Toxic People

I’m sure you’ve met a few toxic people. While the positive people in our lives nurture and encourage us, the toxic people function more like speed bumps. Energy vampires, fun suckers—whatever you want to call them—these poor souls force us to grow or be drawn into their unhappy world. The next time you find yourself dealing with a toxic person, remember that they deserve your compassion. Just don’t let yourself be submerged in their toxins.

If you’ve ever befriended a toxic person—or if you’ve been lucky enough to have one in your family—you know about the draining effect they can have on you. I’ve found they come in three basic varieties: the overtly negative, the snipers, and the attention hogs. The ones who are overtly negative are also usually hypercritical, and they’re frequently spewing profanity at every turn. Everyone and everything has a label. They can leave you feeling like a punching bag. For these folks, every conversation is the opportunity for a full frontal assault. Snipers appear pleasant, but leave you feeling uneasy as you wonder what on earth they really mean by their back-handed comments (“Gee, Susie, I never would have thought a girl your size could look good in that color, but you really pull it off.”) Attention hogs don’t seem to have a clue that anyone else exists. They can appear egotistical and inconsiderate. These are those people who can’t wait to get together with you, and then spend the entire time talking about themselves. They wonder why you never told them about your marriage, promotion, or pregnancy, completely oblivious to the fact that they never gave you the chance.

The best method I know for dealing with toxic people is compassionate silence, plus a generous dose of self-protection. You can do your best to avoid them, but it isn’t always possible. You can’t take anything they say (or don’t say) personally. Toxic people offer us the opportunity to hone our listening skills, and to practice non-interference and detachment. Listen to what the fun suckers in your life are really saying. What you’re likely to hear under all that negative energy is, “Listen to me! Look at me! I’m lonely!” Fail to hear the real message under all that sludge, and you’ll find yourself smack in the middle of a wave of judgment, maybe even anger. These people virtually invented the senseless argument.

Toxic people teach as much (maybe even more) as our supportive and fun friends. From the toxic people in my life, I learned that unsolicited advice rarely does anyone any good—for either the giver or the receiver. I also learned to relinquish the need to be right, or to talk about myself. The only thing I’m still working on is how to shake that nasty cloud of negative energy they bring with them.

Last week, I met up with an old acquaintance who is also a toxic person. At one time, years ago, she was a friend. But then she became an attention hog. I lost interest in visiting with her after several hours-long episodes of her talking non-stop about herself, sometimes repeating herself endlessly. At first, I felt that because I was her friend I should just let her vent, but then it started to feel like I was on the receiving end of a big pile of emotional vomit. Nothing was going right, her husband was a jerk, her health was a wreck, positive thinking was for imbeciles, and almost everyone she knew was either an idiot or intellectually deficient in some way. She was profoundly uninterested in anything going on in my life. When she got back in touch with me recently, it had been over a year since I’d seen her. I agreed to meet her for some catching up.

I’m happy to say that her health is better and she appears to enjoy at least a few of the people in her life, but she didn’t spend much time talking about those things. Her main topics of conversation revolved around her husband’s failings and how put-upon she is to forever be hosting visitors in her new home. One poor soul had the nerve to bring her an unsatisfactory bottle of wine for a housewarming gift, which she told me she wouldn’t use to make vinegar. (I didn’t mention that I had a bottle of that same wine in my refrigerator.) After two hours of her talking about herself, she was ready to leave. I chuckled when I got in my car. What had led me to believe she had changed? Why hadn't I thought of an excuse not to see her?

My chuckling stopped as I wondered, is it me? Was I at fault because I hadn’t been able to get the conversation going in any kind of positive way? Why did she even bother taking the time to meet me? Did it make her feel better, or superior, or did she just enjoy the fact that I let her talk? How could it be a good experience to have such a one-sided conversation?

In prior years, I would have obsessed over these questions. I would have worried that I appeared weak, uninteresting, or stupid. I’ll admit that it still took me a while to shake the film of black goo that I allowed to cloud my thinking. Fortunately, although she hasn’t changed much since I last saw her, I have changed. Instead of obsessively re-playing every bit of uncomfortable conversation, or thinking of the more witty remarks I could have made, I let it go. I had to consciously move my thoughts away from our visit and on to something positive, but after persistent effort, I succeeded. I realized that it really wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d been as witty as a stand-up comedian, as rich as a Trump, or as sophisticated as a Hamptons resident. It really wasn’t about me. It was about her.

And that, I have to say, is one of the biggest lessons we can learn from the toxic people in our lives. All those mean comments, the negative energy, the seeming lack of consideration, all that thinly veiled judgment isn’t about us. If we take it personally, we just bring ourselves down. But if we practice compassion and detachment, we’ll find the toxic people in our lives can be our best teachers.
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Picture courtesy of Greschoj at http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1057832

An Enduring Classic

If you’re a student of positive thinking, the law of attraction, or any other similar schools of thought, I hope you’ve read the classic Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Published in 1937, this little gem of a book contains the wisdom Hill gleaned after 20 years of interviewing the most successful men of his day—men like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell. Even if you have read it, it bears re-reading—and making notes in it and marking pages that catch your attention.

