Success

Apparently, very few things in nature are as contagious as the COVID-19 virus. That’s why we take such drastic precautions, because no one wants to catch it.

But there is something else in nature that can be even more contagious than a virus. It’s your attitude, or more precisely, your emotional state.

This is not just a metaphor—emotional contagion is a well-researched and established phenomenon. As Daniel Goleman tells us in his book, Social Intelligence, “Every interaction has an emotional subtext. Along with whatever else we are doing, we can make each other feel a little better, or even a lot better, or a little worse—or a lot worse…”[1]

Emotional contagion is similar to an actual virus in that it works invisibly, often beneath our conscious awareness. Our amygdala are highly attuned to emotional signals, especially negative ones, and in fact they extract emotional meaning microseconds before our conscious minds are aware of what we’re looking at. That’s why we can come away from an encounter with a vague sense of either happiness or sadness, without being able to explain why.

Unlike a real virus, distance is no protection. You can infect someone half a world away, whether they’re simply reading your email, hearing your voice, or seeing you on a Zoom call.

So what does this mean to you? Depending on whether you have a good attitude or a bad one, you either want to prevent its spread or encourage it. If you go into a call with a customer with an attitude of discouragement or desperation, you will infect them with your attitude. If you go into a call with the confidence in your ability to help them, you will also infect them with your attitude. It’s especially important if you’re a leader; you’re a “superspreader” because everyone pays inordinate attention to everything you say and do.

But here’s where the coronavirus comparison hits a brick wall. Most importantly, emotional contagion is not potentially lethal. Second, it can be controlled or even used for good.

Take active control of your emotional state. Self-awareness is the closest thing to a vaccine against emotional contagion. Be mindful; look inside yourself and name the emotion you are feeling. It’s called labeling, and this simple act places your executive functions back in control. If the emotion you’re feeling is not the one you wish to portray during this next conversation or meeting, try to change it.

If that’s too difficult, at least try to pretend you’re feeling upbeat even if you’re not. Put on a smile even if you don’t feel like it. Lift your chin, put some enthusiasm in your voice, and take a sincere interest in the other person. In a phenomenon called embodied cognition, our minds often read signals from our bodies, so “fake it ‘til you make it” is actually sound advice.

Emotional contagion works both ways, so you also have to think about guarding against catching others’ negative attitudes. Again, it begins with self-awareness. If you have a good handle on your own internal feelings, you can counteract the “vibes” you’re getting from the other person. If you think the other person will listen, you can label the emotion you’re sensing and ask them about it.

In the end, it all boils down to personal responsibility. There is enough negativity spreading around, and we can’t control all of it. But we can each determine to avoid being part of the problem and perhaps make a small contribution toward a solution. If you can’t avoid being contagious, at least be contagious in a way that helps you and others!

[1] Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, p. 14.

This may be the most important post you read during this crisis. Not because I’m so smart, but because the idea is so simple, so timely, and so powerful. The idea is this: stress can hurt you or help you, and you can decide which it is.

Most people think that stress is bad for you, and they’re right. But some people think stress is good for you—and they’re also right! Your mindset about stress makes all the difference.

It sounds like pop psychobabble, but it’s supported by plenty of recent research, as reported in an article entitled, Stress Can Be Your Friend, by Kari Leibowitz and Alia Crum, two Stanford researchers who explain the idea and provide three simple steps to make stress work for you rather than against you in today’s New York Times.

The key is to acknowledge, own and use your stress in three steps:

1. Acknowledge your stress—don’t try to ignore it, because that just makes it more likely that you’re going to think about it and of course stress out even more.
2. Own your stress—the positive thing about stress is that we feel it because we feel a threat to something that is important to us. Owning your stress reminds you and connects you to what you value.
3. Use your stress—stress can provide energy and focus your mind, both of which you should channel in a productive direction to achieve your goals and realize your values.

How can you start applying this idea right now?

