Dealing with negative people

They are in every family and every circle of friends. We're talking about negative people that try to find fault with everything. It's not a matter of seeing the glass half empty - they don't see a glass when it's flooding!

Here's how to cope with them:

1. Don't look to them for approval. The biggest mistake you can make is running to them with the smallest thing to try win their approval. That shifts the power into their hands.

2. Let them motivate you. Use their negativity as a motivation. When they say "you can't do that" - let that motivate you to give it your best shot.

3. Keep your aspirations away from them. Don't tell them what you want to do or achieve, you don't need that negative energy.

4. Avoid toxic energy. Where possible, try to steer clear of negative / toxic people. Positive people will support you and know that in turn they'll get positive support from you when they need it. That is how healthy relationships are built.

5. Keep a gratitude journal where you keep a record of your achievements as well. When someone tries to make you negative, simply have a look at your journal and all you've achieved. Note how much closer you are to your goal.

6. Don't argue. Just nod, smile and change the subject. They will soon get the message. It's not in your interest to discuss your future with people that want to sabotage it.

7. Know where they are coming from. In other words, if their criticism is constructive, you may have to listen. Then again, if it is constructive, they won't come across negatively and they will be more supportive.

8. Their why. Know why some people always seem to spoil your optimism. They could be jealous of you or afraid of your success. You don't need to listen or put any energy into that!

Do your best, go for it and show them what you're made of!

The N-word

Some of us dread using the word "No". Instead we spend our lives doing things we really don't want to do, dreading the next person who comes along to ask something...

If you'd really like to do whatever it is they ask of you, great! The problem is when you refexatively say 'yes' to any and every invitation or request which is put to you, whether or not you want to say yes.

It's so easy to get into a cycle where you stop one day and realise that you are pleasing everyone but yourself. People could also start to take your courtesy as a weakness and start abusing your giving nature to get their own way all the time.

Why is it so hard to say no? You know that 'yes' is what the person wants to hear, but what is your reason for being unable to say it?

It could be that you fear rejection or disapproval.

Once you have figured out your reason for not wanting to say no, you should be able to summon the courage to come straight out and just say it.

Toxicity

They are in every family, social group or organisation. They spread their negativity wherever they go. I am talking about toxic people.

These are the people who constantly critisise, argue and complain about everything, whether it concerns them or not. The Toxic person uses this negative behaviour to get attention and their lack of social skills causes them to be unable to tell negative attention from positive attention.

Toxic people tend to zone in on the negative side of everything, generally blowing it out of proportion. The negative will often become their obsession. Once this becomes a habit, it becomes progressively harder to see any positivity.

Toxic people generally tend to form cliques of like-minded people that destroy anything positive before it can come to fruition. Jealousy is a prominent core value of toxic people.

Psychologist Martin Seligman showed in his groundbreaking research in positive psychology that people who see the world in a positive light have a long list of advantages, including:

* They live longer
* They’re healthier
* They have more friends and better social lives
* They enjoy life more
* They’re more successful at work

It's essential to cut out toxic influences from your life, even if it's family or loved ones.

If you are toxic, remember this: "Either your toxic emotions are using you, or you’re going to use them. For example, you can either allow your suppressed anger to explode and wreak havoc in your life, or you can harness its inherent power to stand up taller and take on a bigger mission in the world." says Debbie Ford, founder of the Ford Institute.

Dealing with a stalker

Technology is a great tool in prosecuting the more amateur type of cyber-stalker, what with it keeping all the information at the click of a button. This is especially handy if you have teenagers who are on the internet and dating sites where all the baddies lurk.

While every stalker’s pattern of behavior is slightly different, there are predictable stages which a stalker may follow. Understanding how a stalker may move through the stages is helpful to show how stalking behavior can escalate in frequency,intensity, destructiveness and level of danger. In the first stage, the intensity may be nothing more than a quest to collect as much personal information as possible about you from friends, family or organisations you belong to.

The second stage, it becomes more intrusive. As in domestic violence situations, stalkers may intimidate victims in order to coerce them into returning to the relationship, or simply to maintain a sense of connection with, and power over, their victims. Stalkers may now:

* Spread rumors, negative things, and false information about the victim to friends, family members, employers, faith organizations, schools (often, abusers threaten to “expose” their victim, even if the “exposure” is based upon falsehoods and lies – an effort to control other people’s perceptions of the situation).

