How to Protect Yourself from Negativity: Setting Boundaries is the Most Effective Way to Stay Positive
It's hard to stay positive when you're surrounded by negative people who are stuck in their own problems but show no desire to solve them.
Instead, they expect 24/7 support from those around them and hope that they will share their pessimism.
In most cases, their complaints are indeed not interrupted by anyone – people do this out of fear of appearing rude and callous.
However, it is one thing to provide emotional support, and quite another to get stuck head over heels in the swamp of their negativity.
What can you do to avoid ending up in a quagmire like this?
Experts advise setting clear boundaries and maintaining distance between yourself and the source of negativity.
For comparison: imagine that you sit next to a smoker all day long. Do you enjoy the tobacco smoke that he releases? Very doubtful. So step away from him and breathe in the fresh air deeply – literally and figuratively.
If there is no opportunity to isolate yourself from an annoyingly negative opponent, try another strategy - ask your interlocutor a question, clarifying how he is going to solve the problem that causes so many complaints on his part.
As a rule, this is enough to close the topic – at least for a while.
Previously, we talked about how to politely say “no” to work colleagues.
