Negative People SUCK!
That may sound harsh, but the fact is that negative people do suck. They suck the energy out of positive people like you and me. They suck the energy and life out of a good company, a good team, a good relationship... Avoid them at all cost. If you have to cut ties with people you've known for a long time because they're actually a negative drain on you, then so be it. Trust me, you're better off without them.
What would it mean in practice to eliminate all the "negative people" from one's life? It might be a good move to separate from a chronically carping spouse, but it is not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager. And at the workplace, while it's probably advisable to detect and terminate those who show signs of becoming mass killers, there are other annoyin people who might actually have something useful to say: the financial officer who keeps worrying about the bank's subprime mortgage exposure or the auto excutive who questions the company's overinvestment in SUVs and trucks. Purge everyone who "brings you down," and you risk being very lonely or, what is worse, cut off from reality. The challenege of family life, or group life of any kind, is to keep gauging the moods of others, accomodating to their insights, and offering comfort when needed.
But in the world of positive thinking other people are not there to be nurtured or to provide unwelcome reality checks. They are there only to nourish, praise, and affirm. Harsh as this dictum sounds, many ordinary people adopt it as their creed, displaying wall plaques or bumper stickers showing the word "Whining" with a cancel sign through it. There seems to be a massive empathy deficit, which people respond to be withdrawing their own. No one has the time of patience for anyone else's problems.
In mid-2006, a Kansas City pastor put the growing ban on "negativity" into practice, announcing that his church would now be "complaint free." Also, there would be no criticising, gossiping, or sarcasm. To reprogram the congregation, the Reverend Will Bowen distributed purple silicone bracelets that were to be worn as reminders. The goal? Twenty-one complaint-free days, after which the complaining habit would presumably be broken. If the wearer broke down and complained about something, then the bracelet was to be transferred to the other wrist. This bold attack on negativity brought Bowen a spread in People magazine and a spot on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Within a few months, his church had given out 4.5 million purple bracelets to people in over eighty countries. He envisions a complaint-free world and boasts that his bracelets have been distributed within schools, prisons, and homeless shelters. There is no word yet on how successful they have been in the latter two settings.
So the claim that acting in a positive way leads to success becomes self-fulfilling, at least in the negative sense that not doing so can lead to more profound forms of failure, such as rejection by employers or even one's fellow worshipers. When the gurus advise dropping "negative" people, they are also issuing a warning: smile and be agreeable, go with the flow--or prepare to be ostracized.
It is not enough, though, to cull the negative people from one's immediate circle of contacts; information about the larger human world must be carefully censored. All the world must be carefully censored. All the motivators and gurus of positivity agree that it is a mistake to read newspapers or watch the news....
...This retreat from the real drama and tragedy of human events is suggestive of a deep helplessness at the core of positive thinking. Why not follow the news? Because, as my informant at the NSA meeting told me, "You can't do anything about it." Braley similary dismisses reports of disasters: "That's negative news that can cause you emotional sadness, but that you can't do anything about." The possibilities of contributing to relief funds, joining an antiwar movement, or lobbying for more humane government policies are not even considered. But at the very least there seems to be an acknowledgement here that no amount of attitude adjustment can make good news out of headlines beginning with "Civilian casualties mount..." or "Famine spreads..."
Of course, if the powers of the mind truly "infinite," one wholdnot have to eliminate negative people from one's life either; one could, for example, simply choose to interpret their behavior in a positive way--maybe he's critizing me for my own good, maybe she's being sullen because she likes me so much and I haven't been attentive, and so on. The advice that you must change your environment--for example, by eliminating negative people and news--is an admission that there may in fact be a "real world" out there that is utterly unaffected by our wishes. In the face of this terrifying possibility, the only "positive" response is to withdraw into one's own carefully constructed world of constant approval and affirmation, nice news and smiling people.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Bright-Sided. pg 55.
Not only does this absurd "positivity" have negative results. The need to do it in the first place strongly suggests that at heart the practitioner has an incredibly negative outlook on the world. It suggests they don't believe problems can be solved and it's best to just pretend like none are present. Just smile and ignore all problems and ignore anyone who isn't doing the same, as what else could possibly be done? Making long term changes are hopeless. Just pretend everything is already fine.
