Negative people poison the lives of those around them…
1. How are you dealing with negative people in your life?
2. How do healthy people deal with negative people and their toxicity?
I’m in the hot seat this week and I’m answering these two questions, and five more to help you deal with negative people.
Remember the Naysayer, the Know It All, the Drama Queen, the Taker, the Impossible To Please, the Manipulator, the Judge, and the Self Critic? They’re the 8 negative people you should avoid.
Learn how to handle negative people without getting sucked into their drama:
The 7 questions I answer on today’s episode:
1. Why does knowing who these people are matter…how do negative people affect us?
2. What are some affects of being influenced by a negative person or toxic people? What does it look like?
3. If I’m looking at my current relationships and the people that I have in my life, how do I go about evaluating those relationships? How do I determine the toxicity of those people closest to me?
4. If we know these negative people are in our life and affecting you, what steps can we take right now to help?
5. What can we do to change our interactions with these types of people? And if they don’t change, what can we do?
6. You always say, “Watch it like a movie.” What does that mean when it comes to negative people?
7. What would you say to someone who is struggling with the Self Critic?
How To Handle Negative People with Chris LoCurto…
Heather: So today we’re talking about a followup to a previous episode that we cut about the eight negative people you should avoid…
Chris LoCurto: Well, a few weeks ago we helped you identify these eight types of negative people in your life, potentially in your life. Some of you may have all eight. And if so, I am so sorry. And this episode is the how to. So how to stop the toxicity, how to stop the frustration with these negative people, how to get healthy even when you have negative people in your life.
Heather: Okay, so we talked about the eight types last time, so why does knowing who these people are matter…I mean how do toxic people affect us? …keep reading the interview here.
Take the next step.
If you don’t get rid of the baggage in your life, you’ll continue to carry it around and pick up more along the way. Take time to get healthy.
Get rid of junk so you can be the best version of yourself. Get healthy!
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Heather McKiel: Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.
Chris LoCurto: Is that how I sound? It’s such a…
Heather McKiel: …a good impersonation?
Chris LoCurto: Uh, I don’t know. I’m afraid to answer that one. That was quite impressive how you did do that. I don’t think I sound as great as you do. That was, that was super exciting. Thank you, Heather. Thank you for welcoming our guests. That was Heather and she is intro-ing the show. Why? Because today she is the host for the day.
Heather McKiel: Welcome Chris. I am so glad to have you on my show.
Chris LoCurto: Thank you, Heather. I’m glad to be on your show. People are like, this is just weird.
Heather McKiel: So today we’re talking about a followup to a previous episode that we cut about the eight negative people you should avoid. And Chris on that episode you talked about the Naysayer, the Know It All, the Drama Queen, the Taker, the Impossible To Please the Manipulator, the Judge and the Self Critic
Chris LoCurto: Sounds like I was being one of those negative people…”Here’s all these negative people that I’m going to talk about today.
Heather McKiel: So if you haven’t listened to that episode, make sure you do that. You can go to episode 279 and of course we will provide that link for you guys in the show notes. You can just swipe up on Chris’ face…swipe up on the episode in the podcast App and you will see that link there. Onto why we’re even talking about this today.
Chris LoCurto: Well, a few weeks ago we helped you identify these eight types of negative people in your life, potentially in your life. Some of you may have all eight. And if so, I am so sorry. And this episode is the how to. So how to stop the toxicity, how to stop the frustration with these negative people, how to get healthy even when you have negative people in your life.
Heather McKiel: Okay, so we talked about the eight types last time, so why does knowing who these people are matter…I mean how do toxic people affect us?
Chris LoCurto: So for me,
Chris LoCurto: I believe that we tend to be the sum of the influencers in our lives and in our past, what’s happened in our past. Those things combined together tend to be the things that we make decisions on, whether it’s good or bad. How we’ve been influenced by our past, and the people or the situations that shape our decisions. And that helps us to be who we are today. Which again, maybe good, maybe bad. The bad thing is that the toxic people that have been in our lives also help us to make decisions. You know, the toxic experiences now, they’re not monsters. Usually it’s somebody who’s a hurt person… hurt people, hurt people, and we all have a little toxicity in us as well. These are often possibly family members, possibly friends, possibly teachers or leaders that we’ve experienced in life. So the way that it affects us is if it’s affected us in a negative way, we may be basing our decisions on those very things.
Chris LoCurto: So if I had somebody who was, I don’t know, somebody who guilted the daylights out of me as I was growing up, and then guess what, as I look at decision making in the future, that can affect my decisions. I may not take risks because of fear of guilt. You know, that I may do something wrong, or if I do screw something up, then I might pound myself with guilt for a long period of time because that’s something I’ve been trained to do. So that’s why it’s important to not only recognize these people in your life, but also understand how the toxicity or the unhealthiness, let me say it that way as, well affects us.
Heather McKiel: That’s so good. I have maybe one or a few of those people in my life.
Chris LoCurto: Have you had a couple of unhealthy people in your life in the past few years?
Heather McKiel: Well, before we dive into how to get rid of the toxicity, I wanted to let you all know that this episode is brought to you by next level life.
Heather McKiel: Maybe you’re surrounded by toxic people. Maybe you’re finding yourself feeling frustrated or discontent, maybe stuck in the same old stuff and not moving forward, not living the life you want to be living. What if you could wake up every morning with a clear purpose? What would it look like to have healthier relationships with less conflict? Where would you be in five years if you had clarity, purpose, and peace? I know it’s possible because like Chris, I’ve been where you are asking myself, is this what the rest of my life is going to be like?
