What is the single biggest determinant of your happiness?
The answer to this question, as you probably already know, is not “wealth,” “fame,” “beauty” or “power”. Rather, it is how others, particularly those closest to you—friends, family, and colleagues—treat you. When people close to you are nice to you, you can’t help but feel happy; when they mistreat you or avoid you, you are bound to be unhappy.
The reason our happiness depends so much on the quality of our relationships is because humans are supremely social creatures. Evidence of our social nature is all around us. We care so much about what others think of us that, as some of my findings show, we would rather experience an unpleasant event (e.g., watch a bad movie) with those who share our negative opinions about the event than experience a pleasant event (e.g., watch our favorite team win) in the company of those who disagree with us. Our social nature is also the reason why being in love is one of the most cherished experiences and why isolation—the extreme form of which is solitary confinement—is rated, by those who were unfortunate to endure it, one of life’s most grueling experiences.
What all of this means is that it can be excruciatingly difficult to deal with negative people—people who bring your mood down with their pessimism, anxiety, and general sense of distrust. Imagine being constantly discouraged from pursuing your dreams because “very few people make it big.” Or imagine being constantly warned against learning a new skill—like Scuba diving or horseback riding—because “it’s too dangerous.” Likewise, imagine being routinely exposed to negative judgments about other people (e.g., “I can’t believe you told our neighbors that you failed your driving test—now they’ll never respect you!”) Constant exposure to such negativity can make deep inroads into your bank of positivity, leading you to either become negative—diffident, anxious, and distrustful—yourself, or to become indifferent, uncaring, or even mean towards the negative person. This raises the question regarding how does one deal with negative people? One obvious solution is to walk away from them. But this is easier said than done; while we could always walk away from the bartender with a bad attitude or the airline agent with an anger-management problem, we can’t walk away from a parent, sibling, spouse, colleague, or friend with a negative attitude.
However, A more practical approach to dealing with them is to start by understanding the reasons for their negativity. In brief, almost all negativity has its roots in one of three deep-seated fears: the fear of being disrespected by others, the fear of not being loved by others, and the fear that “bad things” are going to happen. These fears feed off each other to fuel the belief that “the world is a dangerous place and people are generally mean.” It is easy to see how, from the perspective of someone operating from such fears, it makes sense to question the wisdom of pursuing dreams (failure seems all but guaranteed), and to be averse to taking risks even if it is obvious that doing so is necessary to learn and grow. It is also easy to see why people with these fears would find it difficult to trust other people.
In conclusion, As you may have realized by now, dealing with negative people also takes humility. The fact that you find it difficult to deal with others’ negativity suggests that there is a seed of negativity in you. If you didn’t feel constricted or deflated by others’ negativity—if you were fully secure in how you view yourself—you wouldn’t find the company of negative people to be aversive. Realizing that you have to work on fixing your own negativity even as you are helping another person deal with their negativity will help you gain the compassion, positivity, and maturity that is needed for this tricky, but ultimately satisfying, endeavor.
[information gathered and cited from]
"4 Tips for Dealing with Critical or Negative People | World of Psychology." Psych Central.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
