How to deal with your emotions and stop passing them to others | Cassandra Worthy

We are emotional beings. Emotions don't turn off just because I've walked through the door of work or because I've turned my laptop on and I'm in a business setting. (gentle music) There's a phenomenon that I write about in my book called emotional contagion. We can literally catch the emotions of those around us. And I'm sure you probably have experienced something like this. You're connecting with a peer or a colleague who's feeling down, and before you know it, you start feeling that same emotion. And the same can happen for someone who's really upbeat, really positive; after you finish engaging with them, you just feel high, and maybe you can't explain it. We literally can catch the emotional energy of another.

I'm Cassandra Worthy. I'm a speaker and founder and CEO of Change Enthusiasm Global, and I'm the author of Change Enthusiasm: How to Harness the Power of Emotion for Leadership and Success. Emotion actually travels faster than rational thought. And so when you're experiencing a big change, like being given a new manager, or your business being acquired by another company, there's actually an emotional response that happens first. And the first things that we typically face are what I call the signal emotions of change, and those are fear, frustration, anger, anxiety, and grief.

I feel too often we are taught or we have learned to suppress those emotions, to ignore them, especially in the business world and the professional setting because the change has to happen. You've got to get through it. So let go of those emotions and just grit your teeth and bear it. And so it's so important that we are in tune to recognize those emotions because they're very powerful. When we're fueled purely by those signal emotions, we do and we say things that we often regret. And I know that either you yourself or you've experienced folks around you who have acted in anger, who have acted in rage, and that can take you into that mental downward spiral.

(Thunder) So as I think about the power of choice and I think about our emotional energy, the geek in me always comes out, and I think about the first law of thermodynamics. And it talks about energy, that it can neither be created nor destroyed. Rather, it can either be transferred, transformed, or conserved. So if you apply that to our emotional energy, with us being the closed system, we can conserve our energy, holding it in, suppressing it, and then it manifesting in all types of other physical ailments—like higher blood pressure, inability to sleep, like driving us to the bar and wanting to drink all night, all the things that stress can bring about.

(Thunder) We also have the choice of transferring that energy, which is like emoting, venting to another. And honestly, this is where most of us go at the very beginning of a change announcement because it's kind of our natural tendency. We want to vent; we want to talk about how terrible this is. Did you hear about this announcement? Can you believe this? And so it's moving that energy. But if you're only venting, if you're only transferring the emotional energy from one individual to another, it's like playing this game of hot potato, right? You're just moving that same energy all around. And it's not just one individual churning and moving into a downward spiral; it's the entire organization.

The other choice that we can make is to transform that energy. That's like transforming anxiety into anticipation. It's the same energy, but it carries a different signature. It becomes fuel. The more that we can be self-aware of these emotions, self-aware of the data, we can use it to inform us in a way that can be productive to help us evolve and to grow. And so as an individual, when you can become empowered to recognize those emotions, of course allowing them to exist, but then knowing that you are in the seat of choice, you have the power to transform it, you're literally rewiring the chemistry of your brain.

I think about our negative thoughts or the thoughts that inspire or nurture negative emotion as weeds that need to be plucked...