 Hello and welcome to today's Mindfulness Challenge Day 97. Thank you for joining me today. Today we're going to talk about how we deal with negative people and the challenges that we face when we come across some of these people and there's many different types of negative people and I try and find myself now and people say well that's not very spiritual Julian but I find myself gravitating towards like-minded people because the energy exchange is pleasant and it's this but we have to remember that the world that we live in and some of these people now are going to be coming out of isolation and all the rest of it and they're going to feel a bit of angst but when you think of working with negative type of people I've always been told that there's sort of we can categorise them as much as you want but there's sort of six categories of negative people and we're going to go through them and then we're going to think about how we deal with them and how we're going to work with them and how we can you know ensure that we don't take on board their energy but try and help them along the process as well and the first sort of negative person that we're going to talk about today is the complainant and that type of person is someone who's always there's always something wrong there's always something happening to them things are never good enough they have an urge to express their frustration with every little thing every time there's an extreme version and the complainant becomes always becomes the victim now we're going to know some of these people as we're actually talking about the character as he oh yeah yeah I remember that person they want you to hear their complaints and agree with them and spending a long time with a complainant makes you feel negative and the key emotion here is dissatisfaction the next person we're going to talk about is the antagonist and they sometimes can be quite aggressive and confidential and pushy and some of their particular feelings of hostility towards certain groups of people they could be manifest in racist or extreme behaviour and sometimes it's a personal dislike in many of these cases however it's not about you they just have a boiling point of anger and frustration and they'll pour it out often whoever happens to be next to them and they get irritated easy and they like to blame or attack others in extreme cases they can be bullies who intentionally want to hurt people and sometimes it does convert out that way but a more refined version of the antagonist behaves in more of a civil manner on the surface but uses passive aggressive speech jokes or sarcasm to vent their true feelings and the antagonist can trigger in your feelings an anger of abuse or distress or or being a victim of injustice and the key emotions here are anger and aversion now another type of person that we'll come across is the narcissist it's all about them and they want you to realise that okay they love talking about their trips their fun times achievement successes and clothes there there's a feeling of self-entitlement they want your attention your confirmation and your admiration taking or talking to a narcissist quite often make you feel disgusted and superficial or it can leave you with this false sense of feeling that the life's not interesting enough and the key emotion here when we start to think about when we talk to a narcissist is pride and then we have mr better or mrs better and you find this type of person in every group their opinion is the only correct one or at least the most accurate one they believe that they're far better than you they're more intelligent they have the material success personal development or whatever it is but they conceal their flaws they have by apologising or recognising mistakes and only put out as a forward shiny face what do they do secretly well your recognition admiration and sometimes submission is what takes them forward they're constantly judging and comparing they can manifest as i know it all they are a purist that can show off quite a bit in a more refined expression they hold their strong opinions with an armour of rational arguments and using condescending language to point to your inadequacies talking to a mr or mrs better may make you feel bad about yourself as if you're inferior but the key pattern here is arrogance and then we're going to move on to the manipulator they will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals even if it means emotionally manipulating you to act accordingly to their own self-interest they might be quite skilled individuals self-driven observant charming and possessing good emotional intelligence and extremely good communication skills but in the most severe cases they're psychopaths and sociopaths you may not realise that you're in the presence of a manipulator although with meditation practice you'll become better at detecting it the key emotion here is selfishness selfishness and the last one we're going to talk about is the drama queen or the drama king and then in the habit of spinning small frustrations into outsized disasters and create this exaggerated emotional response to trivial things and this can be accompanied by blaming others you know generalisation pessimism paranoia and a vindictive behaviour and their moods they're volatile and they expect you to engage with their self-indulgent monologs when you don't they can make you feel bad about it they want our attention our emotional support and our ears but spending time with them is exhausting as if they're sucking the life out of your blood the key emotions here are needing us self-importance and panic now we talk about you know the six different types of people there there's more but I think we can all relate to that and what strategies can we use when we come across these different people these difficult people and how can we use mindfulness to be able to you know change our relationships to some of that and equanimity is something that is very powerful it's the pause it's the breath it's the present without getting emotionally affected we can use compassion for these people we understand them inside out we can use communication we can actively listen and and work on how we can answer some of those questions interruption well let's not get sucked into that rabbit hole or break negative you know bring so even more negative interactions and if assertion if all else fails then confront them mindfully but sharply bringing things to their mind but I want to talk to us about an economias presence equanimity for me is the beginning in the middle and the end of all exercises and without equanimity when we can just pause and breathe so when you get yourself into the situation with one of these type of people don't