. So make it a habit to get out, have fun, meet your positive friends and surround yourself with positive people and happy things when you are not with that negative person. You need to counterbalance that negativity.

 

Try to understand why they are negative and see if you can help them

I would not advocate for this because taking on this responsibility means that you’ll need to expose yourself to their negativity. You need to love them enough and be mentally strong enough to not let them affect you.

So do you love them enough to let them affect your lifestyle?

If the answer is yes, then read on. But still, think about this twice. If you fall into the negativity trap, you’ll both feed off each other and your life path may change.

When they complain about something, ask them what they would have preferred instead – without sounding as though you are confronting them. This way they might question their own complaint and realise that whatever the outcome, they’ll never be happy.

When they tell you it won’t work, ask them why? Listen to their reasons, maybe you might get some constructive criticism. BUT don’t let them get into your head and discourage you.

When they tell you there’s something wrong with you, ask them how they would like you to improve.

When they tell you they don’t want to do something fun, ask them how what else they would like to do that could be fun.

When they complain and blame everyone and everything else about their problems, listen. And then provide some advice e.g that was the past, it has happened. Now how will you improve your future so that you do not feel this way 5 years from now? Or what good thing came out of that?

The key here, in my opinion, is to understand what they are complaining about and why they are complaining about it. Then you need to listen to them and ask how it could be different such that they are happy about the outcome.

When you ask a negative person about what would make them happier, they may realise themselves that actually there might not be another solution that could make them happier and maybe there is a problem with them. That is when, the improvement will begin.

You also constantly need to encourage them, compliment them, do affectionate things for them like cook them something they like, or buy them flowers. When they start to laugh or feel happier, it may pull them out of their negativity bubble. You may also need to encourage them to go for their goals and lead by example. Perhaps when they see you being happy, positive, working towards your goals, your positivity may rub off against them.

Only help a negative person if you feel they can be helped and you are mentally strong enough to deal with them.

Dealing with negative people

All the points I’ve mentioned above are from my own experience and how I dealt with negative people to prevent them from affecting my life.

I hope the above was useful information for you and if you have found other ways to deal with negative people, please feel free to comment below.

Here’s to a bright and positive day xxx