Chris LoCurto: You may have even gone through next level life. A time or two.
Heather McKiel: Yes, there is a better way guys.
Heather McKiel: And it starts with next level life. You can go to Chris LoCurto.com/discovery to take the next step. Next level life is a two day personal discovery experience. It’s a one on one personalized event where we guide you through a process to help you get unstuck and discover what’s holding you back from freedom and peace. Don’t stay stuck. There’s so much more to life. You can scratch the surface of growth with different tactics and distractions, but there’s so much more freedom, peace and fulfillment. You just need the perspective to get there. Trust me, I know firsthand. Go to Chris LoCurto.com/discover and take the next steps to get there. Well, back to our show, Chris. I’m super excited to dive deeper into this. So can you tell us what are some affects of being influenced by a toxic person or toxic people? What does that even look like?
Chris LoCurto: So one of the things that’s difficult to understand is that when we have influence by toxic people or we have influence by unhealthy people, like you know, you just explained that, well you didn’t go through it, but you affirmed that there have been, you know, you’ve had some unhealthy people in your past when we don’t know how to deal with that, we’re not trained up. So let’s say if it’s your parents. If your parents are unhealthy or toxic, and they raise you to believe specific things, maybe it’s you’re not good enough. Maybe it’s that it’s everything’s your fault, maybe you’re perfect and you can’t do anything wrong. Whatever those things are that you’re trained to believe, you’re taught to believe. And nowadays, which, what is happening like crazy is that we have young parents that are teaching their kids, that the world revolves around them and they don’t get no, and they don’t get disciplined and all this junk, right?
Chris LoCurto: And they get to make any choice they want to in life. And all of this stuff. You’re being trained to respond specific ways. And those responses are the things that tend to hold you back in life that tend to plateau you, cause problems. We call those surface level responses because they are responses to something that is way deeper that you either don’t know about, you don’t understand or you don’t even know it’s there. You just know there’s this struggle that you’re dealing with. And some examples would be things like procrastination, control, manipulation, low self worth, not being good enough, not being worthy enough…needing to be a perfectionist. Great amounts of fear. Fear of failure is in so many people. In this response, you know, this fear of failure for some people, fear of success. Remember I was doing a Claire Diaz-Ortis summit that she had a while back.
Chris LoCurto: And when I said that, she goes, but that’s not real. And I’m like, no, it absolutely is real. For somebody like Claire, I’m like, you’ve been, you know, you were raised by fantastic parents and pushed you to do stuff and make all that go make mistakes and go be successful. For some people, success means that the other shoe’s about to drop, that failure is coming right around the corner. So all of these responses are things that we experience in life because we don’t understand the things that are much deeper. We don’t understand the training that we’ve had. We don’t, you know, why we’re doing the things that we’re doing. Now, as I say this, let me be very clear. This does not mean that we get to be victims. We’re very clear about that as we come through next level life, we talked through it.
Chris LoCurto: We don’t make any victims and we don’t make any monsters either. You have to understand this stuff. This is for perspective’s sake because when you realize it, then can make different decisions, not that sit there and blame your parents, not sit there and blame the people around you, but instead make better decisions.
Heather McKiel: So you dove deeper into these eight types of toxic people in that previous episode. If I’m looking at my current relationships and the people that I have in my life, how do I even go about evaluating those relationships? How do I determine the toxicity of those people closest to me?
Chris LoCurto: Well, one of the ways that we help people to do this, we call it the relationship evaluation where we take a look at the people who are influencing you the most, the people that you’re spending the most time with that are influencing you the most.
Chris LoCurto: You might work with somebody eight hours a day, but they really have no influence on your life. That’s not somebody we’re looking at, and we definitely don’t look at your kids if they’re under 18 because an amazing thing happens when you look at your kids when they’re under 18, they just show up as toxic because they’re needy. You’re the one taking care of them…it’s all kinds of amazing stuff, right? That’ll make much more sense when you come to the next level life. So what we do is we help people to take a hard look. Now it’s very subjective. This is again, one piece of the process. Earlier on. We focus heavily on what we call the root system and seeing where the big impacts, the big deposits into your life happened. A lot of the training, a lot of the way that you’ve been led.
Chris LoCurto: We look at a bunch of that stuff, but when we just take a look at relationships as a whole, we ask people to really evaluate how controlling is this person? You know, we go one by one with people that have, that are the big influencers in their life. We go through a list of things to take a look at and they can be toxic attributes that can be unhealthy attributes, you know, control, manipulation that they are takers, that they are victims, they have victim mentality. There’s a whole bunch of things that we look at to say, what do you think when you look at this person? And yes, it’s very subjective. How do you experience them? And we go person after person, after person. Now what’s interesting is sometimes people are going to be off by a little bit. They might be off by a couple of numbers.
Chris LoCurto: It’s, again, it’s not a, we need to nail this down to exact, but what you tend to see is people will surround themselves with the same types of people. So if somebody is very jealous then what you will find is, that other people in their circle are jealous as well. If I experienced you as being somebody who is controlling, then we would probably look around at the other people in my inner circle and go control, control, not so much, control and we would see that because that’s something I’m used to. Now again, we’re evaluating the current relationships to see the toxicity. The reason why that’s so important is not because we’re going to sit there and point fingers at people who are toxic. It helps us to look at US, and go, what am I surrounding myself with? And over and over and over again.
