How To Deal With Negative People

The lotus has always been a symbol that best represents Buddhism. Lotus grows in the mud; a slimy and dirty environment. And yet it remains pure and beautiful as if it is not affected by its negative surroundings. 

 

Lotus is a symbolic object about life itself. There are a lucky few who grow up in almost ideal environment but most of us live in a somewhat challenging circumstances. There are people living in the slum where hygene is an illusive luxury as survival is the number one thing that people are worry about.

 

You may not be growing up in a slum but you are surrounded by negative people nonetheless. They are your coworkers, friends and even family members. 

 

If you have abusive colleagues who constantly is trying to take advantage of you, then at least the best thing you could do is to just focus on your task to get the job done and not take things too personal. After all you only have to deal with them the most 2 hours everyday in the office, the rest of the time you are just doing your work at your desk and you don't have to see him after 5!  

 

If you feel that your boss is always not satisfy with your work no matter how hard you try, then at least tell yourself that you have given your best and it is his loss for not appreciating it. You can't satisfy everybody. There bound to be someone out there who are jealous of you and feeding wrong and bad information to your boss behind your back. You can't really do much about this as you can't control other people's actions. But you can control how you react to the situation. You can complain why these things always happen to you, why is it that you always get unfair treatment in the workplace and start blaming the world for it. OR, you could react in a more positive way by understanding that nothing is permanent, thing changes every second and you are just working in this particular office temporarily. What you have is the experience of NOW and that experience cannot be taken away from you by anyone trying to ruin your day. Tell yourself that nothing will affect your appreciation of life even if people trying to sabotage your position in the workplace. Worse case scenario you just work for other people or start your own business.

If the negative energy comes from your friends, it is still manageable as you don't hang out with your friends everyday. The most is once a week for gatherings and if you don't enjoy it then simply don't attend.

 

The most difficult situation to handle is when you are dealing with your own family members who constantly giving out negative energy around them. Sometime they could be abusive too by shouting at you or physically hurting you. Of course you could at first look at the whole situation compassionately by trying to understand where they stand. Maybe there is something that makes them unhappy over time and they are now releasing all the negative energy that has until now being kept inside them. If there is the case, try to figure out whether there is anything that you could do to solve the problem. If on the other hand they are simply being unreasonable then try not to retaliate at first because if you do you would make the matter worse. Let them throw their tantrum and soon they would cool down as they feel better. Only when you sense that they have ease down, then you could try and talk to them, make them understand how their actions made you feel. Try to find a mutually beneficial solution.

 

Life is never easy because every individual is unique and different. When ideas collide, argument arises and emotions are being attacked. Try to keep a cool head all the time so that you have a better perspective of the situation.

Love Yourself

The Buddha said: "You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."

This sentence sounds very logical and reasonable but do we practice it everyday? Do you constantly feel wonderful about yourself and happy with where you are at in life? You would most likely answer NO to the above questions. Most of us think that we are not good enough our lives are not good enough; we haven't found the perfect job; our salaries are not high enough; we don't have good husbands or wives; our bodies are not fit enough and the list goes on. The fact is that we unconsciously sabotaging ourselves everyday without even realize it.

This pattern of thoughts are not good to us psychologically and physically in the long term. It may even cause problems to our health. If you think that you are not earning enough, then instead of keep blaming yourself, why not think of what other ways where you could make additional income. Negative thoughts consume lots of energy and we should re-channel this energy into activities that could empower our lives.

If you love yourself, then you would be grateful for what you have in life right now. Maybe you already manage to live in your own house while others are still renting or homeless. Maybe you have a descent job while others are still desperately looking for work. Feel grateful that you have children while others pray to God to have one.

Once you start practicing feeling grateful about your life, you start to feel good instantly. The key is to get it started, the hardest part of the journey is always the first step. If you manage to practice it regularly, you will feel positive energy building up within you. Your new positive thought pattern would gradually replace the negative and unhealthy emotions that you used to have. The wonderful thing is that it can be contagious too. People around you would started to feel the changes in you and they in turn will start to feel different as well.

The most valuable part of us is not those material stuff that we possess; it is our outlook of life in general. It is important to maintain a positive outlook on life for it we don't, we could well end up in some very dangerous territory such as depression and some may even develop suicidal behaviour. So to love ourselves is to protect our conscious measurement of our quality of life. To have good quality of life does not necessarily means that you must be living in a big house with multiple cars. A truly happy person does not need to rely on external materialistic stuff to satisfy his inner longings. A truly happy person is the one who achieves balance between himself and the world he lives in. He is happy for who he is, not what he has.

In today's world where everybody is engaging in the social media, most people have very little time left for themselves. They are busy reading gossips about other people. They are too busy changing from one channel to the next thanks to the huge amount of TV programmes made available by fast internet. Their minds are fixated either on their mobile phones or TV. As a result, they feel empty inside. They can't stand being alone. If they ever find themselves idle for even 1 second, they will start taking out their mobile phones and check out what is the latest news online. If you ever put them in a remote resort without any internet connection, they would go crazy because they just would not know what to do. 

To love yourself is to slow down, not being nosy to find out what's happening to other people and start reflect upon your own life. Meditate if you have to or simply spend some real quality time engaging with real people; not chatting online with your virtual friends. Sometimes we just have to discard the technology and to get closer to nature. Give yourself some quiet time so that you could do some thinking to get back your bearing. Just think of it this way, are you more important or your mobile phone? If your answer is you then why are spending more time with your mobile phone instead of yourself? It doesn't make sense isn't it? And yet most of people simply let their life drifted away by doing exactly that.

You definitely deserve more than that, start to spend more time with yourself, nourish your soul through reading or mediation and engage more with your family and friends. Start to live like a human again and not some digital animal. 

Life is short and every second is precious. Don't let it drift away in front of you without doing something useful and productive.