When I first start­ing active­ly try­ing to keep my thoughts pos­i­tive and shy away from the neg­a­tive I hit sev­er­al bumps. I went quite a while before I man­aged to go a full week with­out being neg­a­tive. And since I lived and worked alone this is even worse than it sounds. But final­ly after sev­er­al attempts I turned a cor­ner and man­aged to avoid negativity.

 

It worked well, so well in fact that I no longer got behind the irri­tat­ing coun­try dri­vers that always seemed to crowd the road­ways before.  Then after near­ly a month of stay­ing pos­i­tive I stopped by to vis­it a rel­a­tive. That after­noon I caught myself cussing at the per­son in the car in front of me. Luck­i­ly that shocked me and I was able to stop and ques­tion why. Why after all this time was I behind an annoy­ing dri­ver? And why was it get­ting to me? Then it hit me. When I had vis­it­ed my rel­a­tive I had inten­tion­al­ly not said any­thing neg­a­tive or con­tribute to any top­ics that would bring me down.  Doing no more than nod­ding when the con­ver­sa­tion went in a way that I felt would­n’t ben­e­fit me (or her.)

 

How­ev­er while that may have lim­it­ed the dam­age it did­n’t stop it. So after a week or two I decid­ed to test and see what hap­pened when I stopped by her place again. I did­n’t stay near as long this time, but found the same thing. When I left I felt bad, my ener­gy was low and I was look­ing for the neg­a­tive, look­ing for some­thing to com­plain about it. We all have those peo­ple in our lives. And in our soci­ety it seems that quite a few con­ver­sa­tions revolve around com­plaints. I had a friend that I had a lot in com­mon with, but every con­ver­sa­tion end­ed up being all com­plaints (on both sides it was­n’t just her.) It has been quite a while since I spoke with her because that rela­tion­ship did­n’t work for my good. Of course there are some peo­ple you have to see. Fam­i­ly or friends you have had so long they are prac­ti­cal­ly family.

 

So what did I do? Well first I stopped just drop­ping by her house. For get-togeth­ers I tried to make sure that there was always at least one oth­er per­son who could be swayed toward pos­i­tive con­ver­sa­tions. Things like movies can also be good ways to spend time with peo­ple who are neg­a­tive because there is lit­tle talk­ing. So that is how I han­dle bad influ­ences. It does­n’t always work since every­body has bad days, but I’ve learned that, for me, it is best to avoid ener­gy killers.

 

If avoid­ing isn’t an option that you want to take you can always try and tell them that you are try­ing to stay pos­i­tive. Re-direct the con­ver­sa­tion every time it starts down a neg­a­tive path and bow out of con­ver­sa­tions that take a neg­a­tive direc­tion. This may have a pos­i­tive effect on their lives too and they will dis­cov­er how often they make neg­a­tive com­ments and rants. In my life I find this does­n’t work as well on peo­ple who mired in neg­a­tiv­i­ty. They get defen­sive and feel you are call­ing them out on their neg­a­tiv­i­ty. But most of the peo­ple I know have at least a pass­ing acquain­tance with the law of attrac­tion and feel that I am judg­ing them even if that isn’t my intent.

 

Take a look at the rela­tion­ships in your life. The rela­tion­ships in your life should make you hap­py. Oth­er­wise what is the point?