Our neighborhood is a dog paradise. Plenty of 4-legged friends running around ready to play in open green spaces along with a lot of sidewalks to explore. Our friends said it best – we know the names of the dogs more often than the names of the owners.
While having a lot of dogs in the neighborhood is a blast, it’s inevitable that once one dog starts barking the entire choir joins in. It becomes a barking party that soon makes its way down the street. One dog will join in after another and the love of hearing themselves bark becomes contagious. Each dog mimicking each other’s bark of protection and making sure we all know who runs the neighborhood.
While barking is obviously not something contagious in the context we’d talk about colds or flus, it is interesting how the tone and demeanor set by one can heavily impact a broader group. While we may become annoyed by this mimicking barking behavior, what’s ironic is we are susceptible to this contagious behavior as well. Maybe not so much the barking part, but at least the mimicking behaviors we sometimes find ourselves not even realizing we’re doing. The term to become familiar with is emotional contagion.
Emotional contagion reflects when other people’s behaviors and emotions influence our own. Often, it’s unknown we’re letting others’ emotions have an impact on our own but soon we find ourselves almost mimicking their emotional state. It’s like we’re trying to match their body language or tone.
In certain circumstances this emotional contagion can be empowering and make experiences better. I’ve attended events centered around lifting one another up where optimism and positivity are powerfully contagious. I’ve had moments of celebration with family and friends that created a high emotional state by everyone feeding off one another’s sentiment. I’ve been in meetings where one person’s openness and vulnerability helped others create progressive dialogue.
On the flip side, negative emotions carry the contagious gene as well. When we’re having a conversation with someone that always believes the sky is falling, it’s hard not to fall into the trap of mimicking their gloom. There are times when the person or group you’re talking with is doing everything they can to extract all the negativity from a situation, and the pessimistic outlook can become contagious. We like to believe we can withstand this negativity with our shield of optimism, but the emotional contagion concept showcases it’s hard to not subconsciously let this negativity impact us.
With the concept of emotional contagion, one of the main questions to consider is how to let in more of the positive emotions while filtering out these negative emotions? We can’t completely avoid negativity, and we can’t control each situation we face. Knowing we’ll continuously face negativity, let’s explore how we can both prepare and handle the impact the emotional contagion concept can have.
Who we surround ourselves with
Our journey is ours alone and we shouldn’t expect others to fully understand our path. What we should be aware of is those that help propel us forward regardless of where we’re at on our path – the Accelerators. We need to build our awareness to see who’s looking to uplift us and share with us emotions that are helping us explore what we’re capable of becoming. Know the who that’s going to keep challenging you to strive for something better and surround yourself more often with these people.
Set boundaries
One of the best words of wisdom I’ve heard lately is if you don’t own your schedule then someone else will. The same goes for who we choose to interact with. If we don’t set boundaries someone else will. We interact with such a variety of people so of course we’re going to run into personalities that clash with ours. Identify who you want to invest more time building a relationship with and mirror the time you spend connecting with others with your priorities. Set guardrails for when you’re going to interact with someone that feels like a wave of negativity to then allocate more of your time to the Accelerators around you.
Provide feedback
Many of us think we’re strong in the self-awareness category but studies will show we overrate our self-awareness skillset. One of the best gifts we can give to others is honest feedback on how they can grow and improve. Keep in mind not everyone is ready for this feedback. For those wanting to improve, it’s critical they understand the impact of their negative emotions. Feedback loops are important to helping others build better self-awareness and understand how contagious their negativity could be. It’s typically a tough conversation but can be extremely valuable when we help others become aware of what their negative mindset is doing.
Take time for reflection
Just as feedback is important to provide others with perspective on negativity, taking time to pause and reflect is critical for our own understanding of where our negativity may be impacting ourselves and those around us. I’ve had plenty of times where I’ve felt off, just had an argument with someone, or went through a rough day at work and looked back disappointed in myself on how I let my inner negativity outward to others. We’ll continue to be imperfect but taking time to reflect on how our negativity impacts others can help us understand how to mitigate this in the future.
Address how you’re impacting others
Reflection opens the door into seeing where our negativity may become contagious. It’s unrealistic to think we’ll never be negative but when these moments arise, how can we mitigate the impact? Taking time to yourself, finding a way to calm down through music or other methods, taking a few deep breaths all can be tools to help mitigate the time negativity has a hold on us. Test out what approaches make sense for you and how your body and mind need to work through negativity.
Take your step: there are 2 parts to this step. 1st identifying who around you put out contagious negative vibes along with the Accelerators who often bring the positive contagious energy. Find ways to surround yourself more with the Accelerators and less with the negative vibes. 2nd assess how you may be impacting a negative environment. Are there ways you tend to make your negative vibes contagious? If so, test out ways in the moments of negativity to mitigate the impact.