Pod Insights On Purpose with Jay Shetty 4 Types of Negative People & 3 Ways to Deal With Them About this episode We all have friends that we love but are absolutely draining to talk to. Every time they call you, you know exactly what you’re in for. No matter how hard we try to optimize for the optimistic, negative people will always be a part of each of our lives and that’s okay. In this episode, we take a look at the 4 different types of negative people and 3 ways to proactively deal with them.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Jay Shetty? This episode is brought to you by Vinted. Value can be found anywhere, even in the clothes sitting untouched in our closets. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer want and get more value out of them. Whether you're running out of space, moving, or simply updating your wardrobe. Listing items is a quick and simple process, and once something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And the best part, there are no seller fees, so you keep what you earn. It's a simple way to clear out your closet, be less wasteful, and maybe make some extra money along the way. And if you've been thinking about a wardrobe refresh, this can make it feel a little more worthwhile. You're not just letting go of clothes, you're getting more value from what you already have.
0:43 Jay Shetty? Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees, so you keep every dollar you earn. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop.
1:26 Jay Shetty? AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements, and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.
2:01 Jay Shetty? This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised to yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet,
2:45 Jay Shetty? AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose. If you surround yourself with negative people, you'll start to see the world more negatively.
3:22 Jay Shetty? Welcome back to On Purpose, the place that you find your purpose from people living and finding theirs. This is the place where you get to uncover your potential, your ideas, your passion, and start making progress towards your greatest goals and a happier life. I'm so grateful to each and every one of you that subscribed, rated, and reviewed already. Thank you so much for doing that. If you haven't, please make sure you do. And I love the fact that you're listening every single week. When you're doing this while you're commuting to work or back from work, whether you're doing this at the gym or maybe you're making time for it while you're doing some work on the side, whichever way it may be, maybe you're walking your dog. Whatever you're up to,
4:06 Jay Shetty? tuning in your mind into purpose, fulfillment, meaning is going to help you in so many ways. Thank you so much for making this commitment. I can't wait for you to listen to this episode.
4:18 Jay Shetty? Now, we all have friends that we love, but are absolutely draining to talk to. You know what I mean. Every time they call, you know exactly what you're in for. Event session. And that can last hours and hours and hours about everything that's wrong, everything that's messed up, everything that's unfair. And you're still wondering to yourself, why do you pick up that call? Why do you respond to that message? Now, sometimes they're talking about issues at work. Sometimes it's about their girlfriend or boyfriend. And sometimes it's just about how nothing seems to ever go right for them. Now, don't get me wrong. I know all of us who are compassionate and empathetic want to help, want to support.
5:03 Jay Shetty? Maybe you've tried introducing them to books you love, people you love, classes, courses, programs. But we find time and time again that a lot of people around us avoid solutions, avoid focusing on trying to get better, and continue to dive into the negativity. And now, these people may be dumping their challenges on you without wanting a solution. Or maybe even worse, they're causing drama and issues in your life. It's one thing when people are negative in and of themselves. It's a totally different thing when they're bringing that negativity into your space. It's so important to understand how to deal with negative people
5:46 Jay Shetty? because the detrimental effects on the brain and the mind are staggering. No matter how positive a person you are, negative people can affect your life unless you take the right precautions. And this is one of the biggest challenges that we see. We're all surrounded by negative people, whether it's in our family, whether it's in our friends, whether it's in the workplace. And we've never been trained, never been taught, how to deal with it, how to heal through it. We've never been taught what to do with those feelings. And so, a lot of us end up carrying a weight that's not ours to carry and start feeling heavy. Start feeling like it's a burden. Start feeling it's frustrated. How many of you have ever been in that position?
6:29 Jay Shetty? Where you looked at some of the weight you were carrying? And realized, wait a minute. Where did this come from? It's not even mine. I didn't even create this. And so it's so important that we understand how to deal with other people's baggage that they're putting on to us. Imagine you were about to board a plane. You were getting on and you were told you had to carry all these bags at the same time. How much more different would that make your journey? Now, let's say it wasn't a flight. Let's say you were hiking. And when you were hiking, everyone around you, not only were struggling, struggling is fine, but we're negative about the struggle. We're asking you to carry their struggle. Imagine how difficult it would be. This is often what happens in our lives.
