663: Repelling Negativity & Negative People

Okay, the family's together again. Ooh. For better or for worse, there are some negative Nellies in this family. There is Uncle Bob, there is Grandpa Joe, there is Mom, Tammy. I don't know. Just random names of our relatives. And they can be really negative, really judgmental, argumentative. They can be not just our relatives, but maybe somebody at work. That person who always has to complain about the boss always has to complain about that other co worker always has to complain about how something that you're required to do is so stupid and should be done differently. Do you guys know what I'm getting at? Oh, negativity. Negative people. Isn't it funny how negative people often have more negative seeming things happen to them? It's kind of like, well, yeah, they've got a right to complain. Yeah. We're gonna look at this and we're gonna look also not just at what we know about negative and negativity and negative people, but how do we shield ourselves from it? How can we keep our energy up, keep our focus clear, keep our hearts open and light and joyful, even when we have these people buzzing around us like flies? Stay with me. We'll be getting right to it after this. Slow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope and joy and relief. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. I'm Summer McStravik and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. That's right, how to Repel Negativity. So this actual episode is an update to episode number three one seven three seventeen that I did actually almost ten years ago. And as I was looking at that episode, I thought, huh, I wonder if anything's changed in the last decade. It'd be kind of fun to talk about this again, especially because, well, in the last 10 years, our lives and families and workplaces and friendships have become so much more polarized. So negativity isn't always just that gripey person by the water cooler. We don't even have water coolers. Who's even going into work? So a lot of what's happening instead is that our negativity has moved online. It has moved into our news programs and media. It has moved into what used to be more fun family gatherings, frankly, where, you know, Uncle Joe and Aunt Martha wouldn't necessarily be yelling about politics, or if they did, it was of a slightly different tone. It wasn't so personalized. It's more like, I think differently, not you. You suck for thinking differently. So, yeah, negativity, negative energy, negative people energy, vampires, whatever you want to call them. Whatever you want to call this. I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time pinpointing where they are, who they are. I think it's often pretty obvious. I mean, if you end a conversation with someone and your energy feels zapped, if. If you feel grouchier or crankier than when you enter that conversation, if you leave an interaction and you just feel out of sorts, well, then, yeah, you're dealing with a negative person or negativity. So the way that I approach this is, first of all, I try to become aware of when I'm in a kind of negative sphere of energy. And if you're just paying any attention at all, you can start picking up on this. Things that at first appear dramatic. Interesting. Oh, so and so. Said so and so to so and so. Ooh, interesting. You know, good dish. Dishing the good dirt, spilling that tea, well, it can change character. It can move very quickly into that place of. And it's because, nyah, nyah, nya. And then you can tell. It's like, it's. The drama can lead into a kind of envy or put down. It can go other places very quickly, very easily. So I'm always mindful that, ooh, yes, I may be hearing something very juicy, but I'm going to leave it at that. I'm going to file it away and go, well, that's really interesting. Okay. And that's it. Most people, however, don't do that. But why do I do that? Well, one, I'm trying to protect myself, basically. Fundamentally, I'm protecting my energy. I'm not allowing the energy of the other person to come into my world. Imagine it like. Two, you know that picture where you draw two circles on a paper and you intersect them in the middle so that there's this little crescent in between that they overlap? Right. When I'm interacting with a negative person, my energy and their energy, we're overlapping. And I want to be able to walk away not having been colored by their energy, by their negative, you know, stinky grayness. So I'm thoughtful about it. Okay. I'm participating until I'm not. And I know it can feel difficult sometimes because how do you just move the conversation? How do you just shift away from that person? Especially, you know, what if they're your good friend? What if your friend is caught in, like, A negative death spiral. And you're supporting them and you're being there for them. And it's the same damn thing every phone call. And what are you gonna do? What are they gonna do? And eventually you just wanna scream at them to just stop their silliness and get their act together, but that's not gonna work. This is where you're starting to put up these boundaries. This is where you're starting to put up these, hey, I'd love to talk with you about this, but I can't talk now. And hey, it sounds like this is the same thing we've been talking about the last three phone calls. When are you going to fix this? Right. Becoming aware and nudging that interaction down paths that feel better. You can't always do that, granted. Let's say you're in a workplace where there's a lot of negativity going on, or a family where there's much negativity. You can't tell everybody to stop that and forget it and shape up. What do you do? So when I am thinking about how we interact, especially in terms of flow and this sort of overlap, this kind of exchange, I like to one, become very aware of when I'm starting to feel my mood change, when