Getting the coronavirus can wreak havoc on your body and puts those around you at risk too.
In a blog post from the archive, Dave Mashburn points out that worry and negative emotion can have the same effect on you and your team.
Scientists at the forefront of research on happiness and positive functioning have discovered that negative emotion always undermines positive emotion when it’s left unchecked.
As a leader, it’s your job to counteract the negative emotion and keep it from taking root in your office.
How?
According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, you must teach yourself and others to occupy their minds with directed thoughts, defined goals, and meaningful work.
Without this focus, the brain defaults to a state of worry.
In order to escape such psychic entropy, we must pursue activities that give positive feedback, demand concentration, