10 Tips On How To Overcome Negative People

If you're dealing with negativity in your life, these are the best tips on how to overcome negative people. There are ways to cope, ignore, and remain positive when surrounded by downers!

Bah, humbug. Negative people are quite frankly like dementors. They’re dark, they suck the life out of you and they’re ultimately dangerous. They will destroy you if you let them. Here are my 10 top tips on how to overcome negative people!

1) Avoid them like the plague.

To me, compulsive cynicism is like the bubonic plague. You either fully avoid it, or you let it kill you – a slow and painful death. If you feel like somebody is really draining your soul from every inch of happiness you have left, ditch them. It can be hard if these people are your own family, but in this case you can try to either help them out of their Scrooginess or just minimise your contact with them, if all else fails. You don’t have to make it too obvious, either. Just slowly and awkwardly shuffle away. When it comes to wondering how to overcome negative people, this is one of the most efficient ways.

2) Believe in yourself and take action.

If these Debbie Downers are giving you a hard time when it comes to your goals and aspirations and they’re making it rather impossible for you to move forward and achieve all that you want to achieve, the best thing to do is to simply NOT listen to a word they have to say. Believe in yourself and just keep being proactive. There is a fine line between advising someone so that they are aware of the realities and the difficult challenges they must be prepared to face in life, and just outright discouraging them; demeaning their abilities and basically raining on their parade. You’ll know the difference, and you’ll know what you’ll need to do.

3) Kill them with kindness.

This seems like another boring piece of cliché advise that you’ve been hearing all your life, but it’s just so true. A lot of these overly pessimistic Squidwards have simply lost confidence in themselves, they believe they’re incapable and inadequate and so they project their own wretched insecurities onto those who seem to “have it all” – or so they think. To put it simply, they’re under the impression that they’re fully destroyed and they want to destroy you along with them. Beware of these people because they might even be doing it subconsciously and they themselves may not be aware of how dark and twisted they’ve become. Once you’re aware of this fact, it will become easier for you to not give them the satisfaction of getting upset and showing that they’ve hurt you – or even worse, agreeing with their negative comments about your capabilities. Smiling is one of the best tips on how to overcome negative people, as well as always staying focused and adamant on achieving your goals and fulfilling your dreams.

4) Flourish…in secret.

Many aren’t aware of the importance of this particular piece of advice. I’m not saying you should delete all of your social media accounts including your LinkedIn profile and your YouTube channel or your blog (and if you want to, that’s perfectly fine!) I’m simply saying, don’t outwardly tell people of your strengths and your achievements. Don’t be upfront in how much you believe in yourself and your talents. Don’t rub it in their faces, especially not to the seemingly jealous and negative type! Work hard, be confident, but stay humble and keep things on the hush hush! Don’t give anybody the chance to ruin things for you, especially if you’re still in the early stages of finding success. Only give brief and humble answers when asked and let your hard work do the talking.

5) Imagine you’re bouncing around life in a bubble.

I’m not joking here. When you imagine yourself in a real protective shield that’s bouncing off all the negative energy, you are simultaneously detaching yourself from any negative people that could come your way. This is extremely powerful because instead of actually avoiding these people, you’re still communicating with them but you’ve made the decision to completely detach your emotions from them and to just observe them as an outsider. This doesn’t mean you’ll stop caring for them as people, (especially if they’re members of your family) quite the contrary, it means that you still want the best for them; you understand why they are so cynical, you feel pity for them and even try to help them out, if you can. You’re just not letting their negativity affect you or hurt you in any way, shape or form.

6) Let them be affected by you.

If you can’t beat them…no, not join them! But inspire them. This might seem easier said than done but it’s actually very easy to practice and the only tools you’ll need for this is your own PASSION! – awesome, right? When you’re passionate enough about what you want from life and the targets you want to accomplish, you should inevitably start to place your focus on all of the great, self-fulfilling steps you must take to get to your destination. You’re not even saying a word, but when the negative people start to see how dedicated and optimistic you are in practice, they will naturally and even subconsciously begin to feel inspired by you and they can eventually change their own thought process! As they always say, actions speak louder. Yup, told you it’s easy.

Of course, many of these draining people will probably never ever change and they might even be on a mission to destroy you so in this case – look back at tips #1, #3 and #5!

7) Decode their messages.

Remember, not everyone that makes seemingly negative comments about you or your work is actually just out to ruin you. Due to a lot of reasons, many of us lack the ability to be able to use the right tone and words to get a constructive piece of criticism or plain advice across. This is especially true when it comes to the people that we are the most comfortable around, for instance close family members and friends. Try to emotionally detach yourself from these types of comments and you might actually see that a extremely important point is being made – it just wasn’t delivered in the best way! This is one of the best ways on how to overcome negative people!

8) Achieve the goals you set for yourself.

Setting goals is all well and good…until you achieve them – and you’re suddenly on top of the world! Proving to ourselves that our hard work and often painful struggles can actually breed success, will further serve to boost our self-belief and will aid in our future goal-setting plans because it makes us realise how much we really are capable of. Once you begin to prove this to yourself, no amount of negativity can ever take that away from you.

9) Never complain to a Debbie Downer.

I had to learn this the hard way myself. Unless your objective is to end up feeling worse than you were before you vented, don’t do it. Negative people seem to relish in negativity. The more they can get their hands on, the better it is for them and the worse it is for you. If you’ve had a rough day and you really need to talk, choose someone who you know will make you feel better, not worse! This is one of the best tips on how to overcome negative people!

10) Beware of the smiling Jack-The-Rippers.

This is the opposite of tip #7 on how to overcome negative people. Just as there are individuals who unintentionally acid-coat their good advice, there are also those individuals who intentionally sugar-coat their nasty agendas. Be very wary of these people as they have the ability to manipulate you into destroying your own self, without even realising it. They will give you their fatal, self-sabotage inflicting opinions in the form of so-called friendly advice and they will make you believe it. These people are dangerous and you have to be very cautious with who you allow into your close circle of friends. Envious, hate-filled spiteful people are everywhere and they come disguised in all sorts of shapes and sizes – including kind and smiley. They are the definition of fake and you want to steer well clear of them. You will be able to sense the genuinely nice ones from the smiling Jack-The-Rippers. Just trust your gut instincts and don’t open up to the latter.

I hope you’re feeling a lot more informed and at ease after reading my 10 tips on how to overcome negative people! If you really start to put these points into practice, I promise you no amount of Debbie Downers, Dementors, Ebenezer Scrooges or smiling Jack-The-Rippers can ever get a hold of you! Guard your soul, take charge of your destiny and live your life the way you want to and the way that makes you the happiest. Don’t let no Scrooge or Grinch ruin your Christmas. 😉