Negativity- The Elephant in the Room

Ok, so I know this isn't an article on healthy eating, healthy cookbooks, gym reviews, diets, or any of the usual fare I tend to write about- but it still weighs in greatly on your health. Your mental health. How often are you having a great day only to be bombarded by some Debbie or Donald Downer and their doom cloud, only because their life hasn't gone the way of their dreams and they are miserable? How many times have you woken up in the morning only to feel instantly anxious over something negative someone said to you yesterday? It would be nice if we were all ducks and these things could roll off our backs, but sometimes they don't. How do we deal with these negative forces in our lives? How do we handle the naysayers, the racists, the bigots, the perpetually down who want to drag you right with them? How do you keep from stooping to their level?
My coping mechanism is to *try* to keep these people at arm's length, but I know this isn't feasible in the short or long term. Negativity is contagious although unavoidable. If you surround yourself by negative people- by choice or not- you may find yourself falling into their little self-sabotaging habits of talking ill of others who aren't miserable or who they blame their misery on, real or imagined. So what do you do? How do you deal? What are the real answers to this? While there are no answers to this there are some preventive measures you can take to lessen the affects of other's misery. Take care of yourself. Take their negativity with a really large grain of salt- a salt boulder, perhaps. Let your positivity and you inner light outshine their negativity. And if nothing else accept the fact that you don't have to have anything other than a civil relationship with others if they are going to have a negative influence in your life. Be your own best friend. Keep only friends of quality. It is better to have one true friend of quality than a room of people faking it and trying to break you down all incognito-like.
Take care of yourselves. Don't let the small shit get you down. It's all just temporary.