dealing with negative people in your life

Last week at Aqua we began a series called It's All in Your Mind. I blogged about it last week.

At the end of Aqua we made some positive promises to God. One of those promises was simply that we would not hang out with negative people. That thought spurred this e-mail to me the next day:

Hi John,

...I was present at last nights aqua. I really enjoyed the message that you guys had for us. I (have a friend who's) in a dilemma. Her mother used to be her best friend and she (has recently moved away). they still talk quite often. The problem is, is that her mother is a VERY negative person. Do you have any advice about how to steer away from negative people and not lose her mother?? I really didn’t know how to answer that question... Thanks for your time

My response:

I’ll try to answer your question: If your friend's mom is truly her best friend and they talk all the time…what would happen if your friend was just very frank with her about her negativity ,in a loving way, of course. Something like, “Mom, God is changing my heart. It’s the craziest thing and I can’t even fully explain it. But I know he’s changing me. Mom, one of the things he’s changing is my attitude. I want to be more positive. We’ve been learning about having the same kind of attitude
that Jesus had…and I want that for me. Mom, I love you and it’s important that you know that…but sometimes our conversations just seem to head toward negative stuff. I don’t want to be like that. What can we do together to avoid that? Will you help me in my efforts to do that?”

Now, I don’t know what your friend's mom’s reaction would be to a conversation like that. But it may be a good place to start…at least begin talking about it.

The best place to start would be with your friend sharing how God is changing her. Notice in the example I gave you that I never blamed or pointed a finger at Mom. I had your friend talking more about herself. Maybe she could begin there and see where that leads the conversation. Bottom line though: I’d be very honest and up-front with Mom about what’s going on in my life and my heart and how I want to change. Also, your friend may just need to establish some boundaries with her mom about what they’re going to talk about and what they’re not going to talk about.

The other thing is to pray, pray, pray for God’s wisdom in the situation. He’ll help your friend…and her mom.

You can listen to the Aqua message Dave D and I gave at Aqua last week right here.