This post is part of a 31-day treatise on habits. <— Click there to see all the posts. 
It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that, whatever you say to them, they always purr.
“If they would only purr for ‘yes,’ and mew for ‘no,’ or any rule of that sort,” she had said, “so that one could keep up a conversation! But how can you talk with a person if they always say the same thing?
– Alice, of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Indeed Alice, how do you talk with a person who always says the same thing?
I have a friend who moved away recently. She left without even saying good-bye. Interestingly, before she left my husband and I had the opportunity to spend a morning with her and her husband. He made a comment to my husband that “you guys are always so positive“.
After comparing notes on the morning, hubby and I noted that they, on the other hand, were usually negative. There was always some stressful thing dragging them down. And before this friend moved away, she confided in me that she had not felt accepted or loved by the people around her in the community. “Nobody except you guys has reached out to us“, she said.
Which was interesting. Because I wonder if the two of them ever had the self-awareness to make the connection that perhaps THEY were sending out a vibe that pushed others away?
Sadly, they probably didn’t. They think that moving somewhere else will solve the problem. Perhaps it might, because they may approach the new situation with a different attitude. But if they don’t, then nothing will change. Because they are the common denominator.
One of the things I try to do in my life is own my particular role in any situation. Even if things seem black and white, they rarely are. At the very least, I wonder why I have attracted certain crazies into my life, and accepted them as friends without noticing the crazy soon enough.
Being negative is a bad habit.
Negativity blinds you to your own responsibility in a situation. Being negative pushes people away, and then you complain of being lonely, so you act standoffish. People who are negative are more self-absorbed, and behave in more selfish ways. People who have the good habit of being positive have more friends, are healthier, have more sex, and make more money. (Some studies say that pessimists live longer because they’re more likely to get preventive health care, but other studies contradict those findings. I have a fascination with reading the stories of super-centenarians, and they are always a happy, positive bunch.) Happy people even impact their friend’s friends.
Negative people are a total buzzkill.
(My friend mentioned above also had a super-annoying habit of checking her phone every 5 minutes and nodding and umm-hmming me while I spoke. Turnoff! And also a bad habit! )
I genuinely care about my friend, despite her tendency towards being negative. I tried to reach out, to contact her when I had missed seeing her, to invite and include her when I could. But she couldn’t value my friendship enough to say good-bye before moving away. Her negativity blinded her towards her own habits that were keeping her isolated, as well as blinding her towards what could have been a good friend. When I discussed the situation with a mutual buddy, she said that when she attempted to converse with her recently, she had a total “wall” around her, so she backed off.
People can go through unusually stressful and tough times, and it may be that such was the case with her. Perhaps if I had met her at a different time, she would be totally different.
What do you think? If you were being negative, and pushing people away, how would you want someone to clue you in to your bad habits? Or would you?
Since negativity is a habit, and habits are so powerful, is there anything I could have done or said to her that would have helped her be happier?
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