How your mood affects others

Have you noticed that when you’re having a bad day, everyone seems to be out to get you and irritate you?

According to John Bates from “The Art of People” by Dave Kerpen, we all have mirror neurons that mirror the emotions of the person speaking to us.

Someone’s bad mood can rub off on you.

A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another animal.

We are social
Thus the neuron “mirrors” the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting.

If you’re a public speaker and you take the stage in a bad mood, your audience will likely sense it and become a “bad” audience, Dave Kerpen advises.

Point to note when going for your next interview. If you’re nervous and tense, the interviewer can sense and become a bad interviewer.

However, if you happen to chance an interviewer who’s not in the best of mood, my suggestion is to resist the temptation to mirror his/her mood.

Instead, rise above the situation and hopefully your positiveness will be mirrored by the other person’s mirror neuron.

Photo: Taken by me at the 2017 Edible Gardens Festival, Hort Park, Singapore.

Life is a shipwreck but don’t forget to sing in the lifeboats. – Voltaire