How to manage contagious emotions

- You know those days when you arrive at work in a great mood, and the colleague right next to you is in a bad mood? Before you know it, you're in a bad mood, too. Isn't that annoying? The reason their mood gets to you is that moods are contagious, and there's a biological basis for this, too. Let's discuss why emotions are contagious biologically and also what you can do when someone else's mood interferes with yours. If I were feeling happy, the happiness circuits would be activated in my brain, right, and if I walked past an angry colleague, their anger circuits would be activated in their brain. So far so good? Great, but the story doesn't stop here. When we're around others, we don't just have our own emotions in our brains. We carry their emotions, too, quite literally. That's because our brains have chains of nerve cells called mirror neurons, and these neurons are wired to reflect the emotions of others. Some people pick up others' emotions more easily because they have greater baseline empathy. The more empathy you have, the more you'll be able to reflect the other person's emotion. Negative emotions like fear and anger are more contagious than positive ones. You might wonder why it's easier to spread negative feelings like fear than positive feelings like excitement. Researchers believe that this happens for an evolutionary reason. Our brains are wired to protect us above all else, so they'll process emotions like fear and anger first. When you want to empathize with what someone else is feeling, like if they're sad because they've lost a loved one, mirror neurons are very helpful, but when you don't want to feel what they're feeling, you have to make certain adjustments, throw a towel over the mirror, so to speak. I call these countermirroring techniques. Knowing how to navigate this can be very helpful at work. There are three things you can do to prevent someone else's negative mood spoiling your own. First, to create a dominant emotion like happiness, look at something that makes you feel very happy before walking over to a person in a foul mood, perhaps a video of a girl and baby or your favorite sports team winning. Then walk over to your coworker directly after that, making sure to keep your mind on the happy baby or winning team. You could also go into their office and positively comment on something like great report last week. You might be tempted to say and I can't deal with you, but you won't because your attention will be fixed on the positive. Another technique is simply looking away at something in your coworker's office that's positive, like a nice picture, and just keep talking about the issue at hand. When you remember these very simple tips, they will protect you from the disruptive, contagious emotions of others at work.