How to Never Let Negative People Bring You Down

Hale Dwoskin, Featured Teacher in "The Secret" and author of the New York Times best seller "The Sedona Method," reveals how people can avoid ever letting another negative person bring them down in their job, relationships or any aspect of life.

An excellent New Year's resolution people can make this year -- one that will serve them well emotionally for their entire life -- is to not let others bring them down.

The negative person type is often characterized as those who complain about anything and everything, and have a knack for telling people exactly what's wrong with them and their life.

People who exude negative energy such as this can be a major risk for other people's well-being. If people are not careful, the negative individual's pessimism may begin to rub off on them, or make them doubt their instincts or path in life.

At the most basic level, people can stop a negative person from bringing them down simply by not being around them. As soon as they start droning on about the bad things in life, they can just leave. Of course, this isn't always an option, particularly if the negative person is someone they work with, live with or must see often. So a backup plan is necessary -- one that will work every time, no matter what.

Positive people should make it a point to stay positive, and it is their right to stay that way. If someone begins to bring a person down, here's how to circumvent it:

Step away from their negativity. One way to do this is to imagine taking a pair of scissors and cutting the cord linked to the negative person. Using this visualization technique, someone's negative thoughts cannot interfere with another person's positive ones.

People can also find something to love about the negative individual. Nothing squelches negativity faster than love, so they should find something positive about the individual, even in the midst of that individual's complaining. When a person shares that positive something with the negative person, they may even see that negative person's frown turned upside down.

Another tactic people can do is to make themselves open and transparent.

"Allow yourself to feel and be as transparent and as open as possible," says Hale Dwoskin, CEO and director of training of Sedona Training Associates. "What this means is if you are trying to protect yourself or prevent others from pulling you down, you are much more likely to be pulled down."

"However, if you allow yourself to simply open and welcome whatever feelings are brought up while you are around others, you become more transparent and therefore create less ways for people to hook into you and pull you down," he continues.

People need to remember that they can be positive no matter what. "Use The Sedona Method to let go of the belief that others can pull you down," Dwoskin says. "If you believe that someone can pull you down, you make it so. But it doesn't have to be that way."