MSS #021: Six strategies to manage toxic people

MSS #021: Who surrounds you?

MSS #021: Six strategies to manage toxic people.

03 June, 2023

Read time: 4.8 minutes

In a hurry? Cut straight to the 2 tools read from heading How to assess who surrounds you - reduced read time 3 minutes

This week you will learn how powerful the impact is of negative people, people who drains energy and enthusiasm.

I will share six strategies to improve your life my managing the negative people in your life.

The benefits to your personal well-being and happiness can be immense, especially if the impact of the drainers has been ongoing for a while.

These strategies will also give you back control in your life.

Many people have no idea where to start and what they can do about negative people. This newsletter will help you identify the challenging people in your life. As a result, you will feel compelled to do something about it. The six strategies will show you how.

Let’s not hang about, we need to work on getting your life better, starting NOW!

 What is the true impact of negative people on you?

You have a choice about who you want to surround you.

We all know we are surrounded with different characters in life who have alternative views.

To some extent we accept who we are surrounded by, but we do have a choice.

Being more aware of the people in our lives and the different influences they have is important in empowering us to make choices.

Negative thoughts affect us in many ways, one way is a complementary physical response. There are lots of practical examples of how negative thoughts impact us physically.

The most common demonstration of this is to get someone to stand up, put their arm out straight to the side of them. You then ask the person stood up to push their arm up, whilst someone else applies pressure to try to push their arm down. A friendly tussle takes place and the arm stays more or less level or horizontal, balancing the upward and downward forces of each person.

The same exercise is then repeated and the person standing up is asked to think about something sad or negative or think of a sales graph going down. This time the person standing puts up little resistance and their arm is easily pushed down by the other person.

The exercise is repeated, but whilst asking the person stood up to think of something happy, funny or uplifting. You guessed it, the person trying to push their arm down cannot.

This demonstrates quite simply how our mindsets can change our performance.

Research shows that when in a group setting you need five positive people commenting to outweigh and compensate the one with negative comments.

That is quite a staggering ratio, even if there is some error in the measurement, let’s be critical and say it is a three to one ratio, that is still astonishing how people with negative thoughts can have such an impact on us.

In fact, it is not just negative people, negative events have a similar impact, that is why I deleted the news app from my phone a few years ago, as I was taking too much notice of instant news, which by its nature is highly negative.

If you want to check out some of the research on this here are the details.

Harvard Business Review - The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio

Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman

March 15, 2013

https://hbr.org/2013/03/the-ideal-praise-to-criticism

How to assess who surrounds you

Start thinking about who surrounds you. Pick a situation, home, work, social life and consider who the characters are.

Consider if they nurture and nourish you and make you feel great, whole, or special or those that de-motivate and drain you.

You can assess this in many ways such as,

• what they say

• how they say it

• how they treat you

• their body language

• if they are good listeners or just talk a lot about themselves.

Give them a score on a range of +5 to -5,

+5 +4 +3 +2 +1 0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5

Positive influence Negative influence

Be honest with yourself when scoring.

For those with lower scores, you need to think about how you reduce their impact on your life.

This may well seem like a really tough thing to consider, but it can have a big impact on your life and is your choice. Equally, maybe somebody important is missing from your life that you would give a big score too, perhaps a friend or family member you have lost touch with or had a falling out with in the past. Is now the time to reach out?

To help you decide how to distance yourself from those that are more toxic in your life, here are some strategies or approaches you can take.

Strategies to reduce the impact of negative people in your life

For those people in your life that have a negative impact on you, you have several choices. Remember, you always have a choice, even if it is an uncomfortable one, so please consciously exercise it, even if it is to stay as you are, that still leaves you in control.

Choices include,

• Remove yourself from their influence. Sometimes this is easy to do, but in many cases, it may not be so easy to make happen. If you really need or want to you can though, it depends how significant that person’s impact is on you. You can do this by Avoiding being with them so often or completely dropping them.

• Reduce the amount of time or frequency you have contact with this person.

• Meet them with other more positive people, to dilute their impact, remember the five to one ratio though. Any dilution is better than none.

• Challenge their negativity, do not accept it, ask or tell them to stop or explain themselves. Many times, people are not aware of how they come across and do not intend to be negative, in their minds they might feel they are just searching for the best answer to an issue. A good way to do this is to tell them how they make you feel. As your feelings are facts for you and not open to debate.

• Support them, give them a copy of this book, help them look in a mirror they may not know the impact they are having on others, let alone how to change if they want to.

Do not forget to thank and be grateful for the positive people in your life, give them the feedback they deserve.

There are countless personality profiling systems on the market, if you work within a team, it can be a huge insight to get yourself or others profiled and maybe share your profiles.

This often leads to the someone saying things like “Wow, when you say X to me it does not make me feel great, but now I know that was not your intention, so let’s agree to find a way to change between us how we handle this in the future”.

So what?

For either one or a few people you have scored a very low figure, well into the negative numbers, decide what strategy you will adopt.

Support - if you have the time, skills and energy can you help that person make some positive changes in their lives

Avoid - only have contact when necessary 

Reduce - do not meet with them so regularly

Dilute - do not meet them on their own, make sure there are some other positive people in the room at the same time

Drop - the ultimate choice is to make the changes necessary to drop them, no longer meet with them

Challenge – their use of language and how they make you feel

You can record your decisions here.

Action plan

Now consider what is the first step you can take to implement this strategy.

Choose one simple, easy to achieve step that starts to move you in the right direction.

Summary

Quick recap.

• For every negative, draining person in your life you need 5 positive people to act as a balance.

• Assess who surrounds you at home, at work, in your family or socially.

• Give them a score of between +5 and -5, based on how nurturing or draining they are.

• Choose the person on the lowest score – and decided which of the six strategies you will apply and when?

Want more? 

When you're ready, 3 ways I can help you:

1. Build self confidence and resilience fast - £48 training course

2. Work with me 121 - start with a FREE 15 minutes exploration session.

Lets have an open chat and explore how I can help you and what is troubling you.

If we both think we can work together and I have what you need we can go from there.

3. Workshops and Speaking - I run workshops and speak. Book me to help your team increase their productivity.

Nuclear Powered Resilience – learn one golden habit that gives incredible inner strength, comfort and support, that keeps growing by instilling Unconditional Love in your mind.

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Vitamin C for the mind – how to feel and have more control in life, with simple techniques built into a habit.

Happy habits – simple habits to make you feel happier everyday.

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading, really hope this helped. Contact me if you think I can help you further at [email protected].

See you next week. If you haven't already, follow me on LinkedIn and hit the bell for daily posts on tips, insights and techniques.

Happy thinking.

27 May, 2023