5 Tips To Stop Letting Negative People Affect You

Those negative and cranky people are everywhere. It almost seems as if they are just waiting around the corner to ruin your day! The ridiculous thing is they feel better the worse you feel! And you can let it affect you long after the day ends which is bad for your health and your sanity.

Here are 5 tips to stop those negative people from affecting you and your life.

1. Don't Be Them

Many times a negative person will come over to make you feel bad for the sake of making themselves feel better. They actually enjoy watching you feel worse while they talk to you or are around you. If you engage in their behavior then you are playing into their hands. They want you to engage. In fact, they expect you to engage in their stupidly. It gives them a reason to do it even more and it validates them being mean or rude to you.

Try to not let them get to you and instead be nice and in a good mood with them instead. I know it can hurt to do so in the beginning, especially since your instinct is to be mean, but it's worth the reaction you get from them in the end. Plus when you are mean you will not feel better about yourself like they do. Chances are they will be upset that you are not upset and leave you alone and move on.

2. Don't Use Your Imagination

Once someone has succeeded in affecting you negatively it can be easy to start playing scenarios of telling them off or interacting with them after the fact. This will always make your day worse. And it is now you making your day worse, not them.

You are not having a positive interaction in your head with them so you can't feel positive while you are thinking about them. You have to let your present mind take over and force your imagination to stay away for a while so that you can get past the anger or hurt.

3. Don't Take it Personally

This is another hard thing to do considering they are being negative towards you. But you have to remember that anyone who deliberately sets out to make someone else upset is not happy themselves. They probably make themselves feel miserable on a daily basis as well, not to mention the other people that they come into contact with.

For example, I used to think my new neighbor was targeting us to be mean to. I took it personally and couldn't understand why she would do the mean things she did to us. But soon I found out that she not only did it to us, she did mean things to the whole neighborhood! And on top of that she was miserable when no one was around her as well. Now I see that it's not us - it's her.

4. For Everything Negative Thing They Do - Do an Equal Amount of Good

One sure way to shake off a negative experience with someone is to put out some good into the world. If someone is having an issue then lend them a hand. There is nothing that will make you feel better about yourself and get you back on track for the day then being a good person and helping someone out.

5. Confront Them About It So They Have To Confront Themselves

The person may not ever get confronted. Chances are no one ever tells them that they are a jerk or that they have the ability to make people run the other way. I'm not saying that they don't know they can do this, they obviously do, but if you tell them you are completely aware of why they are saying what they are saying then you may throw them off their game and make them contemplate their behavior a bit. They probably don't think about what a jerk they are, but instead they think about how they feel better after putting someone else down.

Saying things like "You are not going to ruin my day." or "You cannot treat me like this because I don't deserve it." or "Why are you such a negative and mean person?" may make them stop to think about what you said. It will allow you to see that they are just a mean person who lives their life in negativity. It may even make them leave you alone if they don't want to confront who they really are again.