Why does a person become cynical

The people you spend time with influence your outlook. Examine the groups you follow on social media and the co-workers and other people you hang out with. Do they tend to be negative or positive?

The company you keep, both in real life and online, has a great impact on your thoughts and actions. Logic will tell you that if you surround yourself with positive people, their positivity will rub off on you. However, the opposite is also true. If you surround yourself with cynical people who always see the negative in things, you will forget to look for the silver lining when you face a challenge.

It can be tough to understand the dynamics of your circle, but if you find that you are often negative, take notice of the people around you. Ask yourself who brings you up and who drags you down.

Try to find a way to shift your time to limit your exposure to negative people. Your social network is yours to create or diminish, so make certain that you surround yourself with the positive support you need to get the most out of your life. According to Jim Rohn, we are the average of the five people with whom we spend the most time.

Choose to be surrounded by people who exude optimism and positivity while maintaining a realistic outlook. Similar to evaluating the company that you keep, think about the people in your life that you admire or look up to in some way. If you can maximize your time with them, it will make you feel like a better person yourself. Make sure to spend your time only with those who are truly worth it. If you have some very positive people in your life who live far away, find photos of them and display them where you can see them on a regular basis.

Use only photos of people who uplift a very specific positive trait in you. The simple act of curating these uplifting photos helps banish cynicism, as it is nearly impossible to rage against the world when a picture of your very best friend pops up during a lull in your workday. Focusing on the positive traits of other people will speed up your return to idealism by leaving no room for negative thoughts or feelings. It will help you generate a positive feedback loop mechanism that will make this habit become second nature.

Remember these things: kids laugh every day, people fall in love every day, and people reach great heights of success every day. Strangers help strangers, injustices are mitigated, art is created, and positive things are constantly happening.

Knowing that great things like these are happening all the time in our damaged society, you can also realize that each person you come across also has great qualities that can overshadow anything that may be negative about them. Negative things happen beyond our control, and being cynical has perhaps been your way of protecting yourself and gaining a semblance of control in life. However, if cynicism is affecting your health, relationships, and career, and is a major cause of unhappiness, then the only option is to change your attitude.

The strategies featured in this article will be your guide on how to stop being cynical. Pin Share Buffer Being cynical prevents you from having meaningful relationships or being close to others.

Cynical people have a higher risk of strokes and heart ailments. Cynics are more likely to have dementia. Cynics are more prone to depression. Admit to yourself that you are cynical. Isn't it astonishing, for example, how, once elected, MPs continue the daft traditions of jeering, guffawing and addressing their colleagues by ridiculous circumlocutory terms such as "the right honourable member"? It comes to something when the most controversial defiance of convention by a politician in recent years was Gordon Brown's refusal to wear a dinner jacket and bow tie.

People would perhaps be less cynical about politicians if the politicians themselves would be more cynical. Perhaps the biggest myth about cynicism is that it deepens with age. I think what really happens is that experience painfully rips away layers of scales from our eyes, and so we do indeed become more cynical about many of the things we naively accepted when younger.

But the result of this is to make us see more sharply the difference between what really matters and all the dross and nonsense that clutters up life. So as cynicism about many — perhaps most — things rises, so too does our appreciation and affection for what is good and true. Cynicism leads to more tender feelings towards what is truly lovable. Similarly, doubting the reality of much-professed sincerity is a way of showing that you respect and value the rare and precious real deal.

It's time, therefore, to reclaim cynicism for the forces of light and truth. Forget about the tired old dichotomies of positive and negative, optimistic and pessimistic. We can't make things better unless we see quite how bad they are. We can't do our best unless we guard against our worst. And it's only by being distrustful that we can distinguish between the trustworthy and the unreliable. To do all this we need intelligent cynicism, which is not so much a blanket negativity, but a searchlight for the truly positive.

In praise of cynicism. It's claimed that at the age of 44 our cynicism starts to grow. But being cynical isn't necessarily a bad thing, argues Julian Baggini. It's at the heart of great satire and, perhaps more importantly, leads us to question what is wrong with the world — and strive to make it better Test how cynical you are.

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Some people are, and some people are not. Be a cynic, but don't tar everyone with the same brush. Maybe when you were younger you believed that love was all you needed, and that it could last forever.

One or more heartbreaks in, you're starting to revaluate the whole "happily ever after" thing. You're starting to think that everything has to end at some point. Like everything else, maybe love does—but maybe it doesn't. You don't know the future, and you can't control it. But you can control your attitude towards it. Once upon a time, you would stand on your soap box and fight anyone with an even slightly bigoted or offensive opinion.

Now you're starting to think, "Well, if they're not hurting anyone, and they just go about their business believing something different to me, do I really even care?

Oh, to be 16 again and have it all planned out to perfection! As you experience more and more, you realize life doesn't always go to plan. That's good to know: Things sometimes go haywire, and there's nothing you can do to help it, so you just have to accept it.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't get excited about or build up your future plans. Blending a healthy dose of cynicism with your dreams can keep you realistic in your expectations and priorities, but retaining optimism will, in your day-to-day life, make you a happier person.