The table of contents gives a good synopsis of the book:

1. The Power of Thought
2. Desire: The Starting Point of All Achievement
3. Faith: Visualizing and believing in the Attainment of Desire
4. Autosuggestion: The Medium for Influencing the Subconscious Mind
5. Specialized Knowledge: Personal Experiences or Observations
6. Imagination: The Workshop of the Mind
7. Organized Planning: The Crystallization of Desire into Action
8. Decision: The Mastery of Procrastination
9. Persistence: The Sustained Effort Necessary to Induce Faith
10. Power of the Master Mind: The Driving Force
11. The Mystery of Sex Transmutation
12. The Subconscious Mind: The Connecting Link
13. The Brain: A Broadcasting and Receiving Station for Thought
14. The Sixth Sense: The Door to the Temple of Wisdom
15. How to Outwit the Six Ghosts of Fear (Clearing the Brain for Riches)
16. The Devil’s Workshop

Interesting enough, right before I started to write this post, I checked my e-mail and found a message from our Twitter account (@YouRTheAnswer) that let me know I had what’s known as a “follow” from Bob Proctor—yes, the Bob Proctor featured on The Secret. I’m sure it wasn’t from Bob personally; many serious users have systems that automatically give anyone who follows their updates a “follow back,” and I had just signed up for his updates. (Almost every one of The Secret’s teachers are on Twitter, by the way.) As a thank-you, he had sent a link to one of his free videos. This is also a common strategy from high-level Twitter users—they send a link to a free video, a free e-book, or website. I’ve never clicked through to any of these offerings, but for some reason, I clicked on Bob’s. I almost fell out of my chair when he started talking about—you guessed it—Think and Grow Rich. Bob held up his well-read copy and explained exactly how he had put the book’s advice to use in his own life.

It’s difficult to find many modern self-transformation teachers who haven’t studied Hill’s classic. Read the author’s introduction to the original, and it’s easy to see why. Here’s an excerpt:

“Every chapter of this book mentions the money-making secret that has made fortunes for more than 500 exceedingly wealthy people whom I have carefully analyzed over a long period of years. The secret was brought to my attention more than a quarter of century ago by Andrew Carnegie…. When he saw that I had grasped the idea, he asked if I would be willing to spend 20 years or more preparing myself to take it to the world, to men and women who, without the secret, might go through life as failures.” The modern edition is updated and tells the story of some of our own modern giants, like Bill Gates and Steven Speilberg.

Hill tells us in Chapter 1, “A great many years ago I purchased a fine dictionary. The first thing I did was turn to the word ‘impossible,’ and neatly clip it out of the book. That would not be an unwise thing for you to do.”

It would be very wise, however, for you to pick up a copy of Think and Grow Rich.

The Fallacy of Should

All by itself, “should” isn’t a bad word. It’s quite useful in sentences: Johnny should clean up his room. But it’s quite useless in daily life.

Here’s the difficulty with “should”: instead of simply sitting in your sentences as a desired action, it indicates thwarted expectations. One therapist I know said any time we use the word “should,” it indicates an erroneous belief. I should be skinny. I should be richer. My mate should be more attentive. My children should behave better. Should’s sister is Can’t, and they usually travel together: I should be skinny, but I can’t find the time to cook meals. I should be richer, but I can’t do anything beyond my job to make more money. My mate should be more attentive, but I can’t say anything to him. My children should behave better, but I can’t get them to listen to me.

I’ve been reading Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life every morning while I drink my cup of tea. In this book, he examines each verse of the Tao Te Ching, an ancient text written by Lao-tzu. I don’t think Lao-tzu had much use for Should. He was more concerned with Is. I was struck this morning by his examination of the pitfalls of authoritarianism, the epitome of Should. In the 57th verse, Dr. Dyer’s translation says:

If you want to be a great leader,
You must learn to follow the Tao
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
And the world will govern itself.

Should and Can’t figure prominently in many people’s lives, especially during tumultuous times. I have a dear friend whose business has all but collapsed because of the economic downturn. “I should be able to support my family,” he tells me. Repeatedly. “This shouldn’t be happening to me.” Because he feels his business Should be doing better, he is very angry that things aren’t the way they Should be. Anger blinds us to the possibilities contained within our challenges. You’ve probably heard clichés about thinking outside the box; the boundaries of that box are formed with Should.

Students of the LOA (law of attraction) may initially take exception to this line of thinking. They might argue that if we keep our minds focused on how things Should be, then that’s what will happen. Here’s the difficulty with that vein of thought: Should carries a heavy load of negative connotation. It’s all about not wanting what we’ve got. There’s not a shred of thankfulness or gratitude in Should.

We can look at what we don’t want to give us contrast and help us define what we do want, but focusing on what Should happen means you’re second-guessing the Universe. Ever heard the saying, “God works in mysterious ways”? Don’t paint your world in black and white when you live in a colorful Universe. Those things that Should or Should Not be happening may simply be the stepping stones to what you do want, but you’ve got to stop passing judgment on them. Thinking positively and practicing the LOA does not mean that you never encounter difficulty. No matter how positive your thoughts, or much fortune and luck you attract, you will still have to deal with challenges. Let go of Should and be willing to go with the flow, to understand that in every life storms arrive (and pass), and that what appears awful today may be just what you need to push you in the direction you need to go.

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Photograph by Nevada Redd