Chris LoCurto: Maybe many times people come through. We go through both toxic attributes and healthy attributes, you know, unhealthy, healthy. And many times you’ll see people have phenomenally healthy people in their life and maybe one toxic person. And then other times you will see somebody that’s gone through a really bad childhood, and they’ve got just terribly toxic people surrounding them and they are still allowing those people to have great influence in their life. So that’s how we kind of take a look at the people that are closest to us. It’s those people that are influencing us. Some people will have a parent that they never talked to, so you know, that’s not really an influence. That’s not somebody who’s spending time influencing them on a regular basis.
Heather McKiel: I think a key word that just stuck out to me there was experience. How you experience. It’s not that we’re pointing fingers at someone else saying this is who you are.
Chris LoCurto: Right.
Heather McKiel: You know, because one person may experience that person completely different than another, and so it’s really look taking a look at you as a person and how you are experiencing or receiving the information.
Chris LoCurto: That’s actually a great point. We even asked them in the process, how do you and other people view this person? Because that just what you just said right there. Some people, if it’s a controlling person, many times they will go, well, I don’t experience them this way, but other people do. Well, why do you think you don’t experience them that way? Maybe because you’re the controlling one, so they don’t respond to you that way. So that’s a great point.
Heather McKiel: Yeah. So for those who haven’t been through next level life and had that deep dive done and have had that action plan to take away, and maybe there’s somebody out there that knows that they have those toxic people in their life that are affecting them, what steps can they take right now to help?
Chris LoCurto: Yeah.
Chris LoCurto: Like I said earlier, one of the things you have to realize, we don’t let people be victims or we don’t make monsters through the process. You don’t get to look at somebody who might be toxic in your life and go “SEE, they’re my problem,” because they are not. If you are old enough to be in this event, and we have had people that have as young as 16 years old. We’ve had folks come through this event. Yep. Sixteen years old. We’ve had two 16 year olds, a 17 year old. I think those are our youngest that we’ve had come through. And you’re old enough to take responsibility for the decisions you’re making in your life. So if you have friendships or even relatives that are toxic, that are unhealthy, and yet you’re choosing to allow them to influence you, you have to see that.
Chris LoCurto: Now, as I’m saying this, I’m hesitating a little bit in my mind because usually by the time we get to this point, we’ve had a whole day of learning and growing and understanding. So as you hear this, folks, I want to make sure that you understand that going through the process, the steps I’m going to give you to take right now are the things you can do right now without a much deeper version of this. So I don’t want to set anybody up for failure on this area. The key is if you have those folks, you have to first start with you. What am I doing? What am I allowing in my life? If I’m allowing controlling people, if I’m allowing victim mentality, if I’m allowing people to be abusive, if I’m allowing people to manipulate me, if I’m allowing those things in my life, I’m the one who’s allowing it.
Chris LoCurto: Now you’re probably allowing it because you’ve been trained to believe that you’re supposed to. There’s a saying that only shows up, only shows up in people who come from abusive families and that saying is family is thicker. You know the old blood is thicker than water. “Family is the most important thing.” The only time anybody ever brings that up is somebody who comes from an abusive relationship. Why? Because those who abuse use this as a guilt tool to say family is the most important thing. Yes, family absolutely is incredibly important. I think your relationship with God is way more important. But family is absolutely important, but the amazing thing is, is when you don’t come from an abusive family, nobody’s guilting you with that. Nobody’s trying to convince you that you have to allow these abusive people to stay in your life for 50 years, 60 years, and continue to treat you like crap.
Chris LoCurto: So it has to start with you recognizing what you’re allowing. If you allow unhealthy people, then you have to take the responsibility. Why are you allowing that? Well, I don’t have any other friends. Go find healthy people, go be healthy, you will find healthy, be toxic. It is super easy to find toxic. So the things, the steps that you can take. Start with you. What is it about myself that I’m allowing this to happen? Then I’m always going to tell you, put in healthy boundaries. Now I believe there is a difference between boundaries, walls, and healthy boundaries, walls are the kind of things you throw up immediately that shuts everybody off, horrible…because it causes you to be isolated. It’s that self protected mode of I am not letting you or anybody else in. Wall is up. You can’t get past this. Again, problem is you’re stuck with your own thoughts.
Chris LoCurto: People do not recognize how toxic it is to be behind your own walls because then you’re just left to your own thoughts. And for me, who’s a believer also, I believe there’s evil influence as well, and that comes around and our enemy would love for you to be isolated because then it gets to just pick you apart. So walls are super unhealthy, right? So then some folks think, well, I won’t do walls I’ll put up boundaries, but they’re not healthy boundaries and so they put boundaries out there, but controlling abusive, manipulative types of people are going to just destroy them. They’re going to come right through. Healthy boundaries are the kinds of things you put in place to keep anybody who is taking advantage of you, that is manipulating you, that is treating you badly, that is setting your reality and telling you that you’re not good enough.
Chris LoCurto: You’re not worthy. You’re never going to be. You’re always going to be fat. You’re always going to be stupid. You’re never going to be smart. You’re never going to have the right job. You never, never, never, never that person a healthy boundaries is the thing that you put in place that says, “Stop, you do not get to come any closer,” and matter of fact, let me put this distance between you and I. Now this person can come in this person, this person, this person, but you don’t get past here. Even to the point if it’s somebody terribly abusive, if you’ve got to leave. Now, as I say that, a lot of people that just rocked their world because they’ve been at family parties, they’ve been at family reunions, they’ve been at a family member’s house where that family member is just railing on them and they feel like they can’t leave because what happens when they do? All the other verbal abuse comes out.