1. Reading the original article online because they explain it better and more credibly than I do.
2. The article has a link to a free video course which further explains the science behind it and provides practical ways to turn the three steps into a habit. (I’ve included the link here in case you can’t access the article).
3. If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend an excellent book, The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It, by Kelly McGonigal (Or read my own Cliff’s Notes version)

Simple, powerful, and oh, so timely. It may not seem like it right now, but we will get through this crisis eventually. The questions is: will we emerge weaker or stronger? It’s our choice.

In my last post, I wrote how good habits are so much more reliable over the long term than motivation, discipline and willpower in getting done more of what we should and less of what we shouldn’t. But there’s a bit of a Catch-22 in that approach: you need motivation, discipline and willpower to get through the initial difficult process of establishing a beneficial habit or breaking a bad one.

You can’t totally avoid the need for willpower, but fortunately you can make the path a little easier for yourself by paying attention to the context in which you perform the behavior.

Although it’s comforting to assume that we’re in control of our own actions and behaviors, our environment has far greater influence on our behavior than we think. In one study, researchers were able to get diners in a hospital cafeteria to drink 11% less soda and 25% more bottled water by simply changing where bottled water was placed.[1] I would bet that if you had asked someone why they bought a bottled water instead of their usual soda, they would give you a solid reason for it—and they would believe it, too.

A much more powerful demonstration of how the environment influences habits is described in Atomic Habits. During the Vietnam war, as many as 20% of American servicemen became addicted to heroin while there. Heroin is an immensely difficult drug habit to break, yet upon returning to the States, fully 99% of those addicts were able to break the habit! The difference was their environment had changed.[2]

Our environment affects our behavior in two ways. First, it can make it easier or harder to perform a specific behavior. If you have to walk somewhere to get that can of soda, you’re less likely to choose it than the water that is right in reach.

Second, our environment is full of cues that our minds may notice outside our conscious thought that trigger our behaviors. All habits are triggered by cues, so if we can remove or add cues we can weaken or fortify our habits.

You can fight against the influence that our environment has on your behavior by conscious effort, but that defeats the purpose, because it taxes your willpower and discipline. It’s better to make the upfront effort to redesign your environment so that it works for you and not against you.

First, make it easier to perform the behavior you want to turn into a habit, or harder for those habits you want to break. Arrange your materials and your workspace ahead of time so that you can get right to work. Lean thinkers call it 5S, and it’s a great practice to adopt in your personal work as well. In my own case, I want to write for a full hour every morning, and I’ve found it helpful to have my desk clean and my notes arranged in advance the evening before. (In fact, an end-of-day routine is what I call an enabling habit—one that’s relatively easy to establish and makes it easier to perform the more difficult habit.)

Turn off distractions such as incoming email notifications; put your phone somewhere that you won’t be tempted to check it every few minutes; put tempting foods out of sight—the small easy fixes you can make are all around you if you just take the time to look for them.

Also, think about your social environment. The old saying that “You become like the five people you spend most time with”, definitely applies to habits. For example, one study showed that participants who had a friend become obese were 57% more likely to become obese themselves! Your peer group is immensely important.

Second, take inventory of the cues that trigger unwanted behaviors and minimize or eliminate them If that’s not possible, try habit substitution. Use the cue that you can’t avoid to trigger a different, positive habit. That worked for me last year: I used to follow up may daily workout with my “recovery drink” (which comes in a little green bottle from Holland). Now, I meditate for a few minutes instead, and it has become a regular part of my day. That was a double win for me, and easily done.

Sometimes the hardest thing about starting a habit is remembering to do it. Your best antidote to forgetfulness is consistency, which is easy to achieve if you stick as closely as possible to a particular spot and a time for the activity. You might find it helpful at first to schedule “appointments” for yourself for the activity, but it will become automatic in a surprisingly short time if you stick with it.

Change your context first. Our environment shapes so much of what we do, but there’s no reason that we can’t in turn shape our own environment. We’re constantly told by the success gurus that we need to change ourselves if we want to change our lives. That may be true in the long run, but that’s a huge task. By changing the things around you, you make it easier to change the things inside you.

[1] James Clear, Atomic Habits, p. 108.

[2] Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch, p. 206.