7 Concrete Ways To Combat Negativity
Everyone has a few people in their life that just refuse to appreciate the success of others. Despite any achievement you may complete, goal you may reach, or any pride you may feel, these cynics act the wet-blanket and find a way to rain on your parade.
These people come in many denominations. They can be younger or older, richer or poorer, close friends and relatives or mere acquaintances, but they are always there.
In general, odds are they are pessimistic towards your success because they are jealous or even fearful of it. However, knowing this is often not enough to deal with their negativity.
Here are 7 ways to manage such negativity, keep your aspirations high, and stay on track to a happy, successful life.
- Keep Aspirations Personal and Private - Most naysayers will not appreciate or commend something in its baby stages. Try keeping silent about your goals until you have achieved something significant. Once you have something concrete to show, they’ll be hard pressed to find something entirely negative to say about it.
- Positive Passivity - An ideal way to silence a potential naysayer is to merely shrug it off. Be positively passive. If someone is trying to shoot you down, you have no obligation to listen to them. Be aware of the potential for an explosive conversation and how to handle one.
- The Old Switch-A-Roo - Try to adopt the approach of using someone’s negativity as motivation. If someone tells you “you can’t do that,” make it your goal to prove to them that you can.
- Keep A Progress Log - Write down your significant achievements and whenever you reach your goals. If ever a cynic tries to get you down, just take a look at your Progress Log and be instantly reminded of your potential and ambition.
- Distance Yourself - Although not possible in some cases, try to get away from pessimists. Try to surround yourself with people that always see the glass as half-full. Intelligent people realize that supporting others in their endeavors earns reciprocated support and leads to a less stressful life. Surround yourself with smart people.
- Recognize Constructive Criticism - It is not always the case that someone is intentionally downplaying your success. Try to be aware of constructive criticism and realize when an individual is sincerely trying to help you up instead of putting you down.
- Remember Why - Remember why some people insist on spoiling your mood. They are often jealous and fearful of your success. Whenever you think somebody is trying to put you down, keep this thought in the back of your head and smile. They just wish they were more like you.
All in all, you are your own best judge. If you think your accomplishments are worthy of acclaim, then they most definitely are! If, however, you find yourself succumbing to the wet-blankets of the world, try out these tips and methods and let me know how they work out. Do you have any other methods to curb the daily pessimist? Please, let us know in the comments.
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Great article…sometimes we don’t realize it, but close friends and family can actually work against us, because they want us to depend upon them in some way, and success threatens such a dependency…so yes, a little distance and also confidentiality about business are two very good suggestions. Best Wishes, Keith Johnson, Author “365 Great Affirmations”
Hey Keith,
Thanks! You make a good point. It is not rare for those close to you to like your dependence and therefore spawn negativity about your business projects.
Hope to see you around,
Tim
Are you saying that positive = good & Negative = Bad?
If so then why?
It works both ways. Those in my life who always try to promote the positive turn out to be equally as negative.
The idea of avoiding or converting everything negative seems weird. It’s like trying to power your house using only positive electricity.
The more you try to make everything positive the more you encounter negativity.
Sometimes a balance is the way to go as opposed to an extreme.
Life would be unbearable if my office was full of people being positive all day.
Apologies if I’m just another wet blanket.
Proinsias,
It’s not so much that positivity is good and negativity is bad. This post isn’t entirely about converting negativity to positivity. Such is only one of the ways to over come negativity.
The truth of the matter is that some people in the world do not like the success of others. These are methods to deal with those people while maintaining your positive feelings that came with your personal success.
A balanced life between positivity and negativity, optimism and pessimism, and accepting negativity on its own merits is perhaps another means to the same end. And that is something worth looking into.
Thanks for your input,
Tim
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I’m inclined to agree with Proinsias.
So while your post is true and accurate for some (many) instances, I’d respectfully suggest that in general it’s an oversimplified model of the human condition.
We all have multiple personalities. At one time or another, everyone is a pessimist. Very, very few are consistent pessimists day in, day out. We can’t distance ourselves from the whole world, can we?
You are correct, we cannot distance ourselves from the whole world.
Perhaps the approach taken should be to only distance yourself from pessimists when they are in a “pessimist” mood or, in your words, personality?
Tim,
Make you right!
I live with this every day, I think also some people believe they get your power by destroying your motivation, ie you lose the power and they gain it?
Regards
John
this is stupid.
if you are surrounded by positive people, and these people are ‘more’ positive than you, it makes you the negative person amongst them, and they will distance away from you!
in this world, it’s a matter of your own mind. essentially, if there are no losers in this world, it will make all the winners losers as well.
it’s true that ugly people are there to make beautiful people look more attractive.
Another way dealing with the scrooges is to simply ignore them.
But one can only do this is when you are very clear about what it is you are trying to do and why. When you have doubts yourself, the naysayers tend to aggravate these ‘blindspots’.
As Emerson says: “The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.”
I would guess that the reason success is often met with both positive and negative responses is that success usually contains elements of both.
Some peoples’ reactions can verge on the extreme but may still contain a little truth outside of their own meanness.
If someone was being negative about my success it may be in part because I’m am not humbly accepting it and instead parading it around like a peacock with his feathers or have perhaps not appeared to have used the most honorable means to obtain the success.
Negativity from others is often a good time for some self examination, it’s not always a sign to prove them wrong or ignore the comments.
Most of the successes that are paraded in my office life would be put down and belittled by anyone with anti-capitalist ideas, it does not mean they are views to avoid or use to invert to further strengthen the office goals but rather more that some of these points may be taken on board and incorporated to provide a more balanced goal.
I just feel that often the use of positive thinking is something used to gloss over issues that may get in the way of goals as opposed to incorporating or dealing with the issues and altering the goals or methods.
I sometimes think that the most unpleasant and dangerous people the world has seen followed much of the above and succeeded in their goals much to the dismay of those who were pessimistic about the goals.
In my experience I have not met people who do not like the success of others. I have met people who do not like the success made by certain types of people by certain types of methods, often with perceived ulterior motives.
I would have read the article if it were titled “Seven Concrete Ways to Promote Optimism”…but I avoid combative articles focused on negativity.
Tim,
Very well said. With the exception of John and Albert, the other comment just prove you point.
There are many people who seem to feel they only have negativity to contribute. From their p.o.v. they may think they are being “careful” or “relaistic,” etc. In reality, there are many personal psychological reasons that are at play . . . most of them not good.
I hate to sound negative. Try to think of this as practical. Look at the glass again. I don’t care that it is full or twice half full or not empty. Th glass appears to be full of urine. Urine stinks. Dump it out and be glad that you didn’t get any on you.