Heather McKiel: Here comes the guilt trip…
Chris LoCurto: Here it comes again. If you walk out of here, you aren’t a man, you aren’t a woman. You’re such a Wuss. You’re such a look at you, you’re horrible. All of the junk comes out. So what do they do? They stay. I think we’ve all experienced this at some point in our lives, right? And so by staying you’re affirming that the person who’s treating you this way can continue to do so, and that is something you can’t allow. So you’ve got to put those healthy boundaries in place that say no matter what, and it may be a very distant, healthy boundaries. Sometimes you got to cut certain people out of your life for a while, until you heal, and then you can allow them back in a little at of time. There. There have been points in my life where I’ve had to put such a strong, healthy boundary in place that I did not spend time with somebody until I got to a place of healing.
Chris LoCurto: Okay, I can now handle them so when they come my direction and they become manipulative, controlling, whatever it is, attacking, setting my reality that I just put another…boom, okay, you know I can allow you in for this period of time… “Here it comes again.” Boom. Here’s a healthy boundary. It doesn’t have to be as far as distant, but let me shut that down right now and it may even be me leaving sometimes I just. I’m like, okay, I’m done. I’m out because I’m not gonna sit here and allow this to happen. So those are just some things you can do. One, start by recognizing you next, focus on healthy boundaries. The next thing I want you to do, this happens to be a core value at our business and that core value is recognize that everybody has a root system and honor that.
Chris LoCurto: So what we mean by that here is, you know, root system is the basis of what we do in next level of life. We understand everybody has had some sort of training, some sort of heavy deposits of stuff in their root system that they are making decisions based on that. So the very person that you’re putting that healthy boundary in place with, has a root system. There’s a reason why they respond that way. There’s a reason why they’re trying to control. There’s a reason why they’re trying to set somebody’s reality, there’s stuff that they don’t understand. Now. You’re not the person to help them with that. Let the professionals handle that stuff, right? You just need to get you healed in the moment. And it may be a long time before you can handle that again. And so again, as I’m saying this, I’m really speaking to the extremes here.
Chris LoCurto: I’m not speaking to all the folks that come through and they’re the opposite of this. They had a phenomenal childhood, or they had parents who were too loving, you know, I’m not even speaking to that kind of stuff. I’m speaking to the extremes here, which is, you know, we probably get about 50, 60 percent of the people that come through that experience the stuff that we’re talking about right now. So understand that they have stuff in their past that they are a child of God just like you are, that they are somebody who’s struggling just like you are. You’re no better than them. They’re no better than you. We are all worthy for Christ who died on the cross for us. So understand that this is a child of God, that God still wants to heal, that God still wants to get out of the own muck and mire, that they’re living or they’re experiencing. So there’s three things that you can do right now to kind of help in that process.
Heather McKiel: I know boundaries was a big piece of my next level life when I walked through it… and I had read boundaries, I had read the book, I understood the concept, and I thought that I was putting in healthy boundaries, which turned out to be walls that shut me down from being my authentic self and unhealthy boundaries. Like I had no idea that what I was trying to do was actually hurting me even more than moving me forward. So it wasn’t until I got here and really understood what healthy boundaries were and that it was okay that I really started that healing process.
Chris LoCurto: The book boundaries is phenomenal. Henry cloud has done an incredible job with this. When we couple this with all the other understanding, and I think that’s what you’re referring to,
Heather McKiel: I think understanding that by me putting in those healthy boundaries, I wasn’t hurting the other person, which I always felt like I was in the past, because there’s where that guilt and that control came into play and so I quickly would take them back down because I chose to receive that I was a horrible, bad person, but you know, it took the understanding to put it in play.
Chris LoCurto: It’s amazing when, like with me, I had that very same thing. So much of my life has been carried around with guilt and things and training of, “Its my fault… if you’re hurt, then it’s got to be my fault.” If I push back on you because you say that the sky is green and I say, well, I think it’s blue. Oh, you’re a horrible person. Although this stuff that has affected me, the incredible thing is as you work on this stuff and spend a couple of decades healing and getting yourself to a place of being able to put in healthy boundaries, I don’t have to put the healthy boundary in as much anymore, like very rarely because I’ll see what somebody is trying to do and then I see what they’re doing with their attack and instead of, you know, going after the, okay, “I experienced you was attacking me right now.”
Chris LoCurto: I’ll actually go into, “so what is it you’re looking for right here? What are you trying to get to? What is the outcome that you’re hoping for?” Which by asking a bunch of questions back because already know what’s coming and I’ll watch it like a movie. I know what’s going to happen next. By asking the questions back, what happens is it causes the other person to do two things: to realize, “Oh, I can’t get over on this guy.”
Heather McKiel: I’m not going to be able to get away with this.
Chris LoCurto: Hmmm…I have not experienced this before, and two: to ask themselves the questions, “What is the outcome that I’m looking for? What am I trying to get to right now?” And that usually settles them down and allows them to go, “Okay, you’re right, I shouldn’t.” Because they’ve now realized they don’t have to try to control me. And what do we always say about control? Control’s an illusion. When do you need control? When you feel out of control, when you feel out of control, that’s when you fight to take control. So when you’ve worked on it for a long period of time, and again, like you said, it’s that realization of all the stuff that we put with it. Boundaries is just one piece, after we discovered a whole ton of other stuff that you plug that in as a tool to go, okay, now I can get to some healing in this.
