I was once in your situation, and this is what I did!

When you are listening to a lot of whining and negative statements, contradict them in your mind, into positive statements. It will be like a sort of game, and I think you will feel better immediately.

As people around you do negative things, bless them inside yourself. You will feel better. It helps you to have a sense of humor about it as well, as they make ridiculous choices and you say to yourself, "Bless you!"

Make decisions, even if they aren't the greatest ones. Tell yourself, "Well, I am being nearly forced to do this or that, but I choose to. This is the decision I make and next time I may choose differently." This will help you feel control, because you are in control!

In a group setting, if you are with negative people, pretend to surround yourself with a bubble, and tell yourself that their negativity can't reach you, and is mirrored back to them instead. You'll feel lighter inside.

By playing these little games with yourself, you will begin to feel better. As you feel better and no longer feed into the negativity, you will find your life slowly changing. I promise.

It is a matter of perspective. You cannot control the universe but you can control your own thoughts. As you become more focus on the positive you will attract more of same into your life. Try exploring your thoughts to see if there is anyway you could be attracting the present situation in your life. Then make a decision to create a new reality for yourself.

I'm not sure that we can ever really escape negativity. However, we do have the ability to not allow it to affect us and once we start nurturing this ability it becomes less and less a part of our life experience. We do this as you so rightly pointed out by cultivating all that is positive in our lives and being thankful for the many blessings that we all take for granted.

We can't change anyone else around us but we can change ourselves, and by doing so those we interact with change too and those who are no longer a vibrational match will fall away.

Although we may still run into negative or stressful situations, they will no longer have the same effect on us because we have raised our threshold and our vibration so things that once impacted us negatively no longer do so.

LeeAnn has given you some great suggestions and maybe check out the focus blocks or positive aspects processes.

http://www.inwardquest.com/questions/5901/manifesting-experiment-2-the-focus-blocks-method-manifest-what-you-want-by

http://www.inwardquest.com/search?q=positive+aspects

I love what LeeAnn suggested, and I will add mine: usually I don't engage in negative conversations, but when I was on a coaching course, we did exercises with coaching each other, and I found myself in a challenging situation: I couldn't just go away from a person I was coaching, when they were negative, I couldn't avoid them, and in that situation I couldn't even tell them to speak differently, and I had to listen. So at some point I got an enlightenment :) when they were saying something negative, I was perceiving it as their desire for a better life, from a neutral situation, and that felt way better. For example, if someone complained that her husband doesn't understand her, I imagined that what she was saying, "I want my husband to understand me." etc. This way I could actually feel empathy towards their desire, and feel them as constructive positive person, with whom it's a pleasure to cooperate.

Other time, in some other life situation, I once came to work and saw someone who did something good for me, and it immediately came to my mind, when I saw them. Then I noticed, how good it felt, and started going there among other people, remembering about everyone something good they once did, or were. It was so pleasant!!

The third way, I'd say, prepave it. When you don't pay attention to how it is now, but you're asking yourself inside, what it is that you want to feel, and how it would feel when it would be happening, what you would especially love in it, your vibrational atmosphere changes, and you start living a different experience, much more satisfying, especially because you also realize YOU did it. :)

About seeing someone as a victim, instead of a jerk: there can be stages involved. From one of my books, a situation as I described it to a friend:

And what you could do about that man at work, who doesn't want to let the sun flow to you?

You start with the feeling of helplessness, maybe even despair:

"He doesn't let the sun come to me, and I can't do anything about that."

Then you may go to some self-blame:

"Why do I not do anything to move to a different place or somehow else solve it?!"

Do you feel a little relief in it from just feeling helpless?

Then you may go to get angry with him:

"This ******* cares only for himself!! How dares he?!!"

Do you feel a little relief from blaming yourself? In blaming someone else there is some worthiness added, and so you may feel better.

Then you could find something defective in him, then feeling less anger:

"Well, poor *******, he can't make himself feel better in any other way."

Then you could find some use in it, finding peace with the situation:

"Wait a minute, but what if this situation is here to teach me to get truly independent? What if it's my life's way to push me into the direction, where I define what will be in my life? I do want to use it more. After all, let's face it, even though I'm really frustrated in this situation, but it's not something big like stopping my money flow or any other big loss. Maybe on this, let's face it, uncomfortable, but pretty minor situation, I could train myself into directing my vibration into better feeling places? Victor Frankel found good thoughts under much worse circumstances.. What if my life cares for me in this way? I want really to see into it more.."

Then next time you look there and instead of feeling helplessness and anger, you may start feeling curious: "What is life trying to teach me in this way? How can I live a fuller life out of what I'm learning here?"

And you feel "maybe it's not that closed. Maybe there is a chance that I will get my sun somehow."

Then you start remembering, or imagining, how it feels when the sun comes to your workplace. What you love in it the most. And you get immersed in it so much, that it stops bothering you that it still is not so in your physical life.

And then don't be surprised if you get moved to a different room. Or you start speaking with the ******* and he suddenly agrees to get 50-50 on the sun time, or you get switched in places, or he forgets at all that he didn't want to open the window (it happened so at my work :)).

But maybe the most important part of it is, that you show yourself that you can deal with the circumstances, and that you can direct your life into a better feeling place, even when it looks like nothing could really be done there.

Bashar says, "It's simple mechanics: positive meaning in, positive effect out." This way it looks pretty simple. :)

Happy engaging with the positive people that surround you! :)

I walk away and if I can not, I laugh inside.

I am slowly learning that changing your mind is the best way around it. Of course leaving it physically will help but other problems may arise.

This site a member linked may be suitable for your situation: http://www.abundance-and-happiness.com/consciousness.html

When you say "negativity" do you mean other people judging things/events they see around negatively, or, other people doing something you think is bad? This is a very important distinction and from your question it seems like you have the second meaning in mind. If something around seems bad to you, that's your own negativity and you fight it by understanding the causes, the deep reasons the things are the way they are. When you understand actual reason that person is a jerk you will see him as a victim not a jerk. Then you can start helping him. Makes sense?