Sometime, getting away from conflictive people is not a matter of comfort but of mental balance. It’s true that there’re no people entirely “bad” or “good”. Thinking this way would be reductive. However, there’re people whose way of being and behaving doesn’t complement with ours and maintaining a close relationship with them can only harm us because their attitudes affect our balance, block or impede us to fully realize ourselves as persons.
There’re relationships that, while giving us some positive things, seen in perspective end up causing more damage than anything else. These are toxic relationships that pollute our lives and end up infecting us with negative emotions.
Unfortunately, those people often don’t want to change, so we only have one exit: ignore them, or rather, learn to ignore some of their attitudes. Because it makes no sense to sacrifice our emotional well-being just to keep afloat a relationship that is causing us harm.
What should we learn to ignore?
1. The destructive criticism. Critics are positive, when come with a constructive purpose and help us fix an error or grow. However, there are people who simply criticize for the sake of criticizing and cause damage to others. If we want to protect our self-esteem, we must learn to ignore these critics. Once you identified such a person, who makes destructive criticism, stop worrying about what is thinking about you. After all, his/her opinions won’t help you grow.
2. Useless comparisons. We all have an innate tendency to compare. In fact, it is one of the basic functions of our thought, which we use to draw conclusions. However, some people use comparisons to manipulate us emotionally. These are people who are never satisfied and always compare our decisions, behaviors or attitudes with the others, only to make us feel bad. Obviously, if you know someone who always despises your achievements, it is desirable for you to learn not to listen his/her opinions.
3. Unfounded concerns. We all have worries, but there’re people who are true professionals when seeking reasons to be concerned. These are people who always have a problem for every solution, they concentrate on the negatives and always envision disasters. Obviously, we don’t need someone like that in our lives. It doesn’t mean we have to adopt a naive optimism, but surrounding ourselves with people who only see the negative side is depressing, and it plunges us into a state of expectation of the worst. Therefore, it is better to learn to ignore such attitudes.
4. Unnecessary insecurities. Some people pretend to be expert of everything. They always have something to say and take care to minimize our opinion, making us feel insignificant. These people generate deep insecurity, which it ends up undermining our confidence and introducing us into a state of emotional block to prevent us from fulfilling our dreams. Try to ignore such comments and attitudes, especially when at their base there’s not a thorough knowledge of the situation and fail to help you build the project that you’re pursuing.
5. Erroneous faults. There are people who see the speck in the neighbor’s eye but aren’t able to perceive the plank in their own. These people often use the sense of guilt to manipulate us, making us feel really bad about ourselves, to the point we can become their slaves. These are people who complain continuously and are never satisfied. Obviously, it is essential to learn ignore these attempts to blame us and avoid falling into their network.
When you learn to ignore all these attitudes, you realize that you can better listen to your inner dialogue, that you can manage to connect with your deeper “ego”, to discover what it is that you really want.
At the same time, you’ll find yourself full of an energy you didn’t know, because the attitudes of these people used to claim much of your psychological resources, resources that can now be devoted to yourself, to help you grow as a person and follow your dreams.
The path is not easy but the results are worth it.
