Hearing about the law of attraction and how to manifest the things you want can get you totally fired up and determined never to think a negative thought again in your life. You start off strong with a vision board, a goal card AND a pray rain journal. You’re well on your way to becoming a glass-half-full kind of person. The future is glowing, bright, positive. It’s all smooth sailing except for one small, pesky problem—other people. They talk about bad news over breakfast, complain about money constantly and are full of fears that they feel the need to tell you about for some reason.

It’s got you thinking that if you lived on a deserted island where all you had to do was visualize happy things and eat coconuts, you would already be a black belt in Manifesting. But of course, that’s not the case. You live out in the world with the rest of us (how do I know? Not too many deserted islands have wifi … Unless you used your black belt skills to get yourself some internet access…). And I don’t think you even want that island life anyways, not really. People happen to be kind of fun when they’re not in a bad mood, no? Fortunately there might be a solution to this puzzle. Many of them in fact. Here are a few ideas.

1. Activate your force shield. Your force shield? Yes, your force shield. You might be wondering right now if there was some important briefing you missed out on and there is actually more to your belly button than you thought before. But (perhaps unfortunately) this kind of force shield cannot be activated by twisting your little finger three times to the right or pressing a special spot behind your knee. The protection you will need when it comes to other people’s negativity can only be built up through careful attention to your thoughts. Tend them carefully to maintain a consistent high frequency and negativity of any kind will get deflected without you ever needing to deal with it yourself. Compliments of the law of attraction.

2. Reroute the conversation. In the same way that you need to pay attention to momentum when dealing with your own negative thoughts, you will need to approach other people differently depending on how far they have gone down their negative path. This particular tip is useful when the other person is experiencing low levels of discomfort. Maybe they have a slight edge of anxiety or you’ve caught them while they’re still in the warm-up stage of a rant. The point of this approach is to get them off the negative topic and onto another (hopefully more positive) one. Perhaps the other person just made a not very nice comment about you. What you will do is totally ignore the comment. Talk about something else as though you hadn’t heard them. I know, I know. Not very easy not to get offended and defend yourself or attack them in return but infinitely more productive. They might try to wedge in their criticism again, but if you hold steady, they will give up after another try or two. Congratulations! You have just disarmed a quarrel that was waiting to explode.

3. Leave the room. You can probably guess this is an approach for the tough nuts. When people get really negative, it can be a form of madness. They might be mad with anger or sadness or desperation, but the result is all the same. They can’t hear you and a soft approach like rerouting the conversation might not work. You will need to do something more drastic and no I don’t mean punching them in the nose. I guess I spoiled the surprise there, but I’m talking about leaving the room. After all who said you have to sit there and listen to everything anyone says? We are taught that it’s the polite thing to do but do you think it’s very polite to hold someone hostage and rant and rave? Maybe you want to help, but if you feel yourself getting pulled into their tornado of negativity, you will be able to offer them nothing except more momentum for their bad-feeling thoughts. So what’s an easy way to crack a tough nut? Wait till it goes soft.