Positive Life Style

Professor Chris Barnard was asked the question; “How do you keep so positive in your stressful life”? His answer was very simple, “I walk away from negative people”!

Sometimes it is challenging when dealing with a colleague, friend, or spouse because there seems to be two people in the same body. He's a cold person one day and a warm, supportive person the next. To get respect and consistency from this person, your job is simple:

Avoid the cold person and embrace the warm person.

Let's imagine you have a colleague who tends to be moody at work. Sometimes they even affect your performance, because you take it personally and feel down when they are uncommunicative.

In this situation, most people will try hard to please their colleague when he's in a bad mood. They'll go out of their way to be friendly and nice. This is an excellent approach to try the first time he is moody. If he doesn't respond, though, you must abandon this demeanour.

I recommend you keep your contact with the cold person brief. If necessary, look at your watch and say, 'Wow, I didn't realize it was so late...must get back to that deadline.' This way, you're not creating a distraction for yourself at work. You're also not creating a reason to become angry and resentful of your colleague.

But here's the most important point:

People do not respond to negative words, but they do respond to no contact. When you accept others for who they are using these methods, you communicate self-esteem and flexibility. You're saying, 'I don't need you to be any particular way at
all.' Avoidance is not manipulation. It is acceptance.

Avoidance works because you are not doing it in an attempt to manipulate your colleague. Instead of trying to change him/her by being super-nice (or getting angry), you are merely reducing your social contact with him because it is unpleasant for you.

Using avoidance and indifference with people when they are unsupportive is a radical concept. Most of us need to be in control. If a person is not giving us
the support we want, we try to control him. We go back and forth between being angry vs. nice in an attempt to get our way. This never works, because the person
we are dealing with senses what we are doing and rebels even
more.