I'm starting to feel, hey, from happy and bright to ah, okay, to ugh, not good at all. I try to catch that as early as I can. Sometimes I don't. It just blows right past me. And before I know it, I'm complaining, I'm cranky, I'm doing the same thing. And I realize I just drop down and matched them. I just dropped down and matched them. So there's been a lot of talk over the decades. Do high energy people lift low energy people up to match them? Or do low energy people drag high energy people down to match them? And I've known some teachers who are very strongly adamant about which direction it always goes and how, but I disagree. I don't think there is only one direction. I think it goes both directions. I think sometimes the negative person feels better after talking with the positive person, and the positive person can also feel worse after interacting with that negativity. A lot of it has to do with the strength, the energy, the vitality of the two people. Who is feeling the best, the strongest, the sharpest. If that's the case, it's like, you know those balloons at the fair and they give you the really dull darts, and then they give you the really dull balloons and you're like, I struck the balloon with the dart. But it didn't pop. Why? Because that balloon has strategically been sitting up there for four days, getting this sort of thicker, more rubberized, slightly less filled, you know, exterior. I know what you're up to, you crafty carnies. Well, a negative person is throwing a dart at you that you're. You're like that old thick balloon. This is the weirdest metaphor ever. But you're this thick old balloon and it's bouncing off you. Your vitality is strong. You're not as penetrable. So I always keep that in mind. Sometimes you can be around a negative person. And we know people like this. They are bombastic, they are loud. They sweep people into their negativity with them. And maybe we're just feeling kind of light and fluffy and nice and we are bulldozed over. We have now aligned to them. Their sharp little dart went right through our shiny, slick, just blown up balloon. Like our skin was thin. Boom, they got us. So this is the awareness part that's so crucial. Which way is the energy going? Look, you guys, you're never gonna be able to get all the negative people out of your life. Not unless you live in a very restricted community of only positive people. I don't know one of those. And I have, I've heard and seen plenty of cults where that's supposed to be. We're all enlightened and happy and positive all the time. It is not the case. So you're gonna learn instead. How do I keep my energy up and passionate and fiery and strong and burning and beautiful and sweet and loving? How do I stay open when I'm around this negativity? I'm gonna share another trick that's worked extraordinarily well for me over the years, hopefully will work really well for you too. And it's this. I have found that when I am giving a lot of time to my flow, dreaming, when I'm really doing a lot of good, sweet emotional reconditioning, meaning I'm going into flow. This is who I am. This is how I feel. This is what life gives me. This is the joy that I experience. This is how easily things untangle for me and smooth out for me. This is the kind of, you know, environment I live in. And it's good. I mean, it's good, it's juicy, it's strong. And I'm feeling it, I'm creating it. It's like there's some part of me that spins up. Imagine a merry go round, right? And the kids are spinning, spinning, spinning. Zoom, zoom, zoom. It's going around. We've all done that until we make ourselves sick and dizzy. And then there's that kid who's like, wait, I want on. And the kid reaches for the spinning merry go round and he goes flying off because he thought he could catch one of those spinning things, but no, no, they were not aligned. He was stationary. And the merry go round is spinning. So he's gonna get bumped off. He's gonna get bumped off. That is my philosophy. This isn't something you do just like by flow dreaming. This is something that you create in yourself over your life, over months and years and decades. You ever been around that person who is so unflappable? Like, we often look to our elders when they're in their assisted living homes and they're just happy and smiling. And you're just like, why are you always so happy, grandma? And she's like, because life is good. I had a beautiful and wonderful life. And it's like, you're so unflappable. How come you don't get mad that they skipped Jello Day? How come you. I'm making this up too, but you know what I mean. And the answer is Jello day doesn't matter, honey. I'm happy with life. Nothing can seem to get through. How did they become that way? And why are their lifespans expanded? Why do they say happier people live longer? Wow. They've worked on this, they've developed this. Maybe consciously, maybe not consciously, but either way, they've arrived at that place. It's funny, negative stuff doesn't seem to stick to them now. Conversely, I've noticed this about people who are often negative. They are looking for negative things, right? It's what they do. They talk about negative, they feel negative, they expect negative, and then they say, because it is always negative, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. They are angry and upset and complaining and they're feeling used and they're feeling screwed over and they're feeling whatever is causing the spew. So what ends up happening? Life around them. Right. We talk about this in Flo dreaming a lot. Life around them aligns to that energy. So what do you know? They do in fact end up getting multiple more negative things happening than the rest of us. We've all done that, scratched our heads and said, yeah, I've got this friend. And like the worst things just always happen to them. It's kind of weird. Like, you know, they got kicked