Positivity: Turning Negativity Around

What do I do when I am surrounded by negative people?

That’s a really good question. What DO you do? In especial when you have no means by which to escape them (co-workers and family come to mind here).

This is not too dissimilar in respects to news articles and social media posts calling attention to negative things, except those you can delete and ignore. How do you deal with other people’s negativity and not have that impact you?

Every situation is different of course. But I have a couple thoughts on how to turn matters around and find/generate more Positivity.

Redirect. Try to change the topic of conversation, try to introduce something positive or pleasant or otherwise happy.

Don’t engage. When they try to get you to converse with them about that person or that negative thing or what-have-you, don’t let them engage you in the conversation. Avoid the topic and try to shift the engagement to something else. Redirect.

Gratitude. Talk about things for which you are grateful. Verbalize these things and give thanks for them, say how grateful you are for these good things and ask those around you to express things they are also grateful for.

Confront. I am not suggesting you be in any way negative or cruel, but some people simply do NOT realize how negative they might be. So you might need to point it out to them as gently as you can, so as to bring it to their attention. You might even convince them to change their approach.

Excuse yourself. Come up with a reason to walk away and remove yourself from the situation, even temporarily. Trouble with this is that the negative person will still likely be there when you return, but if the other four ideas I have mentioned above are no good for you, then it might be your best pursuit.

The main thing is to not let those negative people change your attitude and your own focus to negativity. Yes, this is certainly easier said than done, but it is still totally doable. You can’t change someone else’s feelings, but you CAN change and control your own. The key to handling negative people is to keep yourself positive and not give in to their negativity. You always have choices.

Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that you will sometimes encounter negative people, you have options for how to deal with them. By choosing an option to keep yourself from joining them in feeling, thinking and acting negative you empower yourself. When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings. We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for. Gratitude leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

This is the seventy-ninth entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.