715: How to Protect Yourself from Someone Else’s Negative Mindset

We all know those people whose energy feels like quicksand, sinking down and leaving us with all their same worries or anger or just general grumpiness. Maybe you work around someone like this. Maybe it's your boss, your parent, or a friend or family member. And we know that emotions are contagious and energy rubs off easily. But now, today we're going to look at some ways that you can leave these encounters feeling shiny as a new penny. Let's discover how Flow Dreaming still kind of Woo Woo is just what it sounds like. An escape into the world of woo. Also a ride into you and how to feel happier, wiser and more self aware in every way. It's your ultimate journey into personal growth and inner power. We'll explore ideas like how your energy self influences the kinds of opportunities you encounter, or how your personal growth can drive your business growth, or even how that feeling of being stuck is really always coming from something else. We just have to figure out what. That's right. We're a dash of woo woo. A sprinkle of self care, a heap of problem solving and pattern busting, and a giant cup of encouragement. We're going to relight so much passion, purpose, self love and confidence in you that you practically stagger. I'm Summer McStravik, your host and welcome to Flow Dreaming Still Kinda Woo Woo. Welcome to episode number 715 of Flow Dreaming Still Kinda Woo Woo. I'm Summer, your host and today we're talking about how to protect yourself from someone else's negative mindset and such a good topic. I've explored this one a couple of times, but today I'm maybe going to take a little bit of a different tack. First of all, let me say we may have a few interruptions. I have the door open, the birds are singing, my big dog might be woofing. At the same time, I have a foot heater on. I know that doesn't make sense. The door open, the heater on. But let me podcast the way I need to podcast my optimal conditions here and there may be a Costco delivery right in the middle of things. So enjoy all the surrounding atmospherics as we plunge in today to really helping you understand when you're around these people how you can protect yourself and not be caught in their web of icky yucky blow blah. Anyway, I was talking with a friend the other day and we were commiserating about how negative her mother is. I love her mom, but yeah, she just grew up in that time when you just looked at everything and pointed out what was wrong with it and you're critical about it and this isn't working and that person is not doing the right thing. And there's a laundry list. I mean, there is a list of everything that ain't right. And my friend feels like she's got to patiently just kind of listen to her mom and go along with things because her mom is old and that's what she does. And you know, you just nod your head up and down and meanwhile you're just thinking, oh, God, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. I just, I don't want to feel as miserable as you're feeling. Why are you doing this to me? Yet sometimes with people like this, you can't actually point out to them what they're doing. They simply will not see it. So we're long past that point of being able to say, hey, you know, you kind of have a negative mindset and it's kind of making me feel sick to my stomach and I just want to get out of here as fast as I can. Well, sometimes people aren't as obvious as that either. Sometimes you're just around a secret seether, secretly seething. And that's often that co worker who's just like quiet and just hating being there and hating the situation. And you think, what's going on? Why am I feeling weirded out? And just, I feel like my own mood is plummeting. Well, energy is catching. Emotion is contagious. That's actually well documented. Anything from crowd hysteria, crowd emotions. Right. There's this kind of effect of emotions catching with other people, like a fire, literally. But just being next to one negative person can have that same seeping over effect. What do you do? What? How do you just, you know, keep yourself, like I said, squeaky, squeaky clean, shiny as a penny. Well, first of all, you're noticing. I think sometimes we don't pause long enough to notice. We just shoulder it and deal with it and go about our business and don't think about it. But meanwhile we're being plunged into a literal vat of seeping negativity. And so when you notice it's that moment of, oh, weird, I was at the, you know, the mom's house or dad's house or Thanksgiving or whatever, Aunt so and so was there and she was talking about how, you know, she's having trouble with her rent and, you know, the people, the landlord and this and that and, and you just pause a moment and think, gosh, nothing beautiful, bright or uplifting has been said in at least half an hour. And it's the state of the world now, and it's all the people in the world and all the bad