Dealing With Negative People In Your Life

Negative people have this uncanny ability to just suck the life right out of you – the happiness, at the very least. Unfortunately, it appears that negative people are everywhere. I know them, you know them, your grandmother knows them. So, when everything in your life is good, or you’re simply the kind of person who always views things in a positive light, and you have to deal with someone who just insists on raining on your parade, how do you deal? How do you effectively handle a negative nelly?

Don’t Engage Them

There is a big difference between the friend who is having a plain old awful day and wants to vent and the friend who finds fault in everything, all the time, no matter what. Stop engaging that girl. Don’t get all caught up in her doom and gloom. Try to change the subject, or just distance yourself. Negative people will suck the life right out of you and make you feel down. You don’t need that.

Don’t Take Negativity Personally

There are people out there who are just so negative they cannot find happiness in anything. For example, say you get engaged and you’re showing off your ring and sharing the romantic proposal with the girls in the office. Negative Nelly overhears you and says, “He probably got a lap dance at the strip club last weekend and proposed out of guilt, just like a man.” It might be hard not to take that personally, but don’t. She’s unhappy with herself, not you or your man.

Tell Negative People to Shut It

You can probably find a nice way of brushing off the negativity but if that doesn’t work, perhaps you just need to be blunt. You don’t have to tell her to shut it, but you can tell her that her negativity is desperately unattractive and that you’d prefer to keep that out of your life, which means she needs to tone it down or get going.