Master Your Energy, Master Your Life

Staying present always begins with being where you are. Having your feet on the ground, taking a few deep breaths, connecting with your own body. And next up, intention. What's your intention for this situation? Today's topic is emotional contagion. We've all been in those situations where we let other people's emotions and energy throw us off track. Or we've been in those situations where other people's emotional energy got us all caught up and made us feel better. The truth is, the world and the people around you, they have a particular type of energy, and it can shape your own emotions. When you're around sad people, they can make you feel sad. When you're around hyped up people at a basketball game, you can feel hyped up. When you're in an audience with a motivational speaker, you can feel more motivated. When you're with a friend who's having just a bad day, suddenly, you can feel your own energy lower, even though the bad day they're describing is nothing like yours. And when we become aware of this, hopefully in middle school, we decide whether or not we want that process to happen in such a way that we don't have any input. The sad truth is, you and I both know a lot of adults who still fall prey to emotional contagion all the time. Of course, most of us do once in a while. But some people have really lost control of their own emotional reality. You know, all the negative vitriol and hatred out in the world keeps sucking them right back in. And they always feel angry, reactive, impatient, upset, frustrated, because others around them have that same feeling, and they just get caught right up. I remember in college, I started volunteering at a mediation center, and I was getting trained on how to do peer mediation, which was basically helping two different people resolve conflicts. They maybe would have a relationship problem, a marriage problem, a business problem. It could be a teacher and a student. It could be an administrator and a student. It could be a, you know, anybody from the local community who were in conflict and they'd come to this mediation center. And I remember how hard that training was because there I was sitting between two people arguing. And it's my job to help them work through that problem. It's not my job to solve it. It's just my job to set up a process and an environment in which that could happen. And it was hard for me. I grew up in a place where emotional contagion tended to lean towards, let's say, the negative and dangerous area. I grew up where there was a lot of physical violence. I grew up in a town where there's a lot of physical violence. And it was just easy to get caught up into that and distrusting people, not liking people, being angry at people, because the small town I grew up had a lot of alcoholism, had a lot of economic disparity and challenges, and the energy was palpable. I remember going back to that small town years and years later and recognizing that feeling and that sensation in certain cafes I visited, in restaurants, walking around town, and how that energy was so different than other places I'd visit around the world. And I just remember thinking, wow, where you grew up can really shape your energy if you're not careful. And see, we must be careful because we're actually hardwired to pick up on the energy of other people. In fact, we don't just pick up on the energy or emotions of other people. We feel too compulsive sensations one activated what neuroscientists call your mirror neurons. It's this feeling that we should mirror or mimic the actions, facial expressions or emotions of other people. It's that thing that causes you to yawn when other people yawn, or a baby to smile when it's looking at its smiling parent. It's that mimicry that we are all hard coded to do without conscious practice or intervention. So the first thing is we want to mimic or mirror it. The second thing we tend to want to do is interact with it. Sometimes that means go along with it, sometimes it means amplify it, sometimes it means solve it. And sometimes those choices aren't so good. And so what can we do? First and foremost, be deeply aware when it's happening, when there are heightened emotions around you to really gauge whether or not that is impacting you and whether or not that serves you. So here's four ideas for today. Number one, when you're around highly emotional situations or people, your first job is already hopefully done. And that is you've determined the type of identity that you're going to have in the world. I'll give you an example. Because I saw so many people fighting and arguing and upset all the time. I said, you know what? When I grow up, I'm not going to be a person who's frazzled, angry, frustrated or impatient. I'm just not going to be that type of person. Now, don't worry. It doesn't mean I don't have those days. It doesn't mean I don't overreact. But I decided very early on that's not for me. I Don't want to be like that. And I adopted what I call the role model mindset. In almost every situation of my life, I ask what would a role model do here? Someone I look up to, a great historical figure and a leader I admire, a mentor I learned from. What would they do in this situation? How would they conduct themselves? Because they're aware that other people are watching and other people can be impacted by them. A role model is responsible for the energy they are projecting into this world because they know that energy has impact. And so just knowing that going into any situation I know in my mind I'm going to attempt to be a role model. It's just who I am I've ingrained in my head doesn't mean I always achieve it again. But my overall identity is I don't get frazzled. I don't stress out, I don't get angry, I don't get violent. I don't get overwhelmed with other people's emotion because I recognize it's