The Power of Negativity

I haven't written for over two weeks now. Well, my last piece was discredited by my brother. The content was a heavy tell all piece about my childhood life. He felt it was not appropriate for the family'...s brand irrespective of the truth in all of it. Oh well...that had to be canned.

Lately I have been meeting new and very powerful people from different industries: some of the people who I believe we all think they are perfect; these are potential coaches, mentors, trainers and to some degree I could actually name them idols. But what has been the greatest shock is how SOME people are bullies, power hungry and impossible to learn from or inspire. These can also be pessimists, cynics, critics, know-it-alls and other common jerk monsters who have a way of popping into our lives, debatable I agree. I at times think we let them.

After a tell-all telephonic conversation with my mentor I discovered a couple of things about him which drew me closer to my idea of strength and serenity. He believes in strength and repeatedly refers to his mistakes and what he draws out of them for a constructive evaluation. I believe this is the power of acknowledgement as opposed to denial in a world that isn’t perfect, where only positive energy can help you grow into greatness.

I took a little time to "research" about what negative energy does to you, besides over ruling your judgment and shadowing your resourcefulness. The preparation for success is to identify and protect yourself from all forms of negative energy. That's what you and I have be failing to do, identify the demon and crawl as far as possible.

Johnny N , a boxing and mental theorist says "Negative people are resisting, refusing, disagreeable, pessimistic, detrimental, destroying, and limiting."

These people don’t help you. They don’t make you stronger. Their number one goal is to SHUT YOU DOWN! And for no reason other than because they are negative. It has NOTHING to do with you; they just don’t enjoy life. Nothing is perfect, and their nature makes them react NEGATIVELY to everything.

Negative energy wears you out, takes the fun out of life, and kills all your dreams before they’re even given a chance. Negativity is that little voice that keeps saying, “You can’t, you suck, it’ll never happen.”

And WHY?! Why would anybody want that? How does this kind of thinking help ANYONE? How does negativity make anyone smarter, stronger, harder working, or luckier, or more likely to succeed? Why would we keep an idea lingering in our minds if it didn’t do anything for us? Negativity is useless and there’s no place for it in your life.

To further explain this I'd like to give you a scenario, this is a conversation which a friend of mine Mfezeko have actually debated on. The example is based on the social changes brought about by Universities merging in South Africa. Institutions such as Tshwane University of Technology placed the Communications, IT and Journalism departments in Soshanguve, a township in the North of Pretoria, where a cold day could be anything around 20 degrees, yes a cold day. Within these departments you can be confronted by an 18year old Sithembiso* aka Cee-Terms* , who studied at the larny Southdowns College and didn't have a good score to enroll at Tukkies for a degree and was faced with studying towards a N.Dip in his desired field. This is the well groomed gentleman, the man's man and a chick magnet. This guy did his research about the institution and fully understands the career path he is talking.

On the other hand you have a 22 year old Ramehlolo aka Mahlanyeng whose parents wouldn't take his nonsense and enrolled him for a year long certificate program because the campus is conveniently close to home and it would be easy to monitor him and keep him off the streets.

These are two completely different clients being hosted by one service provider. Please evaluate this situation and tell me what you make out of this, based on negativity.

There is surely a dreamer who is dedicated to completing his program and making a career out of his passion. On the other hand there is someone who has been forced to "keep busy" and maybe see the light.

The interaction between these two people will definitely have a conflict base. The positive energy projected by Sithembiso may be received as intimidation and being snobbish by the other. As messed up as the human mind is, the inferior person in this setting resorts to finding negatives in everything the other guy does and nails him down. The territory advantage also becomes a power tool used as "the snob can't do anything, this is my hood"... What do you think this energy could do to the guy with the passion?

I have an incident happening in my life and the negativity has got to a point where it throws me off. I'm tired of trying to impress (in this relationship) and earn faith and respect. Now I work towards shaming the enemy, but it is not fun. I can't even celebrate my own efforts because I bounce energy on revenge instead of the highly anticipated success.

I need to bring an end to this cycle. I refuse to be oppressed by someone who I obviously intimidate. I am young, intelligent and have a long road to success ahead of me.

If you have such a situation, either socially, academically, professionally or at home, I believe it is time you re-evaluate your attitude towards it because it is extremely damaging.

Think about it... Negative energy is the most awful form of energy but abnormally powerful because it taps on the unconscious part of your brain and stays longer. Let go of it...