Negative People

Bunni left a great comment on the post about fear and I wanted to follow up on it. Her comment was about being around negative people and how that can affect our levels of fear.

The best possible thing is to avoid negative people like the plague! We all know people who never have a good thing to say about anyone or anything. As much as we can, we should avoid being around these people.

I know that some of you are saying to yourselves, “then how will they ever learn to be positive if I’m not around them to teach them?” You have a good point and here is where I will soften the idea of avoidance a little.

There are some people you cannot avoid all the time. My mother was a very negative person, but there was no way I could avoid being around her, especially in her late years and dealing with dementia. You may have parents, family or friends that are negative and you cannot avoid being around them all the time, or you do not want to avoid them.

Even though these people are negative, you want to try and show them a better way. You want them to learn to be more positive and to change their lives.

The answer is in recognizing these people for what they are, negative and hurting, and then put up your defenses against their negativity. Now this is not easy and I will say that the best defense is to avoid them, but if you can’t, or won’t, then create a mind set that will not let their negativity affect you. This is a good practice anyway since many people are somewhat negative.

Learning to defend against negativity will allow you to be around these people, have a possible affect on them, and yet not be brought down to their level. Understand that you will either have to be very strong, or you will have to limit your exposure.

Steve