Are you surrounded by negative people, people who, no matter what the situation, can always find something wrong?  Or people who always have so much drama in their lives, drama that is, of course, always caused by someone else?

Being around people who constantly have drama and negativity in their lives can drain your energy, especially if you feel like they are people that you HAVE to deal with, like family members.  If you spend enough time with them, it can completely exhaust you.

This draining of energy can take away from other areas of your life, areas that you may (or may not) deem more important… work, relationships, and pretty much everything else.  Watching other things go down the tube (and sometimes not even realizing that it has anything to do with the energy drain from the negative people in your life) can suck down even more of your energy, eventually getting you to the point where you start feeling overwhelmed to the point of collapse.

So enough prelude, on to how to deal with negative people:

1. Step One:  Pay Attention To Them (but not their negativity)

   A lot of people who are negative, and/or seem to need drama in their lives, are that way because they are insecure… they are not certain of their own worth.  One of the best ways to show someone their worth is to give them your attention… the more attention you give them, the more you are telling them they are worth.  This is complemented by showing interest in them beyond the attention you pay, as well… asking about things you know they were going to do, or things you know they are interested in.

   The important thing here is to remember that you are paying attention to THEM, not their negativity.  Ignore the negativity… when they say something negative, just brush it off.  Make it really obvious that the whole being negative thing isn’t working on you, and concentrate on them.

   Please do NOT do this if you don’t sincerely care about the person, as they may be desperate to believe, and not see it as artificial… and then be devastated when they find out it was fake all along.

2. Step Two:  Suggest Ways To Improve (or point them here)

   If the first step doesn’t work after you’ve given it time, or the person is not important enough to you to expend the substantial effort required by step one, then you can move on to giving them advice on how to solve whatever particular negative thing they are going through.  This can have one of two results, either of which will result in less negativity in your life:  They can act on the advice, and improve their life, or they’ll stop being around you (or talking to you) as much, because they don’t want someone to actually help them, they just want attention, and they think being negative is the best (or only) way they can get it.

3. Step Three:  Reduce The Time You Spend With Them

   This is the third, and final, step.  And it may be taken care of for you if you attempt step two first… the person may choose to spend less time around you.  If not, eventually you have to reduce the time you spend around them to reduce the drain on your own energy from their negativity and drama.  It might be hard… it might be very hard, depending on who they are to you.  Reducing the time you spend with family, for instance, is very difficult for some people, or your best friend who wasn’t that way before, but at some point, when you’ve tried the first two steps for as long as you can take for that person, the only thing left is to stop letting that person in your life so much.

Which step you start at depends on how important the person is to you… the less important they are, the higher the step you start on with them..  How much time you spend on each one should also be determined by how important they are to you… some people are worth years of effort, others only weeks or days.  If they’re not worth days of effort, they’re probably not worth the first two steps… you might as well move right to reducing (or eliminating) your time with them.

Only you can determine how much of your effort it’s worth to put into helping a given person get out of their negative focus.  Anyone can climb out of negativity eventually, but some cling to it hard enough that you’re talking about a lifetime.   The more effort you put in, though, the more you are helping that person, and the more they will return the energy you invest in them when they do get past all the negatives.