About once a year someone in my family of five comes down with a cold and inevitably the entire family gets it, leading to a week of coughing, sniffles and less than optimal sleep and performance. It’s a fact of life, something we all families go through.

There’s another contagion that can run through a family, much more often if you let it: your moods. In fact, studies have shown that it’s as easy to catch a bad mood from someone as it is to catch their germs.

It’s human nature to not always be in a good mood. Life can be frustrating and things don’t always go our way. There are times when life downright sucks, but if you’re a parent, partner or boss you have to be mindful of how your mood can infect an entire room. I write from experience on this. It’s an area I’ve made massive strides in, but I’ve often been very bad at masking my mood. Minor things in my life, such as the performance of a favorite sports team or work related stress would impact my mood and inject negativity into the room.

Be attentive to your moods and recognize how they impact others. Scientists call the phenomenon of the mood of one person infecting others emotional contagion. According to Scientific American it’s a three-step process through which one person’s feelings transfer to another person. The three stages go from non-conscious mimicry of nonverbal cues which then triggers a response to that cue, which then results in a feedback stage where the infected person shares their negative experience and emotion. It’s basically a feedback loop that puts you in a negative mindset and slowly infects the rest of the room.

Our negativity leads to others talking about their negative experiences.

According to Robert Greene your mood is a whole language that you have to master. One of my favorite Saturday Night Live skits from the 1990’s is the Rachel Dratch character “Debbie Downer”. For those that haven’t seen the skit Dratch plays a character who immediately injects negativity into every conversation, ruining the conversation and the party. In my household the idea of a “Debbie Downer” has become a term that we apply people that are so unaware of how their mood affects others that they are constantly bringing everyone down.

Be aware of your mood. Negative attitudes can be very subtle. The common expression “glass half empty” is indicative of a person who always takes the pessimistic view of things. Over time this constant pessimism creates a broader air of negativity around that person.

That’s where the term Negative Nellie comes from. We can all remember back to our childhood when mom or dad was “in a bad mood”. Recognizing your moods and how it affects your relationships is absolutely critical. How we react to things sets the tone. Negative tones create more negativity. As I’ve matured I’ve become more aware of how even slightly negative reactions can absolutely bring everyone in my family down.

On the converse, positivity creates positivity. We all know the opposite of the Debbie Downer’s, the person who lights up a room on their arrival, lifting the mood of everyone present. We all have bad days at work or find out bad news. The worst thing we can do is bring it home or to our relationship.

Control what you can. We all encounter people in our daily lives that we don’t particularly care for. Pay careful attention to understanding how you come across to others and how you can properly manage how you carry yourself to exude positivity.

Break that feedback loop.

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