7:13 Jay Shetty? It's very easy to say, yes, we should just help people. It's very easy to say, just distance yourself. So today's podcast is how to deal with these things effectively. Because the effects are drastic. Research has shown that even a small amount of negative brain activity can lead to a weakened immune system, making you more prone to illness. Negative attitudes can also affect your intelligence and ability to think. According to Dr. Travis Bradbury, negativity compromises the effectiveness of the neurons in the hippocampus, an important area of the brain responsible for reasoning and memory. So the point being, it's very easy to just discard negativity or tell yourself to get over it.
7:57 Jay Shetty? But if we don't effectively deal with it, it can lead to many more situations and issues in our own lives. When you hold an idea in your mind, shared by people around you, your brain rewards you by triggering a release of dopamine. When you disagree with people around you, your brain sees that as a threat and triggers feelings of pain. This happens even when the idea is negative and doesn't serve you. How many times have you been in a situation where someone's talking about gossip, but you're really trying not to? How many times have you been in a scenario where someone's talking bad about someone you know, you love, you care about, and you don't want to be there? How many times have you been in a situation
8:42 Jay Shetty? where someone's talking about a particular time, a place, an event, that you actually have no animosity towards? So what happens in these scenarios is that when you're around negative people, your brain is going to incentivize you to be more like them. Think about this carefully. Your brain's trying to protect you, but the way it protects you is making you more like the people you're around so that it doesn't have to deal with conflict, so that it doesn't have to deal with a debate, so that it doesn't have to deal with a disagreement. Our brain is constantly trying to move away from that and towards cohesion. But that means you can become cohesive with negativity.
9:25 Jay Shetty? That means you can start collaborating with negativity. That means you can start creating negativity yourself. It is as contagious as a cold. It's not something we should just disregard or not think about or count as insignificant. It's something we should recognize can have a huge impact in our lives. We perceive what people around us perceive. The same goes with positive and negative people. In the 1950s, Solomon Ash, a psychologist, asked a group of volunteers to guess the length of a vertical black line on a plain white card. Now, you may have seen this exercise before. Maybe you've seen it in a book or maybe you've seen it on a video. If you haven't, let me explain what it was about.
10:10 Jay Shetty? All you were shown was a vertical line on a blank piece of white card. Each person was asked to guess the length, and the results were really interesting. Each person's guess depended on the people they were surrounded by. If a person was surrounded by people who overestimated the length, they would do exactly the same. Someone who is around people who underestimated the length also did exactly the same. This is also known as group think bias. It's when there's a majority opinion around something that acts as a bias on our own mind. Think of a moment in your own life where group think bias has affected you.
10:52 Jay Shetty? Also known as confirmation bias, we seek information that confirms our own beliefs. We do this online, we do this in our social circles, we do this at events. And sometimes this can be positive. If our circles are open-minded, if our circles are progressive, if our circles are around development, this can be great. But if our circles are always looking at negativity, gossip, conflict, then that's exactly what we start creating in our life. People literally saw the line differently depending on who they were around. And the implications of this are enormous. If you surround yourself with negative people, you'll start to see the world more negatively.
11:37 Jay Shetty? It's just the way it is. Group think bias and confirmation bias are real biases of the mind that we build up. And the best way to not let them grow is to constantly keep ourselves in check. Questioning our belief, questioning our values, and not questioning them in a debating way, but questioning them in a way to refine them, to renew enthusiasm around them, to grow them. Now, throughout my time working in the corporate world, being in relationships, and now being an entrepreneur, I've found that there are generally four types of negative people that we all come across. And I believe it's highly important to know which ones you're facing and coming across to know how to deal with them.
12:19 Jay Shetty? It's so important that we recognize the similarities and the differences, the patterns, so that we're able to conduct ourselves and behave in a way that benefits us and ultimately benefits that person as well. So these are the four types of negative people that I've seen, that I've come across. Now remember negativity isn't a person, it's a trait. It's not that that person is a negative person. It's never that a person can be labeled fully negative. That person is just clouded over. That person is just covered over by negativity at that time. Just like the sun is always there, but somehow covered in clouds. People's positive best energy is always there. It's sometimes just deeply buried in clouds.
