Syed Nasir Ershad

We all want to be happy; consciously or subconsciously that is our goal of life. There are so many things a man need in life, but the single biggest determinant of our happiness is not a material thing. It is not wealth, fame, beauty, or power. Rather, it is how others, particularly those closest to us – friends, family, and colleagues – treat us. When our people are nice to us, we cannot help but feel happy; when they mistreat or avoid us, we are bound to be unhappy.
The reason our happiness depends so much on the quality of our relationships is because humans are supremely social beings. Evidence of our social nature is all around. We care so much about what others think of us that, as some of the findings show, we would rather experience an unpleasant event (e.g., watch a bad movie) with those who share our negative opinions about the event than experience a pleasant event (e.g., watch our favorite team win) in the company of those who disagree with us. Our social nature is also the reason why being in love is one of the most cherished experiences and why isolation is rated, by those who were unfortunate to endure it, one of life’s most grueling experiences.
What all of this means is that it can be excruciatingly difficult to deal with negative people – people who bring your mood down with their pessimism, anxiety, and general sense of distrust. It is so depressing to be constantly discouraged from pursuing our dreams because “very few people make it big.” It is also hard to swallow to be constantly warned against learning a new skill – like horseback driving in Dhaka city – because “it’s too dangerous.” Likewise, it is so difficult to be routinely exposed to negative judgments from other people (e.g., “I can’t believe you told our neighbors that you failed your GCE test. Now they will never respect you!”) Constant exposure to such negativity can make deep inroads into our bank of positivity, leading to either become negative – diffident, anxious, and distrustful – ourselves, or to become indifferent, uncaring, or even mean towards the negative person.
One obvious solution to deal with negative people is to walk away from them. But this is easier said than done; while we could always walk away from the shopkeeper with a bad attitude or the airline agent with an anger management problem, we cannot walk away from a parent, sibling, spouse, colleague, or friend with a negative attitude. A more practical approach to dealing with them is to start by understanding the reasons for their negativity. Almost all negativity has its roots in one of three deep-seated fears: the fear of being disrespected by others, the fear of not being loved by others, and the fear that bad things are going to happen. These fears feed off each other to fuel the belief that the world is a dangerous place and people are generally mean.
It is easy to see how, from the perspective of someone operating from such fears, it makes sense to question the wisdom of pursuing dreams. To them failure seems all but guaranteed. Hence, they always appear to be averse to taking risks even if it is obvious that doing so is necessary to learn and grow. People with these kind of fears would find it difficult to trust other people. But we need to trust others not only for getting things done or making them happy but also for attaining our own mental peace and tranquility