Heather McKiel: Well one of the other things that we talk about a lot around here at the office is taking personal responsibility and we talk about victim mentality. So you know, if we’re being hurt, offended and constantly frustrated by one of these eight negative or, eight toxic people, what can we change? Because I know for me for so long I was so focused on, well, if I could just change this person to be what I need, then our relationship will be great. So what can we do to change our interactions with these types of people? And if they don’t change, what can we do as well?
Chris LoCurto: Keep in mind that the focus of what we’re discussing today is really heavily focused on this area of people that struggle with people that do, you know, we’re talking specifically about the eight negative people. So these are people that do offend, hurt people, are constantly frustrated. Those are the things that we’re talking about today. So if you’ve got phenomenal people in your life, this isn’t applying to that situation, the thing you need to understand is that you have authority, you have authority over you. It’s your choice whether or not to give these people power over you. So one of the things I help people all the time is, is to understand when somebody’s setting somebody else’s reality. “Heather that is the most ugly shirt.” Dang it. I’m giving away one of my tools that next level in life, people are going to know this now.
Chris LoCurto: They’re going to be like, yeah, I’m not falling for that. “That is the ugliest shirt. Why in the world did you wear that Blouse today? That is terrible. Why would you do that with the stripes and the, you know, it’s, it’s poofed out there at the bottom, peplum, whatever, that’s called. Why would you wear that?” This is such a great tool for me to use to help people to see. I’m literally saying that is the ugliest shirt and it just doesn’t even make sense why you’d wear that today. Well, what happens? Even as I say that, is there the slightest tinge in your brain that goes, is it ugly?
Heather McKiel: No. Not now. It used to all the time. Yeah, easily. You’ve used that a lot on us and actually, I’ve seen you use it in StratPlan…but no, it didn’t.
Chris LoCurto: It rocks somebody back in their seat and they usually go, “oh, well, I, you know, I like it.” And you could see they’re struggling like crazy in the moment to go, why would he do that? So when I do this, it shocks them. They’re like, “uh, I don’t, I don’t really know how to respond. I feel really bad right now.” And so every now and then somebody just goes, okay…
Chris LoCurto: They just know that it’s not me, but when I do that, even if somebody doesn’t truly believe that I’m being serious, you can still see that the wheels are turning of them going, “Does he really not like my red polo shirt? Does he really not liked my blue blouse? What does he. Wow I’m actually kind of surprised.” Right? So the moment you receive it, the moment you receive it, you’ve given me the power. Because now I have convinced you that your shirt is ugly, right? That is not good. That is where you start to give up your own power. Now I cannot, no matter how hard I try take power from you, all I can do is highly suggest that you believe something and if I get it through and if it works, I win in my mind because, “Oh look at me.
Chris LoCurto: I’ve actually gotten you to believe that the shirt is butt ugly.” Right? So I win, I feel good about myself, now, I’ve just gained some worth. I know I’ve taken or not taken, but I know you are losing worth right now and that gives me more worth because I can see that I affected you that way. That is what happens to somebody who’s trying to gain worth from another person. So you need to understand you have authority over you, you have the power to hold your own decisions, your own beliefs. You could literally look at that comment and ask the question, do I think the shirt is ugly? If I did, I probably would not be wearing it today, or I wouldn’t have bought this thing, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t have to receive the opinion of the holier than thou person who’s telling me that it’s butt ugly, right?
Heather McKiel: Yeah. I think once you understand that you actually maintain that power until you give it to someone else. One of the tools that you had taught that you teach all of us and you, you teach it in next level Life is like you said, question what’s being said, and I always would just automatically receive. That’s truth. Receive and defend. That was my go to, and never understanding that I could actually choose in that moment to either take it or not, and sometimes it was being truth that was being told to me, but knowing that I had the power to go, “is this truth? What do I believe and why is it affecting me and where am I getting my worth right now?” You know all those questions, learning those things, and being able to ask those questions gave me that power to be okay. So what? You don’t like my shirt?
Chris LoCurto: Exactly.
Heather McKiel: Turn around.
Chris LoCurto: Stop looking at my blouse. So, if I don’t receive it and I’m in a place of strength and a place of power. Now, by the way, your greatest power is the holy spirit who lives inside of you. If you actually know how to call on it, right? If I’m in a place of strength and I go, well, you know what? I really don’t care what you think about my shirt. I didn’t wear it for you, and so if you would do me a favor, please keep your opinions to yourself about my clothes.
Chris LoCurto: Boom. Powerful, healthy boundary, boom. Not a, well, you’re stupid because you don’t like my shirt. You don’t go on the attack. You don’t need to defend. Don’t receive the reality that they’ve just set, “I don’t believe it is an ugly shirt, so you can keep that. I’m not going to receive that.” It’s funny to see people that when you do that, they go, what? What, what? What do you mean you’re not going to receive it? I’m not going to receive you telling me that this is an ugly shirt because I don’t believe it is… “well it is…” and all of a sudden there’s…
Heather McKiel: In the beginning, that is what happens when you set those healthy boundaries.
