February 25, 2008Comments are closed.attitude
It’s a fact. Angry and negative people are bad for your brain.
For my birthday my partner bought me a brilliant DVD documentary on how the human brain works. One of the best bits was on visualisation and how it can help athletes learn new skills; watching someone else do what they want to learn or imagining doing the new skill actually activates their brain (and shows up on brain scans) just as if they were doing the new movement themselves.
But this brain effect goes deeper than thinking about perfecting your golf swing; you are observing and learning behaviours all the time. In effect you become who you associate with.
What you observe you can expect to act out. Picking up other people’s mannerisms, accents and attitudes is human nature, so hang out with happy, upbeat people and you’ll feel like all is great with the world. Hang out with neurotic or negative people and, you’ve guessed it, expect to start displaying negative behaviour and a bad attitude.
Negative people love to voice their negativity and unfortunately a career in rescue puts you in contact with a disproportionate number of people who are a drain on your mental health – often both external to your organisation and within the organisation itself. Whether jaded, powerless, resentful or gossipy, if you’re being constantly exposed to these negative attitudes, you run a high risk of being sucked in.
Over the long term your brain can make structural and chemical changes, putting you at risk of depression, stress or burnout. At the very least having people around you that are depressed is going to inhibit your performance and cause problems with your motivation and job satisfaction.
So how do we avoid picking up negative emotional ‘infections’?
1) Don’t let people whinge at you
While it may seem that the only way to get information is to get involved in gossip, whine fests will bring you down. It’s really not worth it – just walk away.
2) Shake it off
Realise that if you take your work home with you, then you won’t be able to recharge your emotional batteries. Spend at least some time each day doing something you really enjoy that’s completely unrelated to rescue. Meditation, music or exercise are all great for rejuvenating your mind.
3) Surround yourself with upbeat people
While you can never avoid completely, having negative people in your life, counteract them by spending time with people who make you feel good. In short: be around what you want to become.
4) Invite positive people into your workplace
Whether it be the new people you hire, motivational speakers from your community or just having social events for staff, build a workplace where a good attitude is encouraged and promoted.
By being aware that attitude is like a disease that spreads from person to person, we can take steps to protect ourselves and build an environment where negative emotional infections aren’t able to develop and that positive ones promoted and allowed to flourish.