people, and, wow, nothing has been said for a while. Bing, bing, the light goes on. That's the very first moment that you get to disassociate yourself, to step yourself out of the quicksand, to walk back from the pool. Noticing. Noticing is not always the easiest thing to do, because chances are you're a pretty good empathic person. You're somebody who cares about others, and our first instinct is to say, oh, I feel that with you. Oh, I share that with you. Oh, I sense that I'm with you. I'm there with you. We want to not commiserate, but. But share in their burden, show that we care, show that we're there for them. Yet after we do that, you start to notice the other person doesn't really absorb that you're caring. They just keep going on and on and on, and that moment of connection is lost. They just want you now to be in it with them. They want you to go beyond saying, I feel you, and I, you have my love and sympathy. If that's all they needed, they would stop talking at that point. They'd say, thank you. You're right. I really just needed someone to hear this from me. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to bring it all down, but we normally never, ever hear that from people like this. They just keep going. And that's your second wake up. Now that I've noticed and they're continuing to go, what do I want to do with this? Couple choices present themselves. One, you can walk away, disengage, say, I've got other things to do. Gotta go, bye. Well, sometimes that works. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes you're at work all day, and you can't exactly say, gotta go. Leaving work early. Bye. You've gotta suffer through it. You've gotta suffer through the. What we call the toxic atmosphere. Now, what happens when you get a group of people together, speaking of toxic atmospheres? They tend to feed off each other. Now, you've got three people at work, or three people wherever you're at, and they're all grumbling and they're all cascading this together. And you can't leave your desk, you can't leave the Zoom call, whatever it may be, you can't leave the register. Your next option is to create a kind of impenetrable emotional shield, energy shield for every negative thing that's dropping out of their mind or their. Or their grumpy point of view or their negative point of view about the world. Your response is, I see something beautiful. I look across the room and I notice, gosh, those flowers in the vase are gorgeous. I wonder who picked those and put them together. Wow, what a beautiful day outside. Oh, look at this sweet little doggie. I bet he needs a little scratch on the head. What you're doing is you're consciously choosing things that you can focus on that are opposite the energy around you. You're looking for the bright spots in the murky painting, and they're there. They're always there. Now, just landing on these bright spots, just noticing them, it's almost like an exercise in gratitude. Whenever we practice feeling gratitude, instantly everything kind of shifts and we're like, yeah, you know what? My life isn't that bad. Gosh, I forgot all these great things that are going for me. We sort of tilt our energy in the other direction. Well, maybe you can't do a gratitude practice. If you can. If you can close your eyes for 10 minutes and just feel how wonderful and thick and full and rich your life is, that's fantastic. That's a great way. But if you can't do that, you're just gonna let yourself land on things around you that you can notice, like, oh, what a. You know, what a nice mom and her kid. And they're treating each other so politely over there. Whatever you can find. You're creating a kind of energetic balancing of the scales, and you're not balancing it inside this other person who's negative, because we're kind of acknowledging we're probably not going to change them. They have an investment in the way they're being. They don't know what it is. They probably haven't stopped to ask themselves, but they have an investment in staying in that state of mind. So we're leaving our hands off them, and we're focusing primarily, really exclusively on ourselves. This is how I feel better. This is how I regain center. Now you can add into that some deep breathing, breathing in, breathing out, exhaling that negativity in and out. You can close your eyes. You can shut off a little of the external stimuli and go right into yourself. Who am I? How do I actually feel about this world? How do I actually feel about this moment, this precious moment in my life, this precious and gorgeous day? And you know what? Maybe some things did get out of line or off kilter, because maybe this other person's negativity has. Seeped into you. And you're starting to feel as down and hopeless and disgusted as they are. But again, I want you to even the scales. Bring up something, something that's happened, some moment experience, something recent, something coming up where you just feel like, I can't wait, I'm