Chris LoCurto: They struggle
Heather McKiel: They struggle and go, “wait a minute”
Chris LoCurto: You’ve always received. You’ve always received me setting your reality.
Heather McKiel: Yeah, but the more that you do that and the more you catch it and put in, “nope,” I’m going to set that healthy boundary. You go ahead and keep that. It’s not going to affect my day. It’s not going to affect how I feel. It’s not going to affect where I’m getting my worth from. They will learn to, you know, okay, I’m not gonna be able to get power over this person.
Chris LoCurto: Right, and again, when you’ve practiced this long enough and gotten healthy, then you can start to realize why the person is doing this and you can start to, like you said, ask questions back. You know…”That is one ugly shirt. Why would you wear that?” “Hey, what are you going for there? What’s your intention of telling me that my shirt is ugly?” “It’s just an ugly shirt.” “Okay.” “What is your purpose of trying to tell me is are you wanting to hurt me right now?”
Heather McKiel: “Are you jealous of my clothes?”
Chris LoCurto: “Are you jealous of what I’m wearing? Are you jealous of my clothes? What is the thing that you’re going for right now?” And it causes people to go, Oh crud, I’m being a jerk and they see that I’m being a jerk and they’re not receiving it.
Chris LoCurto: I should back down. That happens almost every single time. Now you did mention one thing about it. Sometimes it’s the truth. If somebody comes along and says, if I was to say, “Heather, I really am experiencing you as having been rude to our waitress who just came and asked for your order and all you did was stay on your phone and not even acknowledged that she was here.” I don’t know, just totally making that up because that’s not something that you would do, but if I was to say that, then that’s one of those situations where you can ask the question, is that true? And if it’s truth, take responsibility, right? So, the caveat in all of this, now I want to speak to those of you that may be in an abusive relationship and you may not even recognize it. If you are in an abusive relationship, then please find a counselor.
Chris LoCurto: Find a support group. Come here. Don’t do it by yourself. Don’t try and solve this by yourself. If you are in an abusive relationship, there’s a reason this person has been able to convince you that you can’t be without them, that they are going to hurt you even more if you try and take care of yourself. Take a look at the signs of being in an abusive relationship. Is it somebody who isolates you? Is it somebody who always puts you down, tells you you’re not good enough, tells you you never be good enough, tells you that you’ll never make money that keeps your friends away, keeps your family, is physically abusive, verbally abusive? Take a look at those things and make sure that if you’re in this type of relationship, do not try to convince yourself that you’re strong enough to do this on your own.
Chris LoCurto: Get on your knees before God. Take a lot of time in prayer and ask him to help and also get out and go find somebody who can help you through this process because life’s too short to be spending it in an abusive relationship. Now also on the converse side of this, I want you to take a look at how you respond to comments. You know, sometimes you will read into comments like crazy and assume that somebody means something bad, so you might get bent out of shape over a comment that they made or you know, you get a text message or, or there’s a conversation that just ruins your day or you get offended easily when somebody says something to you. So you know, take a look. Do you get your feelings hurt by people easily, are you, is everybody else out to hurt you? Then I want you to look at the converse of this. Maybe you are the one struggling with victim mentality because when you’re a victim, you got to have a villain. You’ve got to have a villain. So maybe you who’s struggling with this and somebody is not intentionally doing something. So that’s another piece that you need to know to take a look at whether or not it’s somebody who’s being toxic in your life or are you being toxic to you or other people?
Heather McKiel: Yeah. So Chris, this is a phrase you use a lot and I know you mentioned it earlier here and you use it a lot in Next-Level Life too…”Watch it like a movie.” What does that even mean when it comes to negative people?
Chris LoCurto: So for me, one thing that I’ve noticed in my life is I know what’s coming next. It’s predictable. I’ve been around toxic people enough. I’ve been around healthy people enough to be able to predict how somebody is going to respond. So if I have somebody who has the highest integrity, I know how they’re gonna respond in any situation. I know how they’re going to respond to something that comes up that looks like it might challenge integrity. I know how they’re going to respond. Well, it’s the same exact thing with somebody who’s responding out of toxicity or are being unhealthy. I know what’s going to happen when I put that healthy boundary in place. You know, we talked about that. You mentioned it. When you put that healthy boundary in place, here’s how they respond. So for me, because I already know what’s going to happen, I think a lot of people don’t really understand this about me.
Chris LoCurto: I am a very high S as well, so I’ve got a lot of S. I’ve got a lot of, I, I’ve got some D in there, I have some C enough C to be dangerous
Heather McKiel: only when you need it
Chris LoCurto: So for me, I watch it like a movie. I know how somebody’s going to respond. We had a great situation. You just hired a new person on your team. Brandon, we just brought branded on board, love Brandon. So great to have him onboard, so needed to have another admin person because of how much stuff we got going on. But the other day you put him in a situation in a StratPlan where he’s now putting the stuff on the screen as we’re walking through this heavy process. I mean it’s just super intense on trying to figure out all these things that we’re doing. And so he gets up there and that fear kicks in, “Oh, I’m going to screw something up.
