Avoiding The Minus People
Have you noticed how easy it is to destroy than to
build, be negative than be positive, be reactive than
proactive? Since it is such a “negative” world out
there, the last thing you need is hanging around the
“Minus People”. This is because as their name depicts,
they always deduct from you and most of the time they
do so unknowingly and sincerely! There are basically
two categories:

Group 1
The first are people who have a toxic effect on anyone
that they come in contact with and since you need no
special training to be a Minus person, their contagious
mindset affects you easily. They have a tendency to
increase the entropy of their environment.

Minuses are not only people with pessimistic opinions that we
come in contact with. They can also be what we listen to,
watch or feed into our minds from literature. Most of the news
networks are good examples. Proverbs say to guard our
hearts with all diligence for out it are the issues of life and
that we speak from the abundance of our hearts. Our eyes
and ears especially are the gateways to our hearts and it is
wisdom to filter what we allow in via these entrances.

Now back to the first category of minus people.
Here are some pointers to these folks:

* They see the world as one big problem and in their
eyes you are included!
*They are pros when it comes to identifying little
problems no matter how well things are going.
*You come up with a great idea and they give you 10
reasons why it won’t and can’t work and they say it
with such cynicism.
*Usually, correcting their mindset takes time and
effort.

So for now, considering that you are on a journey
called success;the best thing to do is to run away from
them as fast as you as far as you can. Proverbs says to
walk with the wise. If you do, you become wise. A
companion of fools will be destroyed. Generally, you
become like those you spend time with - at no extra
cost.

Group 2
The second group consists of those that do not say
harmful things but neither do they say things that
benefit you or energize your emotions towards doing
things of worth. This group is deadlier simply because
they are “harmless”.

Do you have such people in your life?

If you are not sure, here’s how you can spot them:

*They usually take a lot of your time and energy and
after a couple of hours together you wonder why time
has passed so quickly and even wonder more why you
have not derived anything in beneficial from your time
together.

*They talk about everything else except those
things that are profitable or of value.

* If you ask what they have been up to lately, they
“nothing much” or I just dey or something implying they
have really not been progressing in life.

*They have no enthusiasm and take each day as it comes.

I’m sure examples of such people are springing up in your
mind right now. The amazing thing is that you enjoy the
unfruitful time together and this is why I said they are even
more dangerous. This group eats away only your time and
they are also unproductive in their own lives too.

A simple way of avoiding this people is to say you’ve got
something important to do after exchanging pleasantries
and leave immediately.

The truth is time passes so it is now left for us to either
maximize the time on our hands doing purposeful things or
just let it slip away.

In avoiding minuses, there are no rooms for sentiment!

Immediately you realize that someone is one of the Minus
people – whether friend or family, you flee. Simple, uh?

In reality, it is easier said than done because the people
we love the most oftentimes belong to this group. To avoid
minus people, we must realize we have a choice. We decide
what we want in our lives knowing fully well that indecision
is simply a decision to do nothing about a situation. Once you
see that someone is negative in his outlook to everything,
make up your mind to part ways with the person. By doing
this, you do your future a huge favor.
© Olusegun Adedokun 2007

Quote of the post
"Birds of the same feather flock together" - unknown