Kevin Rose, founder of the wildly popular website Digg.com , is up $60 million today because of three things he did long ago.
First he escaped from the pukies who ridiculed him for loving what he loved. Next he found his soul mates.
“His computer love affair drew scorn from schoolkids so Rose transferred to a public vo-tech in 1993 to study computers and animation. “It was a chance to be with other nerds,” he says. (Business Week story here.)
Finally, he developed his passion around others just like him.
Neurologist Richard Restak offers this advice:
“If you want to accomplish something that demands determination and endurance, try to surround yourself with people possessing these qualities. And try to limit the time you spend with people given to pessimism and expressions of futility. Unfortunately, negative emotions exert a more powerful effect in social situations than positive ones, thanks to the phenomena of emotional contagion.”
What about you?
Sometimes, when you really can’t get away from negative people, you can help them become more postive. Here’s a very personal example.
My mom is negative about everything. I dreaded talking to her on the phone or in person because it would be one long b&*$ session. After watching The Secret and encouraging (without success) that my mom watch it herself, I decided to do something a little different.
I finally told my mom that she could not talk to me unless she had one positive thing to say about every negative thing she told me. Rather than getting upset and no longer calling me, she decided to give it a try with my help.
I told her it could be something as simple as the fact that she got to sleep in that day or there was no traffic on her way to work. It got her thinking. In addition, I started suggesting alternative ways that she could look at percieved negative situations.
She slowly began looking forward to calling me with her POSITIVE news rather than all the negative junk. While she still shares that, she now makes sure that she has the good stuff to tell me as well.
I don’t think this would work in every case but I was at my wits end with my mom and willing to give it a try even though I didn’t have much confidence that she would go for it. I guess the universe delivered back what I gave out because now I have a much more pleasant and happy mom.