out of their apartment and then they lost their job and then they got a new apartment. And then it flooded. Then they got kicked out of that apartment. Then it was like this litany, and I'm like, yeah, it sounds like they're caught in a repetitively negative cycle. Isn't that interesting? What you see is what you make. What you make is what you see. Round and round and round we go. Do you want to get drawn into that with them? You're like, yeah, but, Summer, I want to help. You can't tell me just to turn my back. No, don't turn your back. Instead, be like the kids on the Ferris wheel with me. Not the Ferris wheel. The merry go round. One goes up in the air, one goes around, around the ground. Be on the merry go round with me. Spin. Be in that higher state. Look, you guys, in my line of work, I deal with negativity day in, day out. Because one of my jobs is. Is to help people with their problems, right? See through their problems, spot their problems, view their patterns and blocks and put them back on the right path. Eliminate them. But you see, that is the difference. I don't just listen and go, oh, yeah, boy. Ooh, yuck. More. I'm listening with an intention. We're solving this. We're changing this. So, in essence, even though I'm participating it, I am always spinning up with it. I am listening to it even as I feel the weight go down. My answer is, how do we spin that up? How do we spin that up? How do we solve this? How do we move through this? How do we fix this? How do we change that energy? How do we have you step out of it? So there's a constant, equal, if not greater shift toward brightness, solvingness, completeness, fulfillment. That is the energy we constantly oscillate up to. So when you're with these people, when you are soaked in the negativity, you come home and your husband, partner, wife, whoever, is just God, you know, complaining about the kids and the day and the dirty house and the. Whatever it might be, the broken father. And you're just tempted to go, ah. Instead, you're like, huh? How do we fix this? Because you've been spinning up all day. You've been spinning up all week. You've been spinning up all month. You've been spinning up your life. And when you hear them, it's like they're throwing those dull darts at your old balloon. It's like, yeah, I'm hearing you, but it's not getting in. It's not getting in. You and I don't match. We don't align. Now, sometimes you do align. You had a bad day at work, your partner had a bad day at work, you come home and boom. The broken faucet becomes the flashpoint for a negative, you know, meltdown. Or one of your kids is causing a stress between you. Could be anything. Money, you know, wow, we don't have. Why did you buy that thing? All the stuff, right? In that case, you've got two people, both in a negative collapse. What happens? Well, you usually get kind of broken down by. It usually sticks and stays until it forces itself out in some big fight or some cold shoulder thing, you know, for 24 hours. There's some sort of resolution, whatever way you guys have figured out how to resolve it or not resolve it, which leads to its own kind of resolution. But the energy never goes up. The energy just stays down until it kind of dissipates. That's when you start to say, I'm getting really affected by negativity. Really affected by it. If you cannot bring your own energy up because for whatever set of reasons in your own life, you are also stressed out and feeling that negativity, then your option is to then break it, right? Break the connection. We're not going to talk about this. We're not going to do this. You solve it or you disconnect from it. Those are your choices. Those are the choices. Long term. The best solution, of course, is keep spinning up so that negativity never really reaches you in the first place, or it reaches you less and less and less again. Remember those people that you know right now who seem like not a lot of bad things happen? Well, trust me, bad things do happen to them, but they're not always complaining about it. Maybe they only complain about it when it becomes overwhelming, right? They get three whacks in a day, and it's like, oh, God, I've got to complain about this now. But generally, they're still having bad things happen. But their reaction, their energetic interaction with these things is, ooh, that was yucky. That'll pass. Soon we'll just solve it and move on, right? There's no holding of it. There's no grasping onto it. I see it, I solve it. I move on from it. I let go because I know where I want to stay. That is what we do with negativity. And I want to break it down. There's negativity inside yourself, and then there's negativity that comes to you from other people, places, or situations. The inner negativity is, I hate my job. I hate being single. I hate where I live. I hate not having enough money. You know, all the things you gripe and complain about because they're miserable and they're uncomfortable things, granted. Then there are the people outside you who want to engage you in their negative spheres with them. And frankly, that approach of spinning up inside yourself, getting on that merry go round, that will work for both. Like, that will take care of both of them. If you are still in the process of doing that, then with other people, your choice is to either put up the boundary, say, I've done what I can to help with this, but I'm done. You know, I, I'm. I don't want to participate in this negative sphere because it's not going to help either one of us, right? I'm just going to end up matching your alignment and that ain't going to fly. All right? Or you, of course, help them. And it works if it's inside you. Spin up, spin up, spin up. Do your flow dreams. I have beautiful flow dreams for releasing negativity. Negative people. I have flow dreams for overcoming obstacles. Think of the negativity that often erupts in your