Improving Emotional Intelligence Part 2: Being Negative
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Mindset, behavior, and relationship management go hand-in-hand.
Simply Put: being negative has a huge impact on your relationships.
The way that you show up in life impacts others. Your choice of words, body language, energy level, and general disposition are all gigantic factors in the quality and success of your reputation and relationships.
For example, if you’re someone who often complains, is consistently critical and negative, that is going to impact your relationships negatively, too.
As a quick thought experiment, think of the person in your life that you would classify as the most negative. Someone who seems to be always complaining and has something negative to say about just about everything. Now consider how you feel when you think about sharing an idea with this person, or telling them about something that you are really excited about.
Likely the thought of sharing those things is dampened as you consider how it would feel if they responded in a negative way to what you told them. Depending on how much you interact with this person in your life, there’s a chance that you also don’t enjoy spending much time around them. Overly negative people are just a bummer to be around.
The other question to consider is if everyone else in your life was asked the same question, would they think of you as that person?
Negativity = a barrier to relationships.
The result of this behavior is that it will hinder your ability to build deeper, more meaningful relationships with the people in your life.
If you are a consistent source of negativity to others, people will likely distance themselves and gravitate away from you to create space from your behavior.
A tricky part of this is that it is deeply tied to self awareness. So often, the people who are the worst offenders in this way aren’t really aware of it. Your ability to accurately gauge the impact you have on others based on how you show up, treat them, and behave in general is key to your self awareness.
A crucial element of emotional intelligence is around creating trust and rapport and not only building but sustaining and nurturing relationships with other people. Being constantly negative will drive people away from you and cause them to limit their exposure and friendships with you. Or it will result in relationships that are build on a foundation of negativity, complaining, and often bad mouthing others.
Author Brene Brown has a great name for this type of connection which is “Common enemy intimacy.” Essentially bonding over hating the same things.
Some nuance to this conversation.
This is not an argument that you should never complain or utter a negative word in your life. Of course, as humans, we all experience a full spectrum of emotions, and there are going to be times where you feel (and as a result come across as) more negative and critical due to whatever circumstances or moment you are dealing with in your life.
Being aware of and avoiding excessive negativity does not also mean having to pretend everything is positive all the time and be a fake positive person.
This is not about toxic positivity. This is about self-regulation and the impact that you have on the people around you when you are a constant source of negative, critical, judgemental energy.
An earmark of someone who is highly emotionally intelligent is that they are more self aware. And as a result are able to more successfully build and keep relationships of all kinds with other people.
A useful self-check to help you improve.
When reflecting on your impact on others and how much this might apply to you, my advice is to consider how often and frequently you are being negative. A simple check of “What is my percentage?” can be helpful. Meaning of all of the things that come out of you mouth, what percentage of them are negative or complaints?
If you are really interested in getting a sense of where you rank in this regard, then spend a few days or a week being very aware in all of your interactions of how much this applies to you. After each conversation take a moment to come up with a percentage of how much of your communication could be classified as negative,
The simple act of doing this for a week straight after each interaction will like skyrocket your self awareness in this regard. If you are constantly gauging your percentage after each conversation, it will probably make you acutely aware and in the moment during those interactions will will do most of the heavy lifting by nature. If you are aware of what’s happening in real time, you will find yourself able to pivot in the moment and make difference choices.
If it’s consistently 5-10%, chances are that people aren’t going to have an overwhelming perception of you as being incredibly negative. But if that percentage is 25% or 50%, or more? Definitely.
Final thoughts
I view this topic of the amount of negativity or positivity you bring with you as being like your own weather — and you are in control of your own weather. Make the choice to bring blue sky and sunshine most of the time instead of clouds and rain to the people and situations around you.
This matters in every relationship in your life — from work relationships to personal relationships. Having intention around the impact you have on those around you directly affects your ability to build healthy relationships. Be aware, be mindful. Don’t consistently be a bummer.
Related Articles:
Improving Emotional Intelligence Part 1: Emotions vs Behavior
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop