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 Neurochemical research have long shown that stress can have a lasting, negative impact on the brain. Exposure to even a few days of stress compromises the effectiveness of neurons in the hippocampus—an important brain area responsible for reasoning and memory. Weeks of stress cause reversible damage to neuronal dendrites (the small “arms” that brain cells use to communicate with each other), and months of stress can permanently destroy neurons. Stress is a formidable threat to your success—when stress gets out of control, your brain and your performance suffer.Most sources of stress at work are easy to identify. If your non-profit is working to land a grant that your organization needs to function, you’re bound to feel stress and likely know how to manage it. It’s the unexpected sources of stress that take you by surprise and harm you the most.Recent research from the Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology at Friedrich Schiller University in Germany found that exposure to stimuli that cause strong negative emotions—the same kind of exposure you get when dealing with negative people—caused subjects’ brains to have a massive stress response. Whether it’s negativity, cruelty, the victim syndrome, or just plain craziness, negative people drive your brain into a stressed-out state that should be avoided at all costs. Most negative people behave negatively not just to you, but to everyone they interact with.  What they say and do is a projection of their own reality – their own attitude.  Even when a situation seems personal – even if someone insults you directly – it oftentimes has nothing to do with you.  Remember, what others say and do, and the opinions they have, are based entirely on their own self-reflection. There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference.  The little difference is attitude.  The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.

The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. The results of several research studies found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control. One of their greatest gifts is the ability to neutralize toxic people. Top performers have well-honed coping strategies that they employ to keep negative people at bay.To deal with negative people effectively, you need an approach that enables you, across the board, to control what you can and eliminate what you can’t. You are the average of the people you spend the most time with.  In other words, who you spend your time with has a great impact on the person you eventually become.  If you are around cynical and negative people all the time, you will become cynical and negative.  Does who you are and who you want to be reflect in the company you keep?  Start spending time with nice people who are smart, driven and like minded.  Relationships should help you, not hurt you. Surround yourself with people who reflect the person you want to be.  Choose friends who you are proud to know, people you admire, who love and respect you, people who make your day a little brighter simply by being in it. The important thing to remember is that you are in control of far more than you realize.

Complainers & Negative people: Complainers and negative people are bad news because they wallow in their problems and fail to focus on solutions. They want people to join their pity party so that they can feel better about themselves. People often feel pressure to listen to complainers because they don’t want to be seen as callous or rude, but there’s a fine line between lending a sympathetic ear and getting sucked into their negative emotional spiral.

You can avoid this only by setting limits and distancing yourself when necessary. Think of it this way: if the complainer were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? You’d distance yourself, and you should do the same with complainers. A great way to set limits is to ask complainers how they intend to fix the problem. They will either quiet down or redirect the conversation in a productive direction.

The  secret success of intelligent people

Successful people know how important it is to live to fight another day, especially when your foe is a toxic individual. In conflict, unchecked emotion makes you dig your heels in and fight the kind of battle that can leave you severely damaged. When you read and respond to your emotions, you’re able to choose your battles wisely and only stand your ground when the time is right.The one thing nobody can take away from you is the way you choose to respond to what others say and do.  The problem isn’t the events that are negative.  The problem is the way you react to those events.  The last of your freedoms is to choose your attitude in any given circumstance.  Complaining, blaming and criticizing aren’t going to change the situation.  It is not always easy to find happiness in ourselves, but it is always impossible to find it elsewhere.  Regardless of the situation you face, your attitude is your choice.  Remember, you can’t have a positive life with a negative attitude.  When negativity controls your thoughts, it limits your behavior, actions, and opportunities.  If you realized how powerful your thoughts were, you would never think another negative thought again.

Irrational behavior of complainers

Complainers people drive you crazy because their behavior is so irrational. Make no mistake about it; their behavior truly goes against reason. Which begs the question, why do you allow yourself to respond to them emotionally and get sucked into the mix?

The more irrational and off-base someone is, the easier it should be for you to remove yourself from their traps. Quit trying to beat them at their own game. Distance yourself from them emotionally and approach your interactions like they’re a science project (or you’re their shrink, if you prefer the analogy). You don’t need to respond to the emotional chaos—only the facts.

Awareness and object recognition:

Maintaining an emotional distance requires awareness.  by becoming self-aware, tapping into your compassion, and protecting your positive space.  Doing simple things like talking about positive daily events, common friends, hobbies, happy news, make for light conversations with negative people.  Keep the conversations focused on optimistic areas the person can relate to.  You can disarm their negativity, even if it’s just for a little while. You can’t stop someone from pushing your buttons if you don’t recognize when it’s happening. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in situations where you’ll need to regroup and choose the best way forward. This is fine and you shouldn’t be afraid to buy yourself some time to do so.

