Three demotivating personalities to avoid
March 14, 2009 by Chris Duran
Filed under Articles, Blog, Healthy Living, Mental Attitude, Positivity, Social Development
As I’ve spoken about in another article, the people you hang around have a great influence on the kind of person you are and how you view the world. We can’t help it: human beings are social beings, and as such our social interactions dictate a lot with regards to our personalities and world-views. Because of this, it is important to be careful and selective of the people you spend time with. Below are some of the personalities to steer clear of to protect your positive mindset.
- The Pessimist
- The Competitive
- The Lazy
The Pessimist
At Cognicology we focus on the importance of a positive attitude for personal and business success. Nothing can be more damaging to a positive mental state then association with a pessimist! The pessimist has a way of finding the negative side to any situation – they are a ‘worst-case scenario’ guy. They can be quite destructive to positive thinking and will attempt to bring you back down to their level of thought. They are ‘positivity vampires’.
As an example: I used to spend a lot of time with a pessimistic guy when I was younger. Lets call him Jack (apologies in advance to all the optimistic and successful Jacks out there – I’ll use a different name next time I promise!). I’ve always had a pretty active imagination and always had numerous projects or ideas running through my mind. Jack was one of my closest confidants and I would tell him about my ideas. More often then not, Jack would systematically pull my ideas apart, telling me that they wouldn’t work and giving a million reasons as to why. I started to believe that all my ideas were worthless from the start and not worth pursuing. Luckily, things have changed dramatically. I now hang with a very optimistic and encouraging group of people and my success and productivity reflects this.
The Competitor
This is the person in your life that has always done something bigger and better then those around them – and makes sure everybody knows about it.
- You’ve gone on a skiing holiday for three weeks – they’ve gone for four weeks.
- You got a new phone – they got a better and pricier phone.
- You met a really nice girl/guy the other night – they met a nicer and hotter person
- You got a new…. get the idea?
Bizarrely, it isn’t only positive things that the competitor will feel they need to ‘one-up’ on – it can even be negative things. If you have had a serious illness, such as food poisoning, you can bet your bottom dollar that they have suffered from the same thing – but theirs was much worse!
Competition isn’t always a bad thing – many people are driven by the achievements of others. It becomes bad when people compete in a negative fashion – by pulling down the achievements of others, to boost their own. It is a selfish movement to increase their ego or satisfaction at the expense of somebody else. There is no give and take in a relationship with this kind of person, only take, and on their behalf. Don’t let yourself be that person!
The Lazy
This person can be one of the most dangerous for your life, tie it in with pessimism and you have a recipe for disaster. Laziness can be a negative association for reasons of productivity – associating with slothful and unmotivated people can be a severe drain on your enthusiasm and drive.
Laziness association can also be dangerous for another less obvious reason which is related to how lazy people view the effectiveness of their own actions in controlling their lives. This is known as ‘locus of control’, for which there are two extremities: external and internal. Lazy people tend to have a strong external locus of control – they believe that their actions have little effect on the outcomes of their lives, in which case there is little incentive to work hard or strive to implement change – and they will make sure you know that your efforts are pointless also.
On the other hand, most of the successful people I know and associate with have a strong internalised locus of control: they believe they are in control of their fate or destiny – the future is very literally in their hands – and they actively work to reach their goals or dreams.
Who would you rather spend time with?