How to deal with negative people

A while ago I found myself in such a state that I could not proceed with my professional life. I felt like surrounded by negative people only.

After a while, I started becoming like them and started sharing their views on the chaotic work situation. There was a lot of nagging and gossiping about everything and everyone around me. Negative people just suck the life out of me. I try to stay positive and remain strong but their negativity ends up just completely draining me. I found myself feeling exhausted and depressed.

I decided to end this situation and googled “how to deal with negative people”. I got myself enrolled in an online video training called Energy Vampire Slaying: 101–How to Deal with Negativity and Difficult Behavior at Work, at Home, and In Yourself by Dan O’Connor. It is a video training about communication skills, which I turned on in my car to listen on my way to work every morning. The terminology used was new to me so I had to rewind every session more than once to be able to understand the material well.

This training helped me out a lot and got my focus back to my work. The main question I asked myself was: “why is it affecting me so much”? I learned that the way you are is how and what you communicate. If you are troubled and have unresolved issues you will express this by the way you communicate and the words you select. Be polite to people and you will get politeness back.

A very good example was that you can put on the positive glasses and the world will look positive too.

I started analyzing myself what feelings it caused to me. Once I figured it out I could deal with it and move on. Simultaneously I also started searching data on corporate communication. I got to understand people around me much better and it taught me more about myself and how to deal with people in general. I even tested some tips and tricks for this training at work just to find out whether it really worked. Of course, my test persons were not aware of this. I choose the 2 most difficult persons I had to deal with at work daily.

This practical research taught me that the online course was indeed effective. The realization made me more eager to read on this topic and follow online courses to have a profound understanding on this matter. It went so well that I even shared this with colleagues around me who were experiencing the same. I advised everybody to start with the video training of Dan O’Connor. I myself made it a habit to read an article a day on communication or psychology.

This helps me so much more. The daily reading and the implementing in corporate life. It has a big impact on how I need to perceive and deal with people in general. In my profession I daily deal with people of different cultures. This makes my work also more meaningfull and interesting. It gives me motivation and stimulation to perform better.

It also enables me to share this knowledge with my coachees. It will serve them in the future when they experience the same challenges at work. Every person will learn different elements in their own profession. It can then be translated into the specific need which one has while encountering negative people in corporate life.

Enriched by my own turnaround, it gave me the strength to support, advise and guide others to see life through my positive glasses.