No okra, thank you

I was reading Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's book, My Stroke of Insight, and received a stroke of insight myself.  In it, she was describing how sometimes people will try to give her their bad moods, negative attitudes, and so on, and she just looked at it as if they were all sitting around a dining table, and that person passed her a serving plate of something she didn't like or want.  All she had to do is say, "No, thank you" and pass it back.  Since I'm not a huge fan of okra, I think of that negative person in the checkout line as handing out plates of okra, and I can just say, "No thank you.  I don't need to take this in."  For us empaths, I think that's a great way to handle it.  No judgment, no huge walls of resistance, just a polite "No, thank you."  Brilliant!