How does your mood affect those around you?

I am very aware that my mood affects the mood of my children.  When I am stressed with work or personal worries, without even saying anything to my children, they pick up my sour mood and start misbehaving.  So I am really aware that it is important for me to be calm and relaxed, and for our home and environment to reflect this (sometimes this is easier said than done).

When a person influences the emotions and affective behavior of another person through the conscious or unconscious induction of emotions – it is referred to as emotional contagion (EC) and women are more susceptible to this than men.

An article in Psychology Today says ‘For centuries, researchers have studied the tendency for people to unconsciously and automatically mimic the emotional expressions of others, and in many cases actually feel the same feelings simply by exposure to emotions in social interactions. Studies have found that the mimicry of a frown or a smile or other kinds of emotional expression trigger reactions in our brains that cause us to interpret those expressions as our own feelings. Simply put, as a species, we are innately vulnerable to “catching” other people’s emotions.”

But I do not think that you need to see another persons face to pick up negative emotions.  Last year I was driving my car at night and started talking to my passenger about a very stressful situation I had been in at work and my children immediately picked up on my bad mood and kicked off.  They could not see my face.

So the projection of our moods will seriously affect our family, social and work life.

For our children, this is especially important as it will affect their emotions as they develop.  So we must try not to transmit negative emotions to them.

And in our work environment – if we have even one person in a company who has a negative mood, they can be toxic to the whole company and this is incredibly important if it comes from the leader.  Tony Schwartz, author, CEO of The Energy Project, and Harvard Business Review blogger said “Leaders, by virtue of their authority, exert a disproportionate impact on the mood of those they supervise. In this case, I was influenced simply by the strength of this executive’s negative feelings. Others in the office were more influenced by me, because I’m their boss. Emotional contagion took hold. As the negativity spread, it drained the energy of our team and the company as a whole.”

But what about projecting happy emotions?   We all know how contagious it is when someone starts to laugh. We are probably going to be happier when we are surrounded by people who are happy.

So my advice would be to try not to project your negative moods on others so you can keep your home, work and social life in a happy state and also try not to let others negative moods bring you down.  I know this is easier said than done but if you are feeling stressed or upset, try to turn it around and keep calm and if you have friends or colleagues that bring you down, try to avoid them.  Try to keep thinking positively.

Read More:

Global women – it’s good to laugh

Global women – positive thinking

Global women – how stress affects our health and wellbeing

Image credit and read more – www.psychologytoday.com