life as if you were flowing on this river of time and your life and the world, and you get snagged. You get snagged on something and you, you stop flowing with it. You get stuck, you know, snagged on a little branch in the river and you can't go forward. What do you do? Well, my case, I pop in a flow dream. I listen or make my own, you know, up in my own mind, because that works for me. I do that. That's what I do for a living, right? I make flow dreams and I listen to overcoming obstacles or repelling negative situations. And I go, oh, I just did the energy work for that. I immediately feel better. I immediately disconnect from it. I loosen that snag until the point where that leaf breaks free and it flows down the stream where it was supposed to go. And I no longer have to dwell on that and circle around and around and around on that. Now, there's one other area of negativity I want to touch on before I wrap up, and that has to do with the negativity we see around us in society. And I think that's the biggest difference in the last 10 years since I originally recorded on this topic. We have trolls now, right? We have negative news networks spewing 24 hours a day, building their audiences, selling their advertising on how worked up can they get us? News is not just the dry, you know, PBS style BBC style. And this happened today. And this and this and this. No, a lot of it is, this happened because these people are terrible. This happens because these people are ignorant. This happens because these people are cruel. This happened, right? They're working us. And it's flowing also coming from the Internet. It's coming from our social media. The constant comparing, comparisonitis. The constant, do I look as good as her? Should I do that face tuning thing, too? Oh, gosh, I posted something. People misinterpreted it. Now I have all these haters on my thread. I'm so embarrassed. I better, you know, turn this off. Oh, my. You know, all of these things, they're a form of background negativity. It's like background radiation from the sun, right? We're all swimming in radiation. We just don't know it because it's coming from the sun. And we're so used to it. Like, we've, you know, our biology has adapted to it, but we haven't gotten used to the background radiation of social media and the background negativity of social media. And I can't tell you how many people I've spoken with who say, oh, God, I did it again. I was, you know, thumbing through Instagram. I couldn't help myself. I did it before I even realized. And before I knew it, 20 minutes had gone by and I was wondering, how come they didn't invite me on that trip with them? And wait, there was a party and, God, you know, my kids aren't doing half as many great things as my friend and their kids are. And, oh, wow, you know, you got a raise or your kid just qualified for the state finals, or. It's when good stuff becomes bad stuff. It's when you start to see all the good stuff around you and it almost forms a kind of toxicity, right? Too much good stuff. Too much stuff. I'm missing out on too many perfect bodies, too many perfect teeth, too many perfect things happening. And, you know, people, these beautiful, exotic vacations and these gorgeous homes, too much of that turns toxic because we can't help then look at what we've got and say, ew, it is not measuring up. And yeah, we all know in our heads, like, of course people are only posting the highlight reels. That's what they do. Who goes on there and says, wow, just had another crappy thing happened today. No one does that. Or, gosh, everybody just weighed myself, put on another eight pounds this month. Nobody said that ever on social media. Or check out, you know, these thighs. I think the cottage Cheese is really. Nobody's ever put that picture up. We don't share that because that's our own inner angsty thing. And by the way, no body shaming that you guys, in case. I just know that I talk with a lot of people, and their number one thing is I want my body to look and feel the way I want it to look and feel. And it's because they're comparing themselves to size two people, you know, with the perfect curves and all those beautiful things that we aspire to have become a toxic background. Okay, so please take what I'm saying in context. The toxic background is a negative milieu. That's a great French word. Milieu. Milieu. Milieu. It means you start bathing in this stuff and you start with being like, ah, that's awesome. Congratulations. Oh, you look so pretty and all that. And it feels good until it feels bad. It's a new kind of negativity. It almost doesn't have a name, except for maybe I've heard the words toxic positivity, but that's a little different. So what I do in this case is you guys know it. You're like, where's Summer on Instagram? Where's Summer on Facebook? Where is she on Clubhouse? I'm like, I'm not there. Nope, not there. Not there. I will get on there and post and share if there are certain things I want you to know about. Cool new playlist coming out. I want to share it. I want to get the word out. But just scroll, scroll, scroll, look, look, look. You know, snoop, snoop, snoop into everybody's lives. I'm not usually doing it. I'm really conscious of preserving my emotional clarity. I'm trying to preserve my emotional, that strong, thick, but supple, impermeable barrier around me that says I have light and joy and givingness for my friends and the people I see. And I'd love to see you in person. I'd rather see you on Zoom. I'd even rather have a text conversation with you than scroll through and start to get sucked into this weird world of where everything is perfect and beautiful and I am not. So I limit my social interaction online. And so far, it is honestly the only thing that I have found that really works. Right. Garbage in, garbage out. Isn't that some old. I think one of my old 6th grade army teacher