Your success in living out your best self is dramatically increased when you build a team for your intentional change. Our social networks hugely influence our ability to reach our goals. But how can you do that simply and effectively?
Why your social network is influencing your ability to be your best self
For many years now researchers have been telling us that our social networks affect our emotions. It’s a concept called emotional contagion, and basically means that our network of relationships has the ability to affect our emotional affect? Have you ever found yourself feeling really negative after you had a “downer” conversation with a friend or a family member? That’s emotional contagion. It means our brains wired to tune in and reflect back the verbal and nonverbal cues we are receiving from another person. When you seek to create intentional change in your life, an important discovery in experimenting with new behaviors is finding the resources of a supportive team.
Can emotional contagion influence your ability to realize your goals?
The dreaming and articulating of a positive vision is what makes change both meaningful and sustained. I’ve written before about intentional change theory. You might change for awhile with negative emotion, such as when your boss tells you to be more efficient or your spouse asks you to stop leaving dishes everywhere. But negative emotion doesn’t lead to the same kind of results that positive emotion does. You’re more likely to succeed when you tell yourself that you’d be more productive at work and feel better about your contribution if you managed your distractions well. Or maybe you want to create a sense of order and peace in your home by picking up after yourself.
So if you want to change something intentionally, and to do it in a way that is sustainable, you’ll need to build a positive and supporting network around you.
What can you do today to increase the positive emotional support of your social network toward your vision and goals?
Right now I’ve been thinking a lot about how to help people find the kind of support they need in their friends and family network. I’ve also been thinking about personality and communication styles. Here are some of my top recommendations:
- Share with your key relationships about your dreams and goals: It’s a great idea to share your dreams with those who are supportive. A recent study found it also matters who you share with, and doing so with a mentor or someone we perceive as having “higher status” can help even more.
- Pick networks of people who support the vision of who you want to be. There’s a reason why people find support in physical and online communities of like-mindedness. Our current relationship network might not support our dreams very well (eg. giving up drinking or trying to eat more healthy). In that case we may need to build a different network of relationships to support that vision. The more we find a network of relationship that affirms the change we seek, the greater our chance for success.
- Tell them specifically how to best communicate with you: If you’re wondering what your communication style is, you might look up this post on communication and enneagram styles. You don’t even need to know enneagram to read the list and see which preferences best fit you. Tell your people what you need!
- Remind them that positive emotions are the key to sustaining efforts to your goals: Positive vision is important to the change you seek. Since those emotions are contagious, you’ll want to be forthright and tell your supportive friends that you hope to be more positively focused.
Does that mean we shouldn’t share negative emotions?
It seems so simple, but just sharing with our community our need for positive reinforcement of our vision can really help us be on the path to our best self. Does all of this mean that sharing negative emotions are bad? I don’t think so. Part of being human is empathizing with each other and sharing in difficulties. But we know that resilience and bouncing back are so dependent on the kind of mindset we cultivate. These communication strategies with our network of relationships can push the needle in the right direction. They ensure we find our path to that vision of who we hope to be.
Question: Who do you need to share your vision with this week and how can you enlist their help in living it out?
Leave a comment or drop me an email and let me know whether you found this post helpful. Stay focused and positively moving forward on the path this week.
All the best,
Jeff