their own. Which leads me to the second point. Presence. When other people around you are in different emotional energetic states and you don't think it will serve you, your job is to stay present in your body, in your breath, in your mind. To recognize you are not them and they are not you. That you get to be with yourself in your mind and your body and your breath there. You get to feel your feet on the ground, your belly extending and pulling in as you draw and release breath. You get to stay physically present in your own world. I know all the reasons and all the objections and all the excuses we can say to something like that. Well, Brennan, they made me do this. They made me angry, they made me upset. You don't understand my husband. Trust me, after 15 years of working every sing single day with other people, I get it, I've heard it. But the answer is still the same. We have to realize that yes, we have a social connection with people, but we also have a strong mind body connection in which we have a tremendous amount of conscientious control. And so it's not to say that you're not going to feel or sense the emotions of other people. In fact, most emotions, if you've studied our work before, most emotions are impulsive, automatic. They are rooted in the body as an immediate reaction and they're easily triggered. Whereas feelings, which are longer lasting senses of emotion that happen to have meaning to them and linger and have much more capability of controlling, well, they're two different things, emotions and feelings. But because we're Talking about emotional contagion, that first part I reference because we would like to think, well, sure, to have presence. I just won't feel it. No, you probably will. You probably will. You probably sense the emotion right away. Like if someone gets hyper, you know, freaked out around me, I can immediately feel that. But I need to stay present and say, what am I feeling? What am I feeling? What do I want to feel? What is in my body and mind and spirit, not just reacting or mimicking theirs. Staying present always begins with being where you are, Having your feet on the ground, taking a few deep breaths, connecting with your own body. And next up, intention. What's your intention for this situation? All heck can be breaking loose around me. But as someone who aspires to be a servant leader, I say I'm going to serve this situation, not be drawn into it. What would be the highest, best use of my time, energy, or effort in this situation or in reacting to these other people who have emotional contagion? That decision, that second to ask, what do I want here? How can I be of service here? Can change your life. I remember being in college and I was out one late night with a bunch of friends, and something had happened on some corner, and four or five people started running over there. And I could sense there was like, is it going to turn into like a street brawl? And my first impulse was to go to protect friends to see if I could help. And then I thought, you know what? There's a lot of people over there. I don't know that I'm going to serve jumping into this melee. And I just stood, I watched what was happening. I could see that it was just devolving into a worse and worse situation. And I probably just held a beat for like, I don't know, 15, 30 seconds. And then I started walking over there. And what I had noticed was the group was already starting to kind of like fade and run away. And what had happened is a bunch of people threw a bunch of fists and got a bunch of fights. And all of a sudden everyone disappeared. Nothing was achieved or accomplished. No one was, you know, any safer or any more hurt. It was just nonsensical thing. And my intention was, I don't, I don't think I can add anything to that going on over there. And that might sound kind of silly, but that second of taking a pause and asking, what's the point of me being involved here? Can change your life. I help a lot of couples through conflicts, a lot of business founders, co founders through conflicts, and I've done it at the billion, literally billion dollar company level, all the way down to, you know, two people who are just starting their first family. And when I've worked through those situations, it's always been a powerful insight. What does it serve you? Or serve the situation by getting involved? And what is your intention? Just asking that question can keep you out of a lot of trouble, but it also can make you a great servant leader. I can see people having, you know, issues and say, you know what? I think I can serve here. I think I can add value. Let me step in and ask a few questions. Let me make it my intention here to be of service if I can. Let me step in. And that simple question, step in or not, has saved lives. That simple intention to speak up, oh, really not worth it. It's like, gosh, if you just. If people could just take a beat and set an intention versus being reactive all the time. We had a very different social media world, wouldn't we? Same thing in real life. Last idea, if you get pulled in, if you get sucked into other people's emotions, last idea is to give yourself some reset time. You know, if I get caught into someone else's anger, I can go, okay, I got pulled in here. Let me go reset, and I'll just go to another room or I'll go out to the car or I'll go for a walk or I'll do a meditation. But allowing yourself to take a break from other people's emotions is a very high conscious action. To recognize when other people's emotions are hurting you or they're poisonous or they're hurtful in some way that is, you know, making you feel more negative, more down, more depressed, more upset to have the wherewithal to say, you know what, I need a beat. I want to have this conversation, or I'd like to deal with this, but I need a few moments to reset and to step away from.