I don't know if some people realize how negative they are (i.e., "Negative Nelly")

I don’t know if some people realize how negative they are; I guess they just don’t hear their words, at least not the way that other people hear them. A woman I know comes across as a very negative, overly worried person. I don’t think she’s really that negative, but she comes across that way, and I think it causes a lot of problems for her.

Some people write in a journal every night, and one of their tasks is to write all of the bad things they said during that day. It may harm our relationship, but I think I’m going to suggest that to her the next time I see her. Then maybe she’ll hear what she says.

I’m very conscious of this topic because my father could be very negative at times, and that had a big influence on me. I loved the man, but I didn’t want to have that part of his personality, so I listened to a lot of people like Leo Buscaglia and Zig Ziglar in an effort to not end up that way. As I wrote in my book, A Survival Guide for New Consultants, people who are successful tend to avoid and ignore people with negative attitudes like the plague, and that’s true both in the business world and in personal life.