Do this regularly to reclaim your independence from negative people.

3 Eliminate your own negative thoughts:

Often friends reflect back negatives you quietly hold inside your own mind. If you were 100 per cent positive about your life and your plans it would not matter if people close to you were negative.

In fact their negative comments might even make you laugh because their opinions would seem so absurd to you.

You can become more positive by reading books that expand your knowledge and understanding, spending more time with positive, dynamic people and by stretching yourself daily.

By stretching I mean challenging yourself to perform better than your previous best. When you make stretching to be more part of your life your belief in what is possible grows and grows at a furious pace. Before long you will not have room for negative thoughts.

Choose to find a positive in all things and it quickly becomes a habit that will transform your experience of life. I am always asking myself:

-- what is good about this?

-- what is great about this?

-- what have I learned from this that makes me stronger?

Ask yourself right questions and redirect your mind back onto positive.

The first thing I would recommend is looking at your natural gifts. In some other articles I've given some exercises and such to find some of core pieces of yourself. It doesn't matter if you take some of those personality tests like Meyers-Briggs or any others. The idea is that there are certain core aspects of ourselves that are never really going to change very much. For example, you like to work alone or as part of a team. You may be extremely introverted or extroverted. You may be incredibly musical or you may be very mathematical. Whatever gifts and challenges you were born with are what they are. Recreating yourself isn't about denying root of who you are. It's about molding and shaping other things like attitude and such.

I wanted to become one of those people who had lots of self-confidence and was dynamic and bubbly. I wanted to be one of those people who could laugh out loud at a joke and not feel self-conscious that I might sound like a donkey - hee haaaaaw!! Along with picking a new career path that flattered my real skills and lifestyle I wanted to move towards, I began pretending that I was one of those women who walked tall and proud. I pretended that people liked me and found me fascinating. I pretended that I had my act together. There came a day about a year later when I realized that I wasn't faking it anymore. I've been quite a character ever since!

Now a word of warning... sometimes people who knew us before we made all of personal changes refuse to see us as new and improved. That's especially true of family members. They knew you when you were a whiny kid. They knew you when you went through that really bad divorce and turned into a real nutcase. Sometimes they have their own ugly issues to work out and are bitter that you are role modeling positive changes. This is easier said then done, but believe me when I say this - It's none of your business what they think of you. You didn't change yourself so that they would like you better. You changed so that you would like you better. Hold your head up high and laugh out loud with confidence and joy. Don't allow anyone to take your new life away from you.

Copyright 2004, Skye Thomas, Tomorrow's Edge