Energy thieves (Miserable People)

Don't you hate it when... you are forced to interact with a miserable person?

We all know (or work with) someone who we consider to be a miserable person. You know, the ones you hate to see them coming. Don't they drag you down? The old adage is true “misery loves company”.

I find that when I'm around a miserable person, that I am drained mentally, emotionally, and physically. These people just suck all of the life out of you. They drain your power and energy. This is why I call the energy thieves. I have put together a list of why I hate to be around an engery thief.

The reasons are as follows:

1. They tend to be lazy
2. They not only don't do their work, but interfere with yours
3. They are very needy
4. They require a lot of attention
5. They are quite annoying
6. They steal not only energy, but valuable time
7. They raise my stress level
8. They waste time with useless babble
9. They want us to join them on the “misery plane”

I got stuck working with an energy thief the other day. This guy fits every one of the energy thief criteria. He was so busy whining about himself, and all of his little needs, that he couldn't even get his work done. Hope he didn't think that I was going to do it for him.

Most energy thieves live in their own world of denial. The world is unsafe for them, and they blow every thing out of proportion. They are cowards, and very good at what they do. Do not try to confront them.

I have confronted this guy in the past and it did not go well. I spent the rest of the day listening to “poor me”, and what a mean person I was for confronting him. Another emotional drain. Took all I had left in me not to simply strangle him. Though about it quite a few times. I wasted valuable time and energy trying to get this guy to see the light.

This lead me to investigate and come up with ideas about how to deal with such people. I have put together the following list to deal with the energy thieves in your life.

1. Ignore them
2. Avoid them as much as possible
3. Mirror their behavior.

This was the order that I came up with the idea. I have since changed the order to spell A.I.M. (aim).

I will cover all of these ideas in detain in the order that I experimented with them.

1. Ignore them

If you have not previously been ignoring them, be prepared. They may be used to you feeding into their b.s.. This practice gets worse before it gets better. If done consistently (over the course of a few days) it works.

How it worked for me: The first few time that I ignored him, he kept asking ,”what's wrong with you”? I attempted to be polite and simply deflect the question. He kept asking, so I finally told him, that I found his behavior to be quite annoying and that I would ignore him until he stops whining.

What's interesting, was that this time he couldn't start an argument, or play the “poor me” game, because I was already ignoring him. Remember, they are addicted to attention. I was denying him something that he desperately needed. Though he still tries to steal my energy from time to time, the percentage is much lower (10-15% as opposed to 80-90%).

I don't want to create too long of a post, so I will break this up into digestible bits of information. I honestly didn't think that this topic would run so long. Guess I have more energy these days (LOL).

I will continue this topic in the next post: 2. Avoid and 3. mirror them. This will also give me time to collect more data from my experiments.

“Nobody really cares if you’re miserable, so you might as well be happy”, Author unknown.




See you next time, Chris