Awareness of Attitude

My supervisor knocked on my door one morning last week.  She peered into my office and asked if I had a few minutes to talk.  I braced myself for bad news.  It's rarely a good thing when your boss comes to your office for a private chat.  My intuition was right.  There was a problem and my supervisor wanted to discuss it.

"I've noticed at our last few meetings [weekly department meetings] that you've been extremely negative," she said.  Fortunately, I seem to have more control over my "automatic" reactions when I'm at work than I do in my personal life.  If, for example, it had been my husband complaining about my negative attitude I probably would have immediately become defensive.  My initial inclination when my supervisor confronted me was, in fact, to become defensive.  Thankfully, I bit my tongue long enough to think before I spoke. 

"Ok," I replied after a moment in what I hoped was a neutral tone of voice.

"I just wanted you to be aware," my supervisor explained.

"Ok," I repeated.  I proceeded to change the subject as quickly as possible.  My supervisor didn't seem to mind.  Maybe this whole thing was as uncomfortable for her as it was for me. 

Afterwards, I thought back to our last few staff meetings, trying to remember if I'd said or done anything "negative."  I was unable to recall anything specific one way or another.  Ultimately, I decided this was irrelevant anyway.  It didn't matter whether I thought I'd been negative.  Apparently, my supervisor noticed some sort of change in my attitude or she wouldn't have said anything to me.  I concluded that something about my attitude must have shifted without me being aware of it.

I did some soul searching.  The truth is, I was aware of a shift in my attitude.  Work has seemed so heavy lately.  I've been looking forward to long weekends and short weeks with more vigor than usual.  The weeks seem too long and the weekends too short; I return to work on Mondays feeling weary and unrefreshed. 

This happens to me sometimes, typically when I'm under a lot of stress and feeling overwhelmed.  I try not to take it out on others, but apparently it comes out inadvertently.

So have I been negative lately?  Probably.  I'm an expressive person by nature and it's difficult for me to conceal my emotions.  I suppose I need to try harder.

I suspect that what I really need is a vacation.  My work takes a lot out of me.  Sometimes, I need a week or two off to refuel.  I try to take at least a week off every six months; perhaps I need to do it more frequently...

Negativity

I made a decision a long time ago not to allow negative people to remain in my life.  I don't like "drama."  I try to stay away from people who always seem to stir up conflict or who somehow manage to manufacture crises on a regular basis.

As much as I prefer to avoid negativity there are times in life when it is not possible.  I think this is especially true during childhood.  When I was in sixth grade there were two kids in my class who used to tease me mercilessly.  They fed off of each other and would whisper cruel, derogatory things to me loudly enough for me to hear but quietly enough to avoid detection by the teacher.  I'm not sure why I never told the teacher.  Probably because "tattling" was not a socially sanctioned option among my sixth grade peers.  Switching to another class was not an option either.  I never responded to their comments, thinking that if I ignored them they would stop.  They didn't.  There were days when I'd go home, go to my room, shut the door, and cry about some of the things they'd said.  I remained sensitive about some of their specific criticisms for years afterward.  If I could have found a way to avoid these kids I would have done it without question.  Unfortunately, I couldn't.  I had no choice (at least as I saw it at the time) but to endure their teasing.

Really, these kids were just a couple of bullies.  While relatively common during childhood and adolescence, this kind of bullying seems to occur less frequently in the adult world.  Oh sure, there are negative people out there just waiting to put someone down.  In the adult world, however, we have a little more control over how much contact we have with this kind of people.  (This is not always the case, of course.  Sometimes we have no choice but do endure the obnoxious coworker in the cubicle next to ours.  We could, however, inquire about relocating to another cubicle).

It seems obvious.  If you want to live a happy, peaceful life then the best thing to do is to distance yourself from these "grown up" bullies.

An unpleasant experience I had last weekend made me start thinking about this subject.  My husband was previously married and he and his ex-wife have a child together.  We went to pick up his daughter for the weekend; this was the first time I'd met his ex-wife.  (We've only been married just under two months).  She saw me in the car when she pulled up.  She immediately jumped out of her car and started yelling.  She apparently did not like the fact that I was there.  I tried introducing myself and being cordial but with no success.  Instead, she responded by hurling insults at me.  She derided my appearance and told me that my husband only married me for money (not that she knows anything about our financial situation - the comment was just meant to be hateful).

I was really taken aback.  I cannot remember the last time I've seen someone act like that but I'm sure it was sometime before I graduated high school.  I wasn't even really angry at the time.  More than anything I was confused.  I saw no point in arguing with her so how was I supposed to respond?  WAS I supposed to respond?  I kept thinking to myself, "People just don't act like this..."

Do they?  Later I started thinking that maybe I am naive.  Maybe people really do act this way and I've just managed to shelter myself from it.  I ended up handling the situation ok but I was still rather unsettled.  It was almost like being in the sixth grade again.

Are there more negative people out there than I thought there were?  What do you think?  Are you able to keep your interactions with negative people to a minimum?  Or do you find yourself forced to deal with negative people on a regular basis?