Saturday, August 20, 2016

Booting negative people from your life – A closer look

First of all, you can't have one without the other.
Booting negative people from your life seems to be a growing trend. While doing so certainly makes your life more peaceful, is it the right thing to do? I have no room in my life for people who continually insult or abuse me. I don't believe I should have to be friendly with out and out criminals, bigots, etc. However, when it comes to people who simply disagree with my point of view from time to time, they are perfectly welcome in my life.

Sometimes I think people take this whole negativity removal thing a bit too far. Negativity is a powerful learning tool. As humans, we have a pretty basic learning process. By experiencing the bad, we learn to appreciate the good and make positive changes. But we are human, after all, aren't we? That means we're not perfectly positive all the time ourselves. So, next time you consider “un-friending” someone, ask yourself if their infraction was intentional first.

If their behavior contained intentional animosity toward you or someone you care for, you're probably better off without them in your life. If it didn't, do your best to find out what made them feel or act negatively. Try building them up with your own positivism. Not everyone grows and learns at the same rate. If the behavior continues or worsens or you feel your relationship with them is nothing but a psychological drain, then fine, remove them from your life.

Otherwise, just understand that nobody is perfect, not even you and that you truly do:

“Live and learn, from fools and from sages.” - Aerosmith

Everyone has at least one positive quality. Be grateful for the people in your life. Don't just kick them to the curb over one or two negative incidents. Maybe they'll give you the same consideration, the next time you do something stupid.

1 comment:

  1. So kind and understanding an approach. I recently got defriended on Facebook by someone I've always liked in real life, just over a disagreement about an inflammatory cartoon he had posted. It's very sad when people won't tolerate any disagreement with their views. How do we learn anything new if everyone just agrees with us?

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