How to Stop Energy Vampires from Sucking You Dry by Vangile Makwakwa
Please welcome guest author Vangile Makwakwa, a South African writer and renowned speaker, on how to stock energy vampires from sucking your dry.
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How to Stop Energy Vampires from Sucking You Dry
“Don’t let negative people bring you down…cancel my subscription. I don’t want your issues.” ~ Cheryl Caldwell
I love the above quote because it reminds me how important it is to surround ourselves with positive people who emit good energy and leave us feeling energized especially if we’re creative.
1) Avoid eternal complainers and critics
I understand that everyone is on their journey but I’d caution against people that whine and complain about everything or everyone.
You know those people that are just plain allergic to happiness and good thoughts?
Stay away from such people. Respect their journey and send them positive energy by all means but keep your time in their presence at a minimum.
Complainers and critics are energy vampires that leave those around them drained, depleted and not wanting to write or even think up another sentence when they leave your space.
It took me a while to spot energy vampires because they’re not mean or bad people, they’re just negative and have this tendency to leave everyone in their space feeling uninspired.
2) Surround yourself with positive people
Energy is contagious.
I never took this seriously until I found myself drained and unable to move from exhaustion from dealing with other people’s issues.
I was officially a mess: I’d sit to meditate and other people’s complaints would float to the surface but I was to blame because I’d allowed the situation to get that far.
I wanted to be everybody’s friend so I earned my popularity badge by letting everyone into my space and taking on their issues.
If you allow yourself to carry everyone’s problems you’ll soon forget the opportunities that are out there.
3) Set boundaries
I could write a book on the importance of setting boundaries and I’d still feel like I haven’t imparted enough wisdom.
Energy vampires feed off of positive energy so they need to be around positive people. When dealing with an energy vampire you need to set boundaries.
Whatever you do, don’t allow energy vampires to tear your writing apart and analyze your creativity unless you trust their judgment and understand the rules of creative criticism.
When I was writing Heart, Mind & Money one of my energy vampire friends asked to read it before it was done and because I just didn’t want to deal with him, I sent him the half-finished draft.
His constructive criticism was to tell me how the book would be of no use to anyone over the age of 20. I was upset for days because I was convinced I had just wasted months of work.
Luckily I’d dealt with his pessimism often, so I understood he was just behaving as normal but I did stop writing for a few days which almost killed my motivation.
4) Be selfish with your creative time
Writers need to set aside time to just be creative or just be, so that they can find inspiration and go deep within themselves and bond with their inner artist or inner child or just draft new ideas.
Find your most creative time and guard it, be selfish with it and don’t allow energy vampires to invade it because they will if you give them the chance.
5) Avoid topics that trigger the complaining and criticism
As I said before everyone is on their own journey and most of the time energy vampires are wonderfully clueless (you may differ with me on this point) about the way their energy darkens a room. Sometimes the best thing to do is to stick to safe topics with them and just avoid the ones that bring on the endless complaints and criticism.
I’d be interested in hearing of any experiences you have had with energy vampires in the comments section below. Thanks!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vangile Makwakwa is a renowned author and speaker. Download a FREE copy of Vangile’s book, Heart, Mind & Money: Using Emotional Intelligence with Money, at smashwords using this coupon code: ZF65H (expires January 19, 2014). All I ask in return is that if you enjoy the book, you rate and review it on Smashwords. Thank you!
Your advice came too late for me. But I will follow it from now on out. Without being too conscious of what happened, I managed to over schedule my time for the month of January. I took on two writing workshops and offered to help other authors edit their complete novel. All three of these commitments are time suckers as well as energy vamps. All the while hoping to finish my own book for publication in April. During the middle of this, I became ill with a bad cold that has turned to bronchitis. I think brought on by the stress. I hadn’t written a new word since January 3rd. How sad it that. Anyway, I will listen to your sage advice and learn my limitations and how precious my own creative time should be. Thank you.
Hi Carol Anne,
Thank you for sharing. My aunt recently fell ill and she told me something interesting – she said she thinks her illness was a way of getting her to slow down and look after herself. Maybe your body is trying to get you to do the same.One of the things I have had to learn on this journey is to first look after myself and take care of me emotionally and physically because my writing depends on it. If I’m physically drained I can’t write. My only advice is to put yourself first honor your creative time.