13:03 Jay Shetty? So we have to recognize that point. Now, these are the four types of negative people that we come across. The first is the venter. Always complaining, always expressing their hopelessness for situations, and never looking for a solution. Someone who just wants to talk about their challenges, barely asks you about your life, barely gets to know what's up with you. The second type of negative person is called the victim. They always feel the world is against them. No one supports them, nothing is their fault, and they don't want to take responsibility for anything. They blame everyone else for what's happening in their life. They look at the faults and flaws of everyone else for what decisions they're making.
13:47 Jay Shetty? Everything is always about what others are doing to them, as opposed to what they're doing about it. And bear in mind, while I'm guiding you through these four, recognize that we all express these emotions. There are moments where we have also had these negative tendencies, and we can work through them, and some of us have worked through them. The third type of negative person, which I do believe is quite rare, but we do come across, is the vicious type. Someone who's envious, potentially manipulative, and who genuinely wants to take others down. Who actually has that belief system. Now, I do believe that this isn't many people, but we find them everywhere dotted around, where people are going through so much pain themselves,
14:31 Jay Shetty? that they want to bring others down. And the fourth and final type of negative person is violent. Someone who is violent, abusive, maybe physically or with their words. And these people should be avoided at this time. The damage they can do to us is far greater than the other three. And therefore, we have to be careful around them. So these are the four Vs of negative people. Venters, victims, vicious and violent. And often with all of these, distance is better. But more often than not, this is just not possible. This could be a family member, it could be a close friend in your circle, or even a work colleague. How many of you feel that you're able to genuinely reflect and think about
15:15 Jay Shetty? which of these negative people you have in your life? Think about it right now. If you know someone at work, think about which of the four Vs they are. If you know someone in your family, think of the four Vs they are. And if you know someone in your friends group, recognize it because it's going to help you understand where they're coming from better. A more practical approach to dealing with them is to start by understanding the reasons for their negativity.
15:45 Jay Shetty? This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast.
16:28 Jay Shetty? That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980.
16:50 Jay Shetty? That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colours, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. Home should be a place that feels like a sanctuary, a space that truly reflects who you are. But it can be challenging to balance style, budget and endless options. I was looking to create a dedicated calm space for my morning meditation and reading, but I was struggling to find pieces that felt grounding but could also stand up to daily use. I went on Wayfair and found a beautiful, solid wood accent chair and a bookshelf.
17:36 Jay Shetty? Now that corner is my favourite place to anchor my day. The quality is incredible, it's built to last and it completely shifted the energy of the room. Plus, you can shop with Wayfair Verified, where product specialists carefully vet items for quality and functionality, so you can shop with more confidence. And if putting it all together sounds like a headache, Wayfair can handle delivery, installation and assembly. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home.
18:16 Jay Shetty? Almost all negativity has its roots in one of the three deep-seated fears. So these are the three biggest fears that most negative people feel in their life. And when we recognise which fear it is, we're also better at understanding it. See, before putting someone in their place, we need to put ourselves in their place. We need to walk a mile in someone's shoes to really empathise and understand where they're coming from. It's why so often many of us don't understand people going through anxiety, stress or pressure or depression. But when we go through it, we recognise that it's a real emotion, it's a real thing. So here are the three deep-seated fears that most negative people come across.
19:02 Jay Shetty? Number one, the fear of being disrespected by others. And we all experience this. How many of us? Really don't like being disrespected by anyone. Whether they're disrespecting us in their words, maybe they're making jokes about us. Very few people enjoy disrespect, but most people fear disrespect from others. The second type of fear is not being loved by others. This is a really hard one to deal with for people. Not only are they scared of being disrespected, they're scared no one really understands them, and no one really knows them, and therefore no one really loves them. And the third type of fear is that bad things are always going to happen. These fears feed off each other to fuel the belief
19:47 Jay Shetty? that the world is a dangerous place and people are generally mean. And remember, it's less about you and more about them. So when people bring their negativity towards us, it's not a reflection of you, it's often a reflection of what they're going through. And we can understand people even further. The more aware we are of their specific type of pain and fear, we can also make sure that we don't trigger that. When we were monks, we were always trained in speaking in such a way that didn't agitate the minds of others, that didn't cause pressure or stress to others. So we could actually be careful and aware of our speech, our language, our choice of words. And when you do that and become more conscious with other people, you become more conscious with yourself.
