There are some people who aren’t just positive about anything. For them a new job is negative because it brings too many responsibilities, drinking tap water will definitely cause waterborne diseases and everyone has some ulterior motive behind helping you. Living among such pessimists can be quite de-motivating, as their negativity creates a negative aura around you, forcing you to think negative, even when the situations are sanguine.
Normally people get confused when differentiating between a pessimistic person and a pragmatist. Pessimistic people are quite impossible to get along with but pragmatists can offer some valuable information. So, if you sense negativity in everything then the person is a pessimist, while someone offering a mix of positive, negative and rational is a pragmatist.
However, the truth is, negative people surround us everyone, at workplace, in our families and even in our social circles. These grumpy people can be anyone: a friend, family member or a new co-worker and the best way is to just figure out that the advice is worth following or not.
These techniques can be adopted by anyone and might help one while dealing with negative people.
- Be a critique and look into the big picture before deciding whether the person is actually negative or feels negative because of the current challenges he is facing. Spend some time with that person and find out if being negative is his/her part of personality.
- Being negative doesn’t mean that the person is wrong. So, before fully neglecting the views of that person, it’s better to consult a few more people. This therapy is known as “Three’s Company” Rule. If all the three different persons have the same view, then think again, it might be that the person is not that pessimistic and sometimes it’s quite worthy to consider such a person’s views, because they can tell you the worst possible consequence of a situation.
- The best way to deal with negative people is to confront. Ask them why they are negative or tell them that you feel that their pessimism is affecting your life. Most of the times, you will find a perfect response for your questions. Negative people may be negative because they have dealt with numerous challenges or they have been through the facts of your stage and felt negative about it. There is also a chance that the negative person is not even aware of his behaviour. Your confrontation will lead to betterment in his life.
Try these ways and you will surely notice a difference. If you think that none of this works, then you must probably avoid this person instead of listening to their negative thoughts.
