How Can Mindfulness Protect Me From Others’ Negativity?

Hi I am Samantha Amit and Welcome to Ask Your Coach newsletter with stories about how high achieving, busy managers who get overwhelmed and frustrated, are able to change this to being strategic, focused, intentional and calm. ? Gain insights into managing yourself, your teams and the business in today's evolving complex work environment.

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I am stressed, and I need to manage it.

Yes, I did say that. I am stressed.

But the stress is not all my own. I’m surrounded by people experiencing fear, anxiety, grief, loss, pain, and sadness. This negative energy rubs off on us, and on me.? Science calls this emotional contagion.

Understanding Emotional Contagion

Like a virus is contagious, so are negative emotions. When you are next to someone who is angry, that energy can affect you.

Richard Boyatzis a professor of Organizational Behavior, explains how contagious emotions are.

“Emotions are contagious, both positive and negative emotions. The contagion spreads at fast speeds, often in milliseconds, and is predominantly below conscious awareness. If you are not emotionally intelligent and mindful, you do not understand how your emotions are infecting others, nor can you consciously change your impact on others to be more effective” (Boyatzis & McKee, 2007).

The Impact Of Emotional Contagion On Leaders

Emotional contagion can drain your energy, making it difficult to move forward, even if your outlook is positive.

I coach leaders in 35 different countries, and I see global patterns of anxiety, fear, and fatigue. I hear stories of busyness and feeling overwhelmed—these emotions increase as the world becomes more chaotic.

Each of my clients has different reasons. For some, it’s personal; for others, it’s related to their professional life or their environment.

A Real-Life Story: Sandra’s Energy Drain

Sandra works for one of the top financial companies in the world and supervises 450 employees. The company is restructuring, leading to many management changes, and Sandra doesn’t know what her role will be. While confident she will not be let go, she’s keenly aware of the tension and stress around her.

We’ve had five coaching sessions. She updated me at the start of the sixth coaching session: “I am becoming more conscious of where I am spending my time and energy.”

Sandra has been working on her energy levels through mindfulness inquiry, a unique MindfulACT method I use in my coaching sessions.? MindfulACT is a model and the ACT is an acronym that stands for achieve, connect and thrive.???

Mindfulness inquiry with the ACT model involves focusing on the present moment, exploring one's thoughts and feelings, and making conscious choices about the future. Through mindfulness inquiry, we tap into our higher wisdom and create new neural pathways.

Practicing Mindfulness Inquiry

We start by focusing on Sandra’s body and breath and opening up the space so that she can tap into her higher consciousness. In this mindfulness inquiry, Sandra envisions her near future and chooses what’s important to her. I challenge her to be proactive about what she wants in her work and life.

As Sandra envisions thousands of new scenarios, she creates new neural pathways in the brain. Science shows us that visualization techniques, where one mentally rehearses a future event or outcome, are highly beneficial. Our brain doesn’t differentiate between imagination and reality, so by visualizing positive outcomes, we can start to step into our future thereby visualizing and rehearsing how we want things to be.. We end the exercise by practicing gratitude for the wisdom we have received.

The Surprising Outcome

Sandra was surprised by something missing in her vision. Every day, two senior managers would vent their fears and anxiety about their future to her, and a third manager in a different time zone would contact her, too. Surprisingly, these three managers were outside her vision.

Sandra realized that while it was endearing for these managers to trust her, it wasn’t the best use of her time. It was an energy drain.??

Strategies To Prevent Energy Drain

We all have conversations that drain our energy.

It’s not necessarily the people or the relationships themselves, but often a lack of boundaries to preserve our energy. By monitoring ourselves, being conscious of our thoughts and feelings, and paying attention to what is happening around us, we can identify emotions that might be “rubbing off on us.”

In the story above Sandra began to create boundaries around those three managers that she understood were not serving her and her organization.? They were increasing her own anxiety.? She therefore chose to reduce contact time with them and not fuel their conversations together.? She managed to prevent evergy drain and freed up energy for her to use towards a more proactive approach to projects and people where she wanted to give her focus and attention.?

This recuperative approach restores or renews our energy and prevents energy drain.

I want to share with you an exercise I have been using for years, especially with my high-achieving (mostly overachieving :-) ) and very busy clients.? It is a Mindful Pause. Some only pause for a minute.? What is radically important is to turn your attention inwards as our attention is so often turned outside and the intention behind the practice. Join me with one of my most favorite exercises the 3-minute mindful pause to bring energy balance into your life every day, no matter where you are.

?I am very curious to hear about your experience.? AND this can be anything from, this is really stupid to, what a waste of my time, to wow this is relaxing, or this feels strange.? No matter what you experience the actual gem is in being curious around your inner landscape, and this exercise will help you to notice what that is like.??

So kudos to you when you try this and please share with me in the comments.

Wishing you a fantastic day whatever that means for you,?

Sam

Samantha works with high achieving business owners and managers to be more present, strategic, confident and calm.