“Energy is contagious. Either you Affect people or you Infect people.” – T. Harv Eker
Last week, I had the opportunity to facilitate a pretty cool activity to 180+ individuals from around the Country. Everybody was paired into groups of 2. Person #1 was instructed to go emotionless on their face while person #2 was instructed to smile warmly, deeply and sincerely into person #1’s eyes for 7 seconds. ~95% of the initially emotionless faces could not keep a straight face for the full 7 seconds and ended up bursting with laughter!
After I finished teaching, I was scheduled to fly from Chicago back home to Orange County. When I got to the airport, I found out the flight was delayed 30 minutes. No big deal. Then, that delay shot up to an hour. Then 2 hours. When we finally all got boarded, seated and ready to take off, we were told the plane was too large to land onto the runway in Orange County and were subsequently directed to de-board the plane and get on a new one. When it was all said and done, we ended up being delayed for a total of 4 hours.
During these 4 hours, the atmosphere around us was intense! People were pissed! Folks were yelling at the flight attendants, the assistants, and the pilot even though it was none of these people’s faults! As I put in my headphones, took a few deep breaths and observed, I noticed something highly interesting! As one person started to complain or get anxious, the person right next to him/her did the exact same thing! Within a few short minutes of observation, the circumference of the complaining circle got larger and larger until I was literally surrounded by countless infuriated individuals!
Interestingly enough, the science behind the reactions to the aforementioned class activity and the delayed flight are IDENTICAL! Not only do smiles, positivity (and yawns) spread, it turns out negativity, stress, uncertainty and anxiety also spread! We can pick these emotions up like second hand smoke! In the same way that you don’t even need to be the one smoking to experience the negative health effects, the same thing is true with how other people process your world! Energy is contagious!
I tell this story to let you know that you have the power (for good or for worse) to change the energy of an ENTIRE room! This gives YOU incredible amounts of power and illustrates the impact you can have on your environment and the environment of others! We are taught that you can’t change other people, that happiness is an individual choice, BUT we are influencing people ALL of the time, and if we are not conscious about it, then they are influencing us! Now that you are aware of this, you can buffer your brain to be conscious of events like these in the future! What’s more, the positive behavioral change that YOU make can wirelessly ripple out and tip other people’s brains towards the belief that our behavior matters (and is contagious!) And if we can find some way to create a positive effect upon other people, we can ripple out not only what our brains are doing, but can get other people (our friends, our families, our communities) to do that as well!
So… how can you leverage your energy to positively affect the people you interact with today?
Enjoy every moment of today!
With Gratitude,
Rob
