I’m sure you’ve seen the articles in Social Media. “Ten Ways to Manage Negative People” or “How to Get Negative People Out of Your Life!”. There are even Personal Success and Life Coaching programs designed around that, because your belief that “negative people” are holding you back, enables them to take your cash!

That’s right. By acknowledging that you believe “negative people” are hindering you, you set yourself up to be monetized. There are plenty of gurus all prepared to sell you on some affirmation program that will make you feel better, for a mere monthly subscription fee.

But isn’t the real problem you?

By blaming others for how you feel, you may be avoiding the truth. The truth is that each of us needs to survive and succeed in the real world, not some false world of only happy people, or no “negative people”.

I know one manager who asks a set of interview questions “designed to detect negative people”. She believes that the answers she expects to hear from a “neggie” are, in fact, representative of a brand of people who hold back the other employees in her office. By screening for them and avoiding them, she believes she maintains a more effective (and profitable) workplace.

I’ve even heard business owners say they only hire people who are “positive”, as if the owner’s perception of what that actually means is flawless. How could it be a good idea to only hire people you think are upbeat and positive? Wouldn’t that result in a group of yes-people, or people who never actual have a real opinion, or who are very inefficient at expressing a contrary opinion in a business setting?

Yes, it would.

Of course it may be a good idea to avoid mentally unstable people, including people who are so dysphoric they cannot see the positive side of anything.

But the true “neggie” might be you. Your own abandonment of your responsibility for dealing with real humans (who can be negative at times, or tough to convince, or firm in their beliefs, or any of many other traits that can seem negative at a given moment) is manifest in your declaration that they are “negative” and you, are not.

I imagine there are some who right now are thinking that I am “being negative”. LOL.