in school. Well, I mean, he wasn't. I wasn't in the army in sixth grade. He was an ex vet, and he was always telling us about, you know, these terrible battlefield stories, but he always say, yeah, garbage in, garbage out. You know, kids, right? So I try to make sure not as much garbage goes in. Just, you know, here and there, little dibs and dabs, maybe kind of like junk food, little dibs and dabs here and there. And that's been the best way that I've been able to kind of preserve the up feeling, the good feeling, the right feelings. So I encourage you to do the same thing. You'll notice there's so much talk anymore about doing social media diets. You know, seven days off social media, 14 days off social media, 30 days off social media, or eliminating all of them but one, right? Keeping yourself on a real narrow channel so you're not spending as much time there turning on the app on your phone. Did you know that at least iPhones do this? They can actually tell you how much time you've spent on each app. And they can also create time limits where they'll say, oh, you've spent already, you know, eight hours on Instagram this week. You set that as your limit and go, oh, my God, did I really? They have that now because they are quite aware that their job. Social media companies, you guys have been hearing this. Their job is to get as much engagement from you as possible to keep you on their app as long as they can. So you can look at more ads, they can get paid more. So they skew things toward what will keep you there longer. And often the things that keep us there longer are things that don't feel good. Again, like I was saying, a lot of news channels, things that are inflammatory, things that get you riled up and going, things that suck you in with, you know, baseless claims about terrible things happening in the world that we just. We're like, oh, my God, everybody needs to know about this. I gotta forward this to all my friends. And it turns out not to be true. But, hey, they got you on the app a little longer. They got you through that clickbait. They got you into that space. I'm aware that that's what's going on. So be mindful. Be mindful. I wish I could tell you you could flow your way out of it, that you could go spend, you know, two hours you know, cruising social media, you know, talking with the trolls and feeling like crap, and then you can come back and flow dream. But no, ew, that's like. That's like, you know, breaking all the fine china and then saying, but I've got a broom and a. And a dustpan for you. We want to. We Want to make sure it doesn't creep in in the first place. Yeah. Flow Dream for everything that you want. Flow Dream to feel positive, happy, optimistic. Flow Dream when you need to instantly change your mood from feeling negative, overwhelmed and burdened. Yes, yes, yes. Use it for that. Get out of the state of negativity. Flow dreaming is awesome for that. But short of garbage in, garbage out, just limit what you're taking in. So I'm gonna wrap up today. I hope these observations have helped you. Please be thoughtful about what it means to skill up, to spin up, as I like to say, because that's probably going to help you the most. Also to be able to change your feelings quickly, easily moving out of that negative space using the flow dreams, using your own Flow dreaming. Whether it's, you know, no more negativity playlist or removing obstacles, you can just go to the web shop@flowdreaming.com or open the app. There's a Flow Dreaming app. There's two of them. One of them will show you all of those that we have. So I won't be doing a flow dream in today's episode. I don't do them as constantly as I used to do them because I would rather refer you at this point to the really good flow dreams, the super high quality ones that I've made that are also super, super affordable and or encourage you to flow dream on your own. Just learn the process. It's super, super easy. You can do that, by the way, by going to my website and downloading my free. It will teach you everything you need to go. So with all of that, you guys, I hope you have really wonderful holidays, wonderful family gatherings. I hope you'll learn how to put Uncle Joe and Aunt Martha in their place for you to move along happily. And singing and whistling and feeling like you know what, these negative people, they really aren't as big of a problem as they used to be. And they're becoming less and less. Not necessarily because they're changing, but because I'm changing. That is the way to do it. All right, I love to you all. I'll see you all for the next episode of Flow Dreaming. Flow Dreaming is a universe. On the one hand, it's external, extraordinary. It's a technique that can change everything in your life. You can feel better, manifest your dreams, heal it does it all. And to learn it well, just go to flow dreaming.com and get my free kit that teaches you how. Look under free goodies. And you can also download the Flow Dreaming app, which has the kit right there for you. But Flow Dreaming keeps going. Once you fall in love with the technique, you might want to know how to use it better. How to think better, feel better, really change inside. That's why I have Flow on a monthly membership where I teach people a new way of using flow in their lives every single month. Check it out. Finally, you might be perfectly ready for MI School. I know you've heard a lot about MI School, but maybe you haven't actually looked it up yet. It's my most effective program, a culmination of 20 years of teaching. It's been taken by hundreds of students over the last seven years, and this is where you really light that fire, that growth, and you make this a life worth living. You can find it all@flowdreaming.com so go check it out and at least write yourself a note, even if you can't check it out this minute. And while you're at it, subscribe to the podcast.