* Make direct and indirect threats through intimidating phone calls, e-mails, pages, and sending/leaving notes.
* Become more persistent in following the victim
* Leave evidence to remind a victim of their presence
* Monitoring your online movements in social networks or websites

The majority of stalkers have been in relationships with their victims, but a significant percentage either never met their victims, or were just acquaintances – neighbors, friends, or co-workers.

According to Anti-Stalking "These delusional stalkers have almost always come from a background which was either emotionally barren or severely abusive. They grow up having a very poor sense of their own identities. This, coupled with a predisposition toward psychosis, leads them to strive for satisfaction through another, yearning to merge with someone who is almost always perceived to be of a higher status (doctors, lawyers, teachers) or very socially desirable (celebrities). It is not unusual for this type of stalker to "hear" the soothing voice of his victim, or believe that she is sending him cryptic messages through others."

In the case of cyber-stalking, you can easily contact the site administrator or your ISP to track the IP address, which you can then use to prosecute stalkers.

There are many available solutions to stalking online, alternatively you may be able to get help from your local police station or attorney. Many organisations exist that will be able to give you advice for your specific situation.

Will you say it to my face?

In recent weeks, I have witnessed many older, single women attacking younger women for no rhyme or reason. Unhappily married women also love to attack women that are happy indeed.

They also enjoy threatening these young women and harass them endlessly. The pack of wolverines all have one thing in common - they are all in their late forties to mid-fifties and many of them are single. Often-times they would 'adopt' a young, single girl and try to make her into a clone of them. Due to the fact that they are so 'nice' to her, she would believe that indeed they have her best interest at heart.

These women are neighbours, members of women's groups or members of social networking businesses. They have absolutely no problem carving someone up behind their back, via email or public blogs and even via instant messaging. They would accuse people of doing things that they do themselves. They would call one names, say "You are so ugly" and try to break you down in areas they perceive to be a problem for you, but little do they know you... Some of them would publicly say that a man has "small man syndrome" because he (very carefully and constructively) pointed out a weak area in your character.

"Anger, self-doubt, bitterness, and fear are just a few of the symptoms the single woman may face." says Tammy Beck, coach to single women over 50. These symptoms also cause jealousy of younger, happier women and this jealousy leads to attacks and jealous rages.

Wintercreeks.net says "I think it safe to say an insecure person is a critical person. Criticism is the seed of bitterness. Bitterness is the cancer that will destroy a relationship. Many a congregation have been poisoned with the seeds off bitterness."

According to Tasty Research spontaneous trait transference is a phenomenon where people are perceived as possessing a trait that they describe in others. Telling others that your math professor is lazy will cause them to infer that you are lazy. This works the other way too — describing positive attributes about your friend may ascribe you those attributes as well.Several experiments showed that people will associate personality traits to communicators mindlessly without logical rational. They also have a poor recollection of whether the communicator was describing themselves or someone else in a conversation.

As we say in NLP: People tell you all about themselves, all the time. Like looking in a mirror, squeezing that zit and it just gets bigger or there are just more of them, the more you squeeze - these women just don't back off.

I wonder if they would say these things to someone's face though?

2nd hand info clouds your judgment

In any group of friends, there is always the trouble maker. This is a person who would go around from one person to another, discussing someone in the group, often saying very detrimental things. When we hear things about someone we don't know very well, we are likely to believe the stories and that in turn affects the way we treat them.

In NLP there is a saying "The map is not the territory" which means that a territory doesn't necessarily look exactly like it does on a map. Therefore, what we presume of a person may not necessarily be very accurate.

A very good friend once worked for a man who was attracted to her, but she was not attracted to him. The boss' wife was a jealous lady and assumed that my friend too was attracted to the boss and immediately started a smear campaign against my friend. The damage was obvious in the way the rest of the staff treated my friend, especially when there was an incident that caused more jealousy with the wife. The fact that my friend worked out of the office and never spent 5 minutes with the rest of the staff meant that they actually didn't know her at all and she had no time to prove herself to them.

Before you say something about someone else, first ask yourself "Am I prepared to say this to their face?". If the answer is "No!" - then keep quiet about it. If it's something untrue or an unfair assumption, people are bound to discover the truth and you will lose all your credibility and the respect of the entire group. Also look at your motivations for telling people this - what are you going to gain from telling this and what are the people that you are sharing it with going to benefit?

Most importantly - when discussing someone else with others - how could it affect the person you are discussing? Could it cost her her job? Could she lose friends through it? Does her losing make you feel good about yourself?

Take time to form your own impressions, never listen to third party gossip. That person may not have anything in common with the person they are trashing, whereas maybe you do. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt before you get your opinions clouded by unfair judgment.