10 Reasons Why You Should Avoid Negative People
Shawn is a certified professional speaker, author and an Executive and Life Coach. Read full profile
Do you want to be successful?
Do you want achieve great things in life and make all of your dreams come true?
Then one thing I think you have to be very careful about is deciding who you associate with in your life personally and professionally. What I have found is the most successful people that I’ve met have made it a rule to avoid negative people.
Here are 10 reasons why you should avoid negative people in your life.
1. Negative people can affect your attitude
I’m now the author of 18 books, but when I first started writing I told anyone who would listen that the first goal was to write five books in three years. Friends and family were very encouraging, and told me that it was a great goal. Acquaintances however were quite a different story. Some of them said that I was being unrealistic, that I was setting the bar too high, and that writing five books in three years was nearly impossible. If I had chosen to listen to those negative people, or chosen to believe what they had to say, it would have affected my attitude about writing and my goals.
Negative people will discourage you and they will try to drag you down with them to the dark side. As Robert Tew once said, “Don’t let negative and toxic people rent space in your head. Raise the rent and kick them out.”
2. Negative feedback from negative people affects your thinking
I’ve often said that negative people are ESV’s which stands for energy sucking vampires! The problem with negative people is if you hang around with them enough, and listen to them long enough, they start impacting your thinking, and you soon realize that instead of thinking positively you are thinking negatively. They are very stealth at this. Before you know it, you will find it can definitely impact the way that you think and change your belief system when it shouldn’t.
3. They are an energy drain
I have noticed that when I’m around positive people who are enthusiastic they raise other people’s energy levels. Negative people do the opposite; they tend to be an energy drain. I’ve seen some people walk into a room and the energy level goes up, and other people walk into a room and the energy level goes down. They suck the energy out.
4. It damages your credibility
If you surround yourself with negative nasty naysayers, then you may not realize it but other people in your life will judge you by people that you associate with. If you hang around negative, small minded people it makes you look negative and small minded yourself. At one point in my life I had a business partner, who I worked on several projects with. For many reasons, I stopped doing work with him. After he stopped being my partner, several people said that they were surprised that I was ever doing business with them. Little did I know that my association with him was damaging my credibility.
5. Negative people won’t provide encouragement
Negative people are not only negative, they’re also great at discouraging you, and giving you negative feedback. They are so good at it they can make the negative sound like it makes sense. In life there’s going to be times when you are struggling or are facing adversity. What you need during those times is someone who will encourage you support you and convince you that it can be done, not someone who does the opposite. You need someone to lift you up not knock you down.
6. They are hard to get rid of
I meet many people as a professional speaker, and when we talk about negative people, they tell me that they do have a friend of theirs who is very negative that they have been friends with for years. When asked, they say they have been friends since high school, and that they would feel bad getting rid of them. I strongly encourage them to end the relationships with negative people because of the huge negative impact it’s having on their life. Yet they cling to that negative person because of a feeling of loyalty. As Hans F. Hanson once said “people inspire you or they drain you, pick them wisely.”
7. Life is too short
I don’t know about you, but life, I believe, is short, and I really do not want to spend my time being around negative, crabby, grumpy or grouchy people. They tend to make life miserable and I want to live a life of happiness. I want to live a quality life by being with quality people. So one of the ways of doing that is to limit my contact with negative people and to increase my contact with positive people, to bring me joy and happiness.
8. Negative reinforcement versus positive reinforcement
Negative people will simply reinforce anything negative that you say, and give you all the reasons why you’re right in your negativity and toxic thinking. Positive people will tell you can do it, and will give you positive reinforcement which is what you need when you have doubts. Negative people will make you believe your doubts, while positive people will convince you that you’re wrong and that you can do it after all. As Joel Osteen once said “you cannot hang out with negative people and expect to live a positive life.”
9. They love drama
In the past in my life, I have had negative people who were friends. Often they would have many dramatic things going on in their life, and I would try to coach them, help them, and support them. I would give them advice which they said was great advice, and that they would definitely make changes. But guess what? About a month later out I would have breakfast with them, and discovered that they still had the same drama, and I came to realization that they relished and enjoyed it.
The negative people of the world thrive on drama and believe me- it’s not something you need in your life. On top of that, they want to involve you as a character in the drama .As Tony Gaskins once said “negative people need drama like oxygen, stay positive, it will take their breath away.”
10. You won’t grow
If you’re friends with negative people, they will revel in stagnation and negative thinking and they really do not want to grow. Because they don’t want to grow, they want to discourage you from growing as well. The only way to move forward in your life is to associate with people who are also moving forward and will help you move forward with yours. The positive person has their foot on the gas pedal, and the negative person has a foot on the brake.
So in the end it is up to you to decide what kind of people you’re going to be friends with, and the kinds of people you’re going to spend your time with. I strongly recommend that if you have negative friends you should end the relationship. If you have negative family members, we should spend as little time with them as possible. I guarantee you that if you eliminate negative people from your life you will be more successful, far more productive and truly happy. As W. Clement Stone once said “there is little difference in people but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude the big difference is whether it is positive or negative.”
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