just jump in and react ground yourself around your body and just without even doing it with your eyes open just check in and feel where that reaction and emotion is and how does that feel and just pause knowing that you're in the power and that you're grounded and you can silently communicate to yourself you know if you've got the complainer and to the complainer you want to be saying that's not important to the antagonist you want to be saying in your mind i'm not intimidated to the narcissist i'm not playing your games to mr or mrs better it says i'm not impressed to the manipulator you cannot use me or control me or to the drama queen quite simply i'm not buying that and equanimity means you're not going to become more defensive you're present you're calm you're fearless you're clear it's like you know it's like a lion walking through the jungle he's not afraid of anybody is he because he knows he's the most powerful and he's the most calm person in the jungle and think about that in terms of um how we can have equanimity as a direct product of meditation how we can have this purposeful daily resilience and practice where we meditate equanimity every time we refrain from reacting to the thoughts and emotions and instead bring your attention back to your object of focus equanimity is a mindfulness armor that we can put up when we get in and around people who have emotional problems narcissism we've just talked about it and the good way of doing that is through meditation and what i'd like us to do now is just close our eyes very quickly and put a picture up let's take a deep breath in just think about everything i've just said and breathe out and out of those six categories i'd like you to bring to mind somebody who sits in those categories the complainer or the antagonist the narcissist mr or mrs is better the manipulator of the drama queen or king and just bring him to mind bring that person to mind and as you bring that person to mind how do they make you feel how do they make you feel and if you've got the complainer in front of you just take a deep breath in as you breathe out say what you're complaining about isn't important what you're complaining about isn't important and i'd like you to bring to mind now an antagonist somebody who knows antagonises you and just say to yourself as you're breathing and you breathe out i'm no longer intimidated i am no longer intimidated until the narcissist take a deep breath in and when you bring this narcissistic person to your mind say to yourself i'm not playing your games anymore to you the narcissist i'm not playing your games anymore and the person who is always better than you mr or mrs better bring that person to mind take a deep breath in and don't attach yourself to it keep that equanimity be present be calm be fearless be clear have that confidence that equanimity can bring and you say to mr or mrs better as you bring him to your visualisation i'm not impressed anymore and to the manipulator somebody who has been over the period just trying to move you in their direction even if you don't want to go there moving you to a different value system even if you don't want to be there say to yourself you cannot use me i'm in control from now on and finally take a deep breath in and just bring to mind the drama queen somebody who has expanded a small situation into a disaster that in the main suits them and say to yourself i'm not buying your exaggeration anymore i'm not buying your amplification of the truth anymore i'm not buying it just sit in that feeling feel now and check in with your body how having done that you feel in control you have this equanimity you are the calm observer of what happens and you can do this in relation to any recurring challenges that you face in your daily life and once the challenge happens for real your nervous system will already be trained to equanimously work on the situation as you're breathing you just bring another person to mind who's trying to take you out of it they're trying to really work you hard they'll say that you're cold or you're indifferent or you're not listening but take a deep breath in and when you get that response again realise that this is a trap this is for you to come out of equanimity come on to the defensive or come on to the attack but don't buy it just show that from your actions that you are listening that you aren't cold and that you are compassionate and engaging but you're just simply not getting emotionally distressed by this anymore developing equanimity through meditation can really help you to protect you from the harm of negative people and the emotion that they bring we know we can show compassion when we need to and we know that we can work with difficult people who are driven by negative emotions and sometimes we just need to put ourselves in their shoes and imagine you're inside their skin and what they've gone through but the six type of people we just mentioned you've just brought to mind and you take a deep breath in you realise that this is symptomatic this is this has happened on many occasions although you offer them loving kindness and the powerful practice of building emotional intelligence and empathy within yourself it's very difficult to change somebody who is completely ingrained just sit with that feeling of equanimity that knowing it doesn't matter what type of person comes your way you'll be able to deal with them you'll be able to recognise them you'll be able to try to help them but when that point of help is beyond then you know you have the protection to be able to walk away without getting emotionally involved to get your breath in and open your eyes and just wiggle your fingers and come back so it's an interesting topic and it's one that we will you know work on in the future but I just thought today we've talked about a lot of things but we're going to be coming out of lockdown most of us are now and going forward that we're going to come back into this relationship and to this activation with people who are in front of us so it's a mindful way of dealing with these people and situations to understand that they're spiralling all the much you might not help them can cause yours and that's not always helpful either so day 96 good afternoon good morning Julian I love you be love and give love and just think about your relationship again change your relationship with the emotions that are attached to these people see if you can help them if you can't then just make your own decisions but don't get caught up in the trap of jumping in and combining and amplifying the issues through emotional entanglement have a lovely day be love and give love and I'll see you tomorrow on day 97 not many to go see you soon take care bye bye