gonna go visit family. I can't wait to get on the plane. And I haven't seen my grandkids in forever. Oh, it's gonna be beautiful. What a wonderful feeling. Your energy is now going up, up, up, up, up. Think of that up energy as a kind of fortress, a kind of wall made of bricks and mortar. And it's going up, up, up. Now this other person who continues to spew, right, their toxicity is starting to come around the bottom of your fortress. And you know it's creeping up the walls. It's like an icky green mist. But your walls keep going up and their energy eventually kind of levels out. This little pool of icky green olive drabby, yuck around you. I don't know why I'm picking olive green drabby, but that's my, that's my green inner, my toxic spew. You're higher than that now. Your mind is focused elsewhere now. What's gone on here is that you were energetically aligning to them. At a certain point, you were involved with them. You were giving them some of you. And of course, we always do it, like I said, out of the goodness of our hearts. I love you. I care about you. What's wrong? I want to help you. That's our alignment. And then we realize, ah, I've given you in my alignment. You ran right over it. You didn't even notice. So I'm pulling it back. You've shifted into aligning with something very different. I wonder how quickly I can get this work done today. I wonder if I could make something special for dinner. I wonder if I could go outside and take a 10 minute walk and just breathe in the beautiful crisp air. I wonder what I'm gonna do over the holidays, if I'm gonna get a real tree or when I can, you know, light those candles. What? I wonder. Your energy is different now. Your energy is no longer aligning to theirs and you've made it a lot more difficult for their energy to align to you. It's a mismatch, right? You're trying to strike a match on a wet matchbox. It's just, it's not going to light. The connection is no longer there. This is primarily how I handle being around. Very, very negative People. And haven't you kind of noticed that in your gut when you. Sometimes you've been around negative people, but you've been so high and happ. And great. Like, you look at them and you're like, huh, they're not good today. But it's like, it doesn't affect you at all. And you think to yourself, that's weird. I didn't even feel them. Other times, though, it's like you've just been instantly sucked in. When you walked into that situation, you came in at a lower set point. It wasn't that hard for you to align and go down. The higher you walk into a situation or place, the higher your energy, the easier it is to just not align at all. Now, what happens if, you know, you're walking in? Speaking of, like, I know I'm going into work tomorrow, and I'm gonna see. I know I'm going over to so and so's house and they're gonna be. I know. Even. Even, you know, again, sometimes it's not intentional. I know I'm gonna go talk to my. My girlfriend who just broke up from her partner, and she's gonna be messy and it's gonna be rough, and I want to be there for her. You know, you're walking into that, but you don't want to end up feeling the same way she feels. That wouldn't serve either of you. You're there to make her feel better, to give her support, to tell her she did the right thing and it's all going to be okay. You don't want to leave feeling like, ugh, partnerships are terrible and. And, you know, people are terrible. You're going to go in, so what do you do before you go in? Do you put on your mental shield? And I know I've heard all the stuff about put on the white bubble of light, etc. Yes, do that. But frankly, the second you stop, you walk in the door. Most of us forget all about the white bubble of light. You know, we're like, is it a set and forget kind of thing? No, it's the energy that you come in with and you stay with the whole time. So before I go into a difficult situation, and you know, I work with a lot of people one on one, and I'm often encountering negative stuff. And why? Because we're working things out. We're there to work out these negative situations. So, of course I'm putting myself right in the line of fire. What I do, what you should do, what you can do before you enter into a negative conversation. Somebody you call, you know you have to talk to, it may not go well. All kinds of things you can use this for. You're going to go into your energy and again you're going to recognize and feel, I am so grateful, I am so blessed, I am so lucky, I am so healthy, I am so loved. You're gonna create a fountain of positive feelings. However you can come by them. Gratitude is a beautiful place to start. You can also flow dream. Do a flow dream that brings you into a state of joy and goodness and happiness. I have quite a few of them you can listen to and let your emotions be guided into that. Now you're primed and ready for something to get through to you. Your wall is already built. You walk in with a