Negativity TV

Are you aware of how other people affect you?

There’s a weird thing that happens when you’re not and it usually involves someone down the line getting a dose of your irritation so that you can offload some stress or negativity.

Here’s how it works. You spend some time around someone who’s negative, irritating, or critical - either to you personally, or just in their general manner and somehow it gets into you, and you end up feeling something like cranky, deflated, or irritated in result. Sooner or later you’re going to offload that somewhere you feel safe. This behaviour is the kind that lead to the saying about kicking the cat.

The biggest tragedy is when folks snap at their kids or partners as a result of stress that got stuck to them elsewhere.

Simply by becoming aware of how other people affect you and your moods you can play a neat game that protects you from soaking up their dross like a sponge, feeling bad, and then wringing it out on those you love!

Here goes: Next time you’re around someone oozing negativity you can pretend they’re on TV and not actually talking to you individually. By doing this you put some distance between you where you can observe rather than absorb what they’re giving out. And when their “program” ends you can move on without having taken anything personally.

Observing in a detached way not only protects your mood but your values and opinions too - you can comment to yourself in your mind about how true you really think the judgements of others are and remain secretly true to yourself and careful about your energy.

This works great for dealing with people or social situations you can’t avoid, it also gives you the chance to develop an active conscious awareness of how people and situations affect you and from there you get to pick and choose whether you willing to hang out with certain folk in the first place.

If the program a person is showing is really negative and unproductive you might want to switch channels and avoid them altogether.