Think of it this way—if a mentally unstable person approaches you on the street and tells you he’s Hitler,  you’re unlikely to set him straight. When you find yourself with a coworker who is engaged in similarly derailed thinking, sometimes it’s best to just smile and nod. If you’re going to have to straighten them out, it’s better to give yourself some time to plan the best way to go about it.This is the area where most people tend to sell themselves short. They feel like because they work or live with someone, they have no way to control the chaos. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Once you’ve found your way to Rise Above a person, you’ll begin to find their behavior more predictable and easier to understand. This will equip you to think rationally about when and where you have to put up with them and when you don’t. For example, even if you work with someone closely on a project team, that doesn’t mean that you need to have the same level of one-on-one interaction with them that you have with other team members. Sometime people use negativity as a barrier to protect themselves from the world, which in turn blocks them from solutions that could improve their life.  Instead, identify solutions.  Don’t dwell too much on what went wrong.  Instead, focus on the next positive step.  Spend your energy on moving forward toward a positive resolution.  Remember, when you focus on solutions, by thinking and acting positively, sound becomes music, movement becomes dance, a smile becomes laughter, and life becomes a celebration.You can establish a boundary, but you’ll have to do so consciously and proactively. If you let things happen naturally, you are bound to find yourself constantly embroiled in difficult conversations. If you set boundaries and decide when and where you’ll engage a difficult person, you can control much of the chaos. The only trick is to stick to your guns and keep boundaries in place when the person tries to encroach upon them, which they will.Sometimes you absorb the negativity of other people. There’s nothing wrong with feeling bad about how someone is treating you, but your self-talk (the thoughts you have about your feelings) can either intensify the negativity or help you move past it. Negative self-talk is unrealistic, unnecessary, and self-defeating. It sends you into a downward emotional spiral that is difficult to pull out of. You should avoid negative self-talk at all costs.

Suggestibility!!!

When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction are derived from the opinions of other people, you are no longer the master of your own happiness, you are hypnotized condition. When emotionally intelligent people feel good about something that they’ve done, they won’t let anyone’s opinions or snide remarks take that away from them.

While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others, and you can always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. That way, no matter what negative people are thinking or doing, yourself-worth comes from within. Regardless of what people think of you at any particular moment, one thing is certain—you’re never as good or bad as they say you are.

Where you focus your attention determines your emotional state. When you fixate on the problems you’re facing, you create and prolong negative emotions and stress. When you focus on actions to better yourself and your circumstances, you create a sense of personal efficacy that produces positive emotions and reduces stress.

When it comes to negative people, fixating on how crazy and difficult they are gives them power over you. Quit thinking about how troubling your difficult person is, and focus instead on how you’re going to go about handling them. This makes you more effective by putting you in control, and it will reduce the amount of stress you experience when interacting with them.

Forgive, but never forget…

Emotionally intelligent people are quick to forgive, but that doesn’t mean that they forget. Forgiveness requires letting go of what’s happened so that you can move on. It doesn’t mean you’ll give a wrongdoer another chance. Successful people are unwilling to be bogged down unnecessarily by others’ mistakes, so they let them go quickly and are assertive in protecting themselves from future harm.  Too often, we carry around things from our past that hurt us – regrets, shame, anger, pain, etc.  Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.  Don’t let these negative points from the past rob your present happiness.  You had to live though these things in the past, and although unfortunate, they can’t be changed.  But if the only place they live today is in your mind, then let go, move on, and be happy.  You can decide right now that negative experiences from your past will not predict your future.

Object recognition of self control:

I’ve beaten this one to death over the years and can’t say enough about the importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence and managing your stress levels. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them (which causes dreams), so that you wake up alert and clear-headed. Your self-control, attention, and memory are all reduced when you don’t get enough—or the right kind—of sleep. Sleep deprivation raises stress hormone levels on its own, even without a stressor present.

A good night’s sleep makes you more positive, creative, and proactive in your approach to toxic people, giving you the perspective you need to deal effectively with them.

It’s tempting, yet entirely ineffective, to attempt tackling everything by yourself. To deal with negative people, you need to recognize the weaknesses in your approach to them. This means tapping into your support system to gain perspective on a challenging person. Acknowledge the negativity, accept it, and let it pass through your consciousness, thereby teaching you a lesson but not ruining your day.  Life is full of highs and lows, but you don’t have to go up and down with them.  We develop from the negatives when we accept them and learn from them.  This cycle is all part of the human experience.  Relax, let go a little, and enjoy the ride.  Everyone has someone at work and/or outside work who is on their team, rooting for them, and ready to help them get the best from a difficult situation. Identify these individuals in your life and make an effort to seek their insight and assistance when you need it. Something as simple as explaining the situation can lead to a new perspective. Most of the time, other people can see a solution that you can’t because they are not as emotionally invested in the situation. It isn’t easy to remain positive when negativity surrounds you, but remember that you have full control of your attitude.  Think of it this way: An entire body of water the size of the Pacific Ocean can’t sink a ship unless it gets inside the ship.  Similarly, all the negativity in the world can’t bring you down unless you allow it to get inside your head.  People who are able to discern the positive points in negative situations are the ones who prosper in the long run.  So defend yourself against the ‘negative way’ and make room for a positive day.