20:30 Jay Shetty? When you talk to other people with love, compassion, space, and understanding, you speak to yourself with all of that as well. So one of the things we can sense and be more aware of is people with a thin skin. We all know what it means to be thick-skinned, and the opposite of that is being thin-skinned. This is when people take others' comments and completely spin what they're meant to mean. If someone says to them, "Hey, you look good today", they interpret it as, "You mean I didn't look good yesterday?" So no matter what positive statement you make, they're like, "Oh wow, you're looking much better now." They don't look at the positive statement that's being made, they're reflecting it and inverting it to what it could mean about the previous stage.
21:13 Jay Shetty? We all know someone like that, and we can be aware of that when speaking to them. The second is judgmentalism. It's where you judge someone because they don't have an opinion, and you judge them because you do have an opinion. A lot of people, it's hard to be around them because they'll judge you either way. And this is where distance again comes as a very important point, because you struggle with how to active, and you end up being neutral around that person. The other type of person is someone who has a demanding nature. Even though they realize their own abilities are limited, they put pressure on close others to succeed and make them proud and not let them down. It's people who message you and say, "Oh, you never have time for me," even though they're busy as well.
21:56 Jay Shetty? The fourth time is pessimism, or the tendency to believe that the future is bleak. Thus, for example, negative people can more readily think of ways in which an important sales call will go badly than well. So that's a workplace example. Another one is risk aversion, especially in social settings. This leads to reluctance to divulge any information that could be used against them, leading ultimately to boring conversations and superficial relationships. And finally, the need to control others, especially close others' behaviors. For example, negative people have strong preferences on where their partners spend time, who they're friends with, what they should do. Just raising your awareness about these different types of negativity
22:39 Jay Shetty? will help you apply the three principles I'm about to share with you. When you put these three things to the test, it's really important that you start from a place of awareness, so you know how to apply them. So this is the first thing that you can do. I recommend to anyone, you're never going to be able to avoid all the negativity in your life. From those that you can distance yourself, you can move away from, do it. It's good for you. You wouldn't walk into a zone in the world that was infested with illness, that was contagious. You would just not do it in an area that you knew had a virus. You wouldn't just walk in unprotected. Why do we do that with our lives and negativity? It can have the same effect.
23:22 Jay Shetty? So rule number one is have a one-to-three ratio in your life. For every negative person in your life, make sure you have three uplifting, positive people. It's so important that you have a tribe, you have a squad, you have a group of people that constantly uplift you and grow you. I've realized when I've reflected in the success areas of my life, or where I experience happiness, I've constantly be surrounded by people who are better than me, who are further ahead than me. happier than me, who are more spiritual than me, and that has helped me grow. When you're in that environment, you're forced to improve. It's like when you're playing a sport or even a subject at school. If you're always surrounded by people who are not as good as you, that brings down your standard.
24:03 Jay Shetty? Even if you start with people who are all higher than you, you're forced to raise your standard. So even though at the beginning it feels tough to be behind and tough to be the last, it pushes you to grow. Have a one to three ratio in your life. Think really closely about any of the negative people you have in your space and whether you have a one to three ratio of the positive people in that space. The second thing I love is the rule of one. Listen to me carefully. One of the biggest mistakes we make is we think we need to divide up our time and energy equally. We spend an equal amount of time with negative people as positive people, hoping somehow that that positive time is going to cancel out the negative time. It just doesn't work like that.
24:48 Jay Shetty? You can't just cancel out the negative time. And therefore, the rule of one is making sure that you're giving the right amount of energy and time according to someone's energy in your life. So the way I dissect this is one hour people, one day people, one week people, and one month people. Who are the people in your life that the most amount of time you can spend with them is an hour? And you're listening to that and saying, Jay, I think some people are just a minute. Make them a one minute person. Who in your life is a one minute person, a one hour person, a one day person, or a one week person, or a one month person? Recognizing that you can reduce negativity even if you can't completely remove it.
