How To Eliminate The Negative Influences On Your Life

If it’s not doing you any good – why keep it?

If you feel like a person or a situation is a continual drain on your energy, you probably need to learn how to eliminate negative influences from your life. Negative influences are people or situations that encourage us to always think the worst. Allowing negative influences to affect the way you think about things can lead to depression, discouragement, and apathy-exactly the opposite of the way you want to feel.

So what can you do about the friend who always drones on about how horrible everything is or the co-worker who predicts mass firings every time the boss clears her throat? Surprisingly, you have several options.

The first thing you can do to eliminate negative influences in your life is to end negative relationships and associations. This method works well if ending the negative relationship will bring greater benefits than problems. Deciding not to talk to a negative acquaintance, for instance, is much easier than deciding to end all communication with a negative mother in law, and leaving a job you’ve had for six weeks is far easier than leaving a job you’ve had for six years.

If you can’t simply end a negative relationship, you can try to change the focus from a negative to a positive one. Being negative can become a habit. Perhaps your co-worker or family member who sounds like a prophet of doom has gotten so used to being negative that he or she simply can’t think of any other way to carry on a conversation. In that case, you may be able to eliminate negative influences simply by changing the subject. You might come right out and say something like, “We always talk about how bad things are. Today let’s talk about something that is good.” Or you might be more subtle and steer the conversation in a different direction. “Yes, I did read about that horrible railway accident. “Mmmm…who baked cookies? It smells wonderful in here!”

Another way to handle negative energy is to reframe it into something positive. Using this method of thinking, you don’t have “problems,” you have “challenges” and you never admit to “defeat” only a “temporary setback.” One example of positive reframing can be found in the hospice philosophy of care. Hospices work with people who are dying-it’s hard to imagine a more negative situation. However, the hospice philosophy is one of providing comfort and enabling dying people to participate fully in their lives, however long those lives might last. Rather than focusing on what can’t be done for their patients-cure-hospice workers focus on what can be done for their patients-care. If hospice can reframe a huge negative like death, surely you can reframe the smaller negatives in your own life.

A final way to handle negative influences is simply to ignore them. You may never be able to reform your family member who thinks the worst of every situation, but you can learn not to let that person’s point of view affect the way you see your life. You can say to yourself something like, “Just because John thinks this way doesn’t make it so. I choose to believe…” and substitute a positive interpretation.

Negative influences can be a big drain on your energy. Learning to eliminate negative influences is your first step to becoming a more positive, optimistic person.