Have you found it hard to stay positive when those around you are negative?

It can certainly be difficult to keep a positive attitude when the people you’re with have a negative attitude.  The advice I’ve often heard is to separate yourself from those negative people.

What If You Can’t Get Away

Getting away from the negative person is great advice, but there are times when you can’t get away from the negative people.  The negative person could be someone you work with or even a member of your family.

In a case where you can’t get away from that negative person you’ve got to find a way to keep yourself positive.  If a family member is always complaining or speaking negatively, you may be able to talk to that person and help them understand how their negativity is affecting not only you but that person as well.

If it’s a co-worker and you have a good relationship with that person you might be able to talk to them about it.  Or it may be something you need to discuss with your human relations representative.

A Simple Change Worked

A few years ago, I worked with someone who complained constantly.  After a while, I realized that if I greeted her by saying, “How’s it going?” I would get a laundry list of everything she saw as a problem.  Once I realized that, I changed my greeting to just say, “Hi” and that solved a big portion of the problem.

I realized that when I gave her an opening to complain, she would always take it, but by simply changing my greeting I was able to substantially reduce the amount of complaining I heard.  She was still a complainer, but far less of her complaining fell on my ears.

There are some people who are just negative people and there is nothing you can do to change them.  In cases like that you’ve got to work on keeping your positive attitude and not get sucked into their negativity.

Develop Some Tools

If you can’t avoid the negative person, limit your contact with them if possible.  After you’ve spent some time with that person, try a couple of things from the list below to get you back on track:

• Read some positive, inspirational quotations
• Remember the things for which you’re grateful
• Go for a brief walk to clear your head
• Take a small meditation break
• Say a prayer which comforts you
• Seek out someone with a positive attitude

Regardless of what you do, finding a way to get back to your positive attitude is very important.  Develop tools for getting back to that positive mental state as quickly as possible.  The more you practice, the easier it will become to return to that state quickly.

To your happiness!