Handling negative persons can be difficult. Listening to someone with a pessimistic, doom and gloom attitude drains energy, tests the limits of your patience, and can impact your mental and physical health. Life is too short and precious to be inundated by negative persons. If someone around you, whether a family member or casual colleague, is consistently negative, judgmental, and critical, what can you do about it? Here are some tips from stress manager Eddie Chandler for countering negativity, together with some of my own sentiments:

Accept your limitations: You are neither responsible for nor in charge of changing anothers attitude. In fact, be prepared for shocked disagreement if you call attention to their negativity. While you cannot change other persons, you can control your reaction to them.

Cut others some slack: Check out your assessment. Make sure you're not reading more negativity than is intended in anothers comments and actions. Few people consciously decide to make those around them miserable. Most people generally mean well and have good intentions.

Establish boundaries: Limit contact with pessimistic and selfish people. Regardless of who they are, strive not to let anothers negativity infect you. You can choose not to react to anothers words or actions.

Ask for clarification: Make others clarify, explain and repeat whatever negative sentiment they just expressed. This can help negative persons to realize how they sound and possibly to recognize the groundlessness of what they are saying.

Offer solutions: Point out the positive possibilities and focus on potential benefits rather than pending liabilities. Use empathy and diplomacy without buying into their problem.

Don't get baited: Never fight another's turf war. Take what negative persons say with a grain of salt; it is very likely not completely accurate. Some people complain in the hopes that other persons can be enjoined to fight their battles with or even for them. Don't take their bait. Beware of getting yourself caught in a triangle; refuse to be a messenger between a chronically negative person and someone who has supposedly done them wrong. If you choose to serve as their mediator, have both parties present and keep in mind that any miscommunication is their problem, not yours.

Call them on it: If others start fishing for sympathy, call them on it. Question their maturity and gently advise them to quit complaining. Use humor to point out their pessimistic comments. Try mirroring their attitude by expressing sentiments as negative as theirs. This may appear patronizing, but for some people, this could help them to realize how their defeatist approach sounds, and motivate them to change. In extreme cases, taping or videoing them or taking pictures could also help you to prove your point. When they see their facial expressions, hear their negativity and discover how others behave around them, their negativity is harder to deny. Enlist the help of friends or colleagues to work on the problem together.

Don't let them get to you: Be prepared to ignore the negative comments of a known grouch. Don't let their negativity draw you into a downward spiral. Dont let your perceptions be contaminated by anothers hypercritical world-view. If everything else fails, avoid them entirely so their negativity does not bring you down. A negative environment definitely impacts your productivity at work and your personal relationships. If, despite your best efforts, anothers faultfinding persists and begins to infiltrate your own outlook, walk away. As best you can, remove yourself, even if it is only emotionally, from energy-draining persons.

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Handling Negative Persons - Patch