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Finding yourself feeling tired and depressed or defeated for no reason? Maybe you are spending too much time with negative people. 

Instead, develop mechanisms to either cope with them or leave them behind or eventually, you will become one too. 

Ways of surviving negative people

Surround yourself with positive people who empower you.  Surrounding yourself with negative people will bring you down.  It is that simple. Identify all the positive people you know and make continual, effort to spend as much time with them as you can.    Anyone negative you need to make a conscious effort to walk away from.

 Be logical:  If negative people do you the most harm, give them the least time.  When we are left feeling, hurt, angry, or depressed after we see a particular person, we then waste even more time complaining about it, trying to work it out or getting it out of our system.    Register who you spend time with and the effect it has on you.

Don’t argue with negative people:    Don’t try to argue with their negative point of view, because you cannot change them.  Accept that it is their choice to be how they are and stay disengaged.  Feel sorry for them by all means, but concentrate on your positivity. looking after your own wellbeing, pursuing your dreams, and your positive friends. 

Deep cleanse –Make sure you add natural salt to your bath to cleanse off the negativity after you have been with negative people, and try to organize seeing them outside your home, or do a cleansing ritual after they leave.

Control the time you spend with negative people:   Rather than play too much into listening to their negatives, deliberately talk about positive, pleasurable things.  Send other friends nice messages, help your neighbor, or give up your seat on the bus. Nice gestures mean positivity will flow back to you.

Remind yourself that your behavior and emotions are still your responsibility.  The more time and energy you give to re-acting emotionally to the negative person, the more you are giving them the power to your life.  Say an affirmation to yourself before and after spending time with them, re-affirming that you are positive.

Remember positivity comes from within:  Offset their negativity, reminding yourself that your own happiness comes from within.   Remember Dr. Seuss’: “Those that matter don’t mind, and those that mind, don’t matter”.  Whenever we seek validation from others for our own happiness, we become unhappy and have no energy over to build a positive life instead. 

Control your own negative reactions:  Negative reactions are often our natural impulses when others hurt us which negative people inevitably do.   We may feel like arguing or attacking them back, dramatically unfriending them, or complaining about them to our other friends.  None of these things makes us feel better.

 Close past issues:   When we keep stressing about past situations involving negative people, we say in that past.  Instead, consciously move forward.  Try writing a letter to say why you are walking away and telling them you still care about them despite that.   You can then file the letter away, or even bury it.  Sending it will stir everything up again, whereas this gives the situation closure. 

Learn from the Positives:   When you meet someone who makes you feel really amazing, happy, and positive about life, go over the ways they had that effect on you.   Try to emulate these in your dealings with other people.  Literally treat others as you like to be treated yourself.

 Learn from negatives:   After a big bust-up with someone, we may feel ashamed, hurt, or guilty, so we cling on.   We wait in the hope of the other person making things right, coming to their senses, and apologizing for their behavior.  When that fails to happen, we remain confused, unhappy, and go over and over it again and again in our minds trying to make logical sense of it all.

Try instead to accept your part in what has happened.  Admit your contribution and your failure to forgive.   That enables us to stop the re-examining of the negatives that keep us rooted in that past situation.  Once we accept and make peace, we can invite something more positive in; for example a loving relationship to replace a negative one

Turn a negative into a positive:   Look at what has hurt you so much and vow to always do the opposite.  So if someone has lied to you, make sure you are scrupulously honest.   If they have frightened you with gloom, make a point of regaling people you meet with positive, encouraging stories especially to anyone who is fearful.  When someone has run you down, make a conscious effort to encourage and praise other people.

Resolve:  Take a vow to never again give away your power by being a victim to negative people.  You have the power to stop it completely.  Take up your power.

         “A wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim”  Maya Angelou

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This was originally written for 1230‘s Birds on the Blog