high fortress and yes, you'll be stepping through the swamps, but your wall is already there. Now, over time, let's say you're there three hours, four hours, it's a 12 hour shift, your wall is going to start to degrade. And that's where in the moment you're going to go back to this process and you're going to do it again. There's, you're going to step out and away and I've forgotten to mention, but honestly, physical proximity is very, very important. It's a strange thing with energy and emotion, but you can be emotionally and intellectually, like mentally attached to people, thinking about them, worrying about them. They could be a mile and a half away, but you're still invested and connected. Or they could be literally on the other side of a door from you, but you've been able to, excuse me, detach. So this is as much to do with where you're located. Yes, you can shut the door and sort of shut off that energy, but you've got to shut it off in your mind as well in your heart. You've got to detach in both ways. So I've been focusing here on detaching emotionally and energetically, right. And building up kind of a force field, if you will, of positivity around you that the negativity just bumps off and refuses to align to. But you can also just leave the building, get away for a little bit, you know, catch some air. So that's what I do. It's very, it's ridiculously simple. But the hardest thing, honestly the hardest thing is always noticing when you're nose diving. We often don't realize it. We don't even realize that the people or situation that we're in is not great. And so we are kind of unconsciously starting to let our energy align to it, right? So seeing when you start to dip, seeing your mood go down, noticing, hey, is this really something that's happening to me? Is this my problem? My thing, my worldview, my. Or is it someone else's? And very, very often it's someone else's. Now, I have ways of dealing with your own inner negativity. In fact, I've done past episodes about that, so scroll through and look for some of those. But by the way, I call that lack thinking often. It's one of the core teachings of Flow Dreaming, but this one is to deal with others. How to stay bright and shiny. As a beautiful new penny. I hope this really helps you. By the way, you guys, I haven't mentioned it in a while, but anytime you leave a review, wherever you're listening, whether it's Spotify or Apple podcasts, Google, Amazon, if you tune in, if you leave a review, it does wonders to get the show a little bit more out there into the world so it can be found, frankly, by the people who need to find it. So I'm going to give you big hugs in advance for any of you who feel moved right now to just swipe over and give it some stars or write a few words. It doesn't take long, but that's like a big act of appreciation that I would be so, so grateful for in exchange for, I hope, some scintillating and intelligent energy and emotional practices. All grounded, of course, in Flow Dreaming, which is what I'm here with you doing every week. Now, in today's episode, I didn't have any of my little mail bag or, you know, you know, flashback or anything like that, but I'll get to it. Again, I do have some interesting personal news that I will share perhaps in the next episode or two. In the meantime, I'm gonna line off, sign off with one last suggestion. I have completely redone my website. I have simplified it. I've made it prettier. So if you haven't visited flowdreaming.com in a while, I urge you to go check it out. It's a lot easier to get through and I have a lot more training and free materials there, including two free Flow Dreams. You can download them, get them right on your phone in the mobile app. So good stuff, good stuff. Go check it out. All right, I'll see you all next time for another episode of Flow Dreaming. Still kinda woo woo. Love y'. All. Hey, friends, I just wanna point you in the direction of a couple of resources that might light up your day. First, I have an app. It's called Flow Dreaming for meditation and manifesting and it has hundreds of flow dreams and playlists that you can use download enjoy to start sculpting these energies of your life now. Second, there is a YouTube channel for flow Dreaming. I know. Who'd have guessed the best thing you can find on that channel aside from. Also, this podcast is a tutorial. It teaches you how to flow Dream. I'm right there on the screen with you, leading you through several beautiful and gorgeous flow dreams that we do together. So go check it out. Look up flow dreaming on YouTube and have a good time. Enjoy yourself with these beautiful free resources and if you feel the urge, reach out to me. I am always available summerlowdreaming.com and I'll help you and together we'll discover what maybe a perfect personalized Flow Dreaming program for you could be like. To find out how to do that, just go visit my website, flowdreaming. Com. Until next time. Love to you all.