Chris LoCurto: I’m going to mess something up.” And he starts to mess things up and you could see it and for me. So I watch it like a movie. I know what’s going to happen next. I know how he’s feeling. I know what he’s experiencing. I know the lies that he’s telling himself. I know the negative self talk that he’s telling himself in that moment. And so because I know this stuff, I know what to do. Because I’m removed from it. I’m not emotionally attached to the situation, so instead I just choose to lighten it up. I’ll throw a joke out there to knock that off, you know, that stress that he’s feeling. So I said, “Come on, new guy. The pressure’s on,” and it just like, you know, you could just feel the tension just go away. Everybody else in the room, nobody else was having a problem with it, but you could just see him settle down a little bit. Okay. And then he kicked into gear because I’m watching it like a movie. I’m not emotionally attached to the situation.
Heather McKiel: Yeah, you’re not being affected by it or getting frustrated.
Chris LoCurto: So if I do get emotionally attached, then I’m always spending my time waiting to defend, waiting to respond, waiting to reason. I’m always waiting and I’m always tense. And like I always say, when you freak, you freeze. Right? So if I’m in my High S mode than my brain can’t think as fast because I don’t know what to say. Well, when you’re watching it like a movie, because you’re not emotionally attached, you know what’s coming. So I’m going to put this boundary in place and here’s how this person’s going to respond. They’re going to blow up and I’m going to wait for them to blow up and once they’re done blowing up, I want to put this healthy about or I’m going to ask this question or, or, or, or…but the last thing I’m going to do is fight and defend and argue and reason and be self protective and put up walls and all that stuff because I don’t have to. Does that make sense?
Heather McKiel: Yeah. That makes total sense. Just to be able to step outside of the situation, get out of the situation on what’s going on and take the emotional, you know, the height of that emotion and just,
Chris LoCurto: …not that you’re not going to still be emotional, right? Just not handcuffed emotionally.
Heather McKiel: …but don’t respond in that emotional way. Really step outside. That makes sense. So what would you say to someone who is struggling with the self critic? What would you say?
Chris LoCurto: This is all of us right there. I don’t know of a single person who doesn’t. I can tell you this. One of the things that we do next level life is what we call the lies. Every person lies to themselves about something. It may be difficult to see, after a day it’s not as difficult to see, but every single person lies to themselves. Every person has some sort of negative self talk. It’s not self love. It’s self loathing or self hatred, right? Depending upon the level of negative self talk that you have for yourself. So what is the self critic? The self critic is the kind of person that’s always beating themselves up, “oh gosh, you ate too much there. You know that was stupid a look at that. Can you believe that you just said that to that person. Now they’re going to think you’re a total idiot.
Chris LoCurto: Oh my gosh. When are you ever going to stop crying at sappy movies like this,” you know, it’s always
Heather McKiel: It’s always the most damaging. I would say, because that voice inside our head is going 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Chris LoCurto: If you allow it to be negative, it will be
Heather McKiel: That ends up becoming our…We say it so much that it becomes our truth.
Chris LoCurto: It becomes our reality. We are setting our own reality by being that self critic. The key to this is you have to understand, first off, everybody does it. Everybody has some level of it, even if it’s just the teeniest, tiniest. It’s funny because I deal with it, but I’m able to shut it off pretty quickly because I see the negative self talk coming in. Something I do is I go “knock it off.” I have to say it loudly in my head to shock my brain, but I don’t stop there.
Chris LoCurto: A lot of people stop there. You can’t stop there. You have to then fill in the truth. That is not truth. This is truth. This is truth. This is truth, but a lot of folks can be in that self criticizing mode, non stop.
Heather McKiel: It’s just a spiral.
Chris LoCurto: “You knew you were going to fail at this. Oh Great. Now Chris thinks that you’re a total failure because you didn’t do this thing right or you didn’t say that thing right,” or whatever. And it’s just piece after piece after piece after piece, and all it is doing is destroying you from the inside. You’re setting your own reality that you are crap. I don’t remember if it was Henry Ford or whoever said it. If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. What’s the same thing about the lies that you tell yourself? If you believe you’re not worthy enough, you’re right because you’re convincing yourself.
Chris LoCurto: It doesn’t matter what God thinks. You have convinced yourself. If you think you have to take control of your life and you know, attack people and not be able to be out of control or be vulnerable or you have to be self protective. If you feel all of these things are correct then to you they are. So those things that you tell yourself about how horrible you are about how much that you’re not good enough for this person. “You’re never going to get the right raise. You’re never going to get the right job. Nobody’s going to think you’re worthy.” All of those things are things that are not only destroying you mentally, emotionally, but also physically. It is causing you to create all kinds of poison and toxicity in your own body. You showed me something, you went to a fabulous concert of Lindsey Sterling who is stunning
Chris LoCurto: and I believe you went with your youngest daughter I believe…She had this thing where as she’s playing onstage, she showed freezing water after it’s been spoken to and it was done by a believe a Japanese scientists, you know, a couple decades ago. And so she showing this on the screens as she’s playing and he’s going through all of the water that’s been frozen after all of these negative things have been spoken to and all these positive things had been spoken to it. So you might say hate to this vial of water, you know, multiple times. And then they freeze it and you might say, love …It gets more complicated than this….This is the most basic form of this, but love to this one over here and freeze it. And when you pull it out, there are tons of examples on this.
Chris LoCurto: Not just one, tons. Same exact water, same exact place, freezing these things, but speaking hate and speaking love to the water when they freeze it and then they take a shot of the crystals. All of the positive ones love God, peace, all the things that they spoke positives to. They’re crystal clear, beautiful little shapes in the water. Every single time they talk something negative, hate Satan, Hitler was one of the things that they spoke at this water, but they spoke this hatred to the water. Every single time this clean water, the crystals were brown. They didn’t have any good form to them. They were just kind of ugly and funky. That is what’s happening inside our bodies.
Heather McKiel: We are made up of 70 percent water. Over half of our body is made up of water, so
Chris LoCurto: and our blood is our life force. It is our life force, so our whole being, we are telling ourselves that we’re not good enough.
Chris LoCurto: We’re telling ourselves that we make stupid decisions. We are telling ourselves that nobody truly loves us. We’re telling ourselves that we’re idiots. We’re telling ourselves this stuff and we’re physically affecting our own bodies as well with that self critic. So for me, you have got to get to a place of understanding what your true worth this, you know, we spent a good amount of time on that next level life of discovering what your true worth is. And I’ve spoken about it many times on the show as well. You’ve got to kick the self critic to the curb. You’ve got to put healthy boundaries in place. You know, like I say for me, I don’t have a lot of negative self talk…the time, that I experienced negative self talk is when I go to do something incredibly dangerous and I’ve, you know, like racing formula cars and I’ve been out of the car for like 10 months, you know, because we’ve been too busy and 10 months by and I go to get in the car and open wheel formula cars is the most dangerous of racing cars because the wheels touch going in the same direction
Chris LoCurto: then somebody is going up and it’s very scary. Open cockpit, somebody comes up over the top of your car, you’re done, and I know myself, I’m always going to push myself and so there are times that I’ve been. I’ve not been able to get as many races in a year because of so much stuff that we had going on and I’ve been out of the car for maybe 10 months and then I go to get in the car and everybody’s raced all year long and all this kind of stuff and I know I’m going to push myself in there and I’m out of practice. I’m a little bit out of practice and all the negative self talk starts coming. Here it comes. You know, you, you should get back in the car more often. You know you’re not going to do as well as these other guys and you know you’re gonna
Chris LoCurto: push that into the, you know, turn one is always the toughest turn on the start of a race and because everybody’s racing to this funnel that we’re going to turn in and all of this negative self talk comes up and I have to literally go “Shut up. Knock it off” and force my brain to stop. Shut the negative self talk down, shut the self critic down and go straight to truths. This is the key. Once you shut it down, you can’t just stop because the negative will come right back. Jesus did not battle Satan in the desert. He was in his weakest physical state and emotional and mental as well. He did that battle Satan in the desert. He battled the lie and he battled the lie with a truth, and so for me, I’ve got to come quickly with the truth, “knock it off you race cars.
Chris LoCurto: This is what you do. You are a race car driver. This is just another practice. Yes, it’s going to be a race, but you’re going to do more. This isn’t the be all end all race of your life. You’re going to do more races. Treat it like a practice. Get in there, do the best job you possibly can. Be Very safe, but keep that pedal down.” All the positive, positive, positive, positive, positive, and it takes literally a couple of minutes at best. Before I’ve kicked that thing to the curb, so you have to understand that the worst negative person of all is probably inside of your brain. This is the person who believes the lies that you were told and has a tendency to tell quite a few lies as well. So it must be that person must be avoided at all costs.
Heather McKiel: This is something that I see a lot with my personal training clients.
Chris LoCurto: Oh yeah.
Heather McKiel: You know, not only do we focus on food and our workouts and our body, but a lot of them struggle with this negative self talk. And so when we put that practice in play, just taking that lie and I mean there’ll be in workouts and they will be being negative and speaking that lie and we just start calling out the truth. And over time you will see that there’s less negative self talk. They’re sleeping better, their energy is better, their workouts are going better. It’s a complete mind body change. It’s connected, it’s all connected.
Chris LoCurto: I think that’s one of the amazing things about what you do is that people don’t just come to you for a workout. They can go anywhere for workout, but they come to you because you’re that type of trainer who loves and walks them through and speaks positives into their lives and into their ears and the process and helps them to overcome that stuff and they become so powerful being able to speak those positive affirming words to themselves
Heather McKiel: and they become healthier. Just by making that one simple change.
Chris LoCurto: You’re not. You’re not telling them things that aren’t true.
Heather McKiel: No.
Chris LoCurto: You’re telling them the truth and it’s very positive. So folks, if you don’t get rid of the baggage in your life, you’ll continue to carry it around and pick it up more and more and more along the way.
Chris LoCurto: So you have to take time to get healthy. You’ve got to get rid of the junk so you can be the best version of yourself. So even though we’re talking about this in a mental capacity, just like you just shared, not only does it change your mental capacity, your emotional capacity, your spiritual capacity, but it changes your physical capacity as well.
Heather McKiel: So where can people go to get this kind of change in their life?
Chris LoCurto: I’m so glad you asked heather. There actually is a great place to do this. You’ve been through next level life twice. We have many people that will come back through again because there’s not just one level, there’s 700, but folks, you got to take the first step. You got to get to the first level of getting rid of all of this crap in your life. All of the negative people, even if you’re that person. So go to chrislocurto.com/discover to take the next step. All you gotta do is go and get the next step going to start moving yourself in a direction of getting rid of the eight negative people in your life, including you. If it are you, so chrislocurto.com/discover so that you can take the next step.
Heather McKiel: Well, there you go. Folks, hopefully this was helpful for you,
Chris LoCurto: Are you gonna do the close?
Heather McKiel: As always, don’t forget to take this information. Change your leadership, Change Your Business, change your life, and join us on the next episode
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Episode 283: 5 Ways To Work As Unto God, Not People