25:33 Jay Shetty? Reduce negativity even if you can't remove it. So we're so focused on saying, oh my God, I need to get this negativity out of my life, I need to remove it, but I can't reduce it when you can't remove it. Focus on recognizing whether someone is a one hour, one day, one week, or one month person, and give them that much allotted time in your life. Make sure it doesn't go over that amount of time so that it doesn't spill over into your world. The third thing to recognize is you can listen but not put any energy in. We get drained not just by listening, but by actively trying to be problem solvers and fixes. And then we get upset when people don't live our advice.
26:15 Jay Shetty? We get more frustrated and disheartened because we feel we put so much energy into that person and they didn't learn. But that comes from our ego, that comes from our desire to be someone who can save people, who can help people, who can solve people's problems. And therefore, when we give advice and they don't follow it, we're more upset because we think our advice was so powerful. You can remove that ego by simply listening, being there for that person, and not getting involved in actively trying to see it as your responsibility to solve it. The only way it becomes your responsibility to solve it is when you're in a good place, you want to help that person, and you have the time, energy, and mind space to do that.
26:56 Jay Shetty? One of my favorite analogies when it comes to helping people, and this is one I teach often, is that of a drowning person. If you see someone drowning in the ocean, you may be a decent swimmer, but if you're not a lifeguard, chances are when you go out there, that person's not going to act in the way they would if you had a training class in a swimming pool. If someone is drowning and scared of drowning, they're going to panic, they're going to stress, and they're going to feel lots of pressure. So when you go out to save them, if you're not a trained lifeguard, chances are that person is going to pull you down with them because you won't know how they're going to react. This is the same as negative energy.
27:40 Jay Shetty? Someone who is dealing with negative energy is like drowning in water, and when you go to help them, you often get pulled down with them. Now, if you were a trained lifeguard, you may have the skills, the techniques, and the tools to actually go and save that person, depending on the amount of danger they're in. But if you're not, what you do have is the ability to introduce that person to things and people and ideas that can help them. Sometimes the best thing you can do is get out of your own way and get out of their way. We put too much pressure and burden on ourselves to be the problem solvers and the fixes because it makes us feel better about ourself.
28:22 Jay Shetty? But sometimes there's someone else, something else. It could be as simple as a podcast or an audiobook, it could be as simple as a video that can actually speak to that person in their language, that can speak to someone where they are, not where you are. So when it comes to dealing with negative people, the first thing to remember is that remember, no one is a negative person. They have a negative tendency. So I know throughout this podcast, I've referred to them as negative people, but that's what I mean when I say that. The second thing is becoming super aware of what type of negativity you're dealing with. Some require direct distance when it comes to vicious or violent, both physically or verbally. That's something you do want to distance from. And if you can't, you don't want to apply these three principles.
29:07 Jay Shetty? The one to three ratio, the rule of one, and finally recognizing that sometimes it's not about you making the change in their life. Sometimes it's not about you making that difference. Thank you so much for listening to today's podcast. I hope it was useful. Make sure you go and post your best learnings on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter. I love seeing them, I love responding, I repost a ton of them. Make sure you've subscribed, rated and reviewed. It genuinely means so much to me. And make sure you're sharing on purpose with lots more people. Imagine we had a world where everyone knew their purpose and lived their passion to serve others. Imagine what an incredible world that would be. I'll speak to you guys next week. Thank you so much. See you soon.
29:54 Jay Shetty? Thank you so much for listening through to the end of that episode. I hope you're gonna share this all across social media. Let people know that you're subscribed to On Purpose. Let me know, post it. Tell me what a difference it's making in your life. I would love to see your thoughts. I can't wait for this incredibly conscious community we're creating of purposeful people. You're now a part of the tribe, a part of the squad. Thank you for being here. I can't wait to share the next episode with you.
30:47 Speaker 02 Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
31:16 Speaker 03 Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami.
31:23 Jay Shetty? They all keep the blame on me.
31:25 Speaker 03 Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
31:33 Speaker 04 What would happen if I stopped growing? You starve, you freeze to death, that's what.
31:37 Speaker 03 With great power comes great deniability.
31:40 Speaker 04 I'm not the first then.
31:41 Speaker 03 Digger, see the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not admitted without parent.
Previous Rob Dyrdek: ON Dropping Out of School and Becoming an Entrepreneur Next Chelsea Handler: ON How Therapy Changed Her Life Page updated September 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
