Today in a nutshell…
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If someone feels bad about themselves, they can notice something bad about you and point it out, and they feel more equal to you, which brings them up a little. Or they are simply down or out of control and it brings you down because you love them.
The way to tell whether a person is someone who brings you down or not is to ask yourself a question the moment you disconnect from him. The moment you hang up the phone, the moment he drives off in his car, stop and ask yourself, “What was the result of my contact with him?” Do you feel inspired and more able to go on and get what you want out of life? Or do you feel doubtful now because maybe your idea is not such a good one after all? Do you feel confused? Have you been convinced your goal will take more of an effort than it’s worth? Or that your chances are very small? Do you feel in a worse mood because he talked about his own personal miseries that he somehow won’t do anything to solve?
If you feel less motivated, if you feel worse about yourself, if you’re more aware of your faults, then regardless of how smiley and friendly that person is, he has damaged you and brought you down.
Start being aware of how you feel after you’ve been in contact with people. Try to detect who chronically or consistently brings you down. Every time you’re around that person, you come down. Is there a person in your life who brings you down almost every time you interact with him? Think about that now.
The best way to deal with people who bring you down is to concentrate on the way you handle yourself, not them.
Here’s a breakdown of how a pessimist thinks:
1. Good things don’t last. Good things are only temporary. This way of explaining things (as well as the other two below) tends to put the pessimist himself in a bad mood, and when he shares this pessimistic point of view with you, it tends to bring you down too.
2. Good things are small and unimportant and don’t influence much of your life.
3. If a good thing happens to you, it is a fluke — you had nothing to do with it. You don’t deserve much credit for it. The economy changed in your favor, or it was mostly luck, etc.
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That’s what a pessimist does with good news or when good things happen. Here’s what they say and think when bad things happen:
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1. It’s going to last. It is a permanent change. A bad thing happens and they say, “It’s going to be that way forever. It has always been bad, it will always be bad; people are never going to change, etc.”
2. The negative event has far reaching consequences. It will “ruin everything.” Bad stuff is perceived to be even worse than it is. Exaggeration is the name of the game. Blowing it out of proportion.
3. If a bad thing happens to you, it’s your fault. And they’ll make you feel responsible for it.
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The people in your life who bring you down are probably pessimistic, and their ways of thinking come out when they talk to you, which can effect the way you think about events, making you more pessimistic (at least temporarily) because everyone is susceptible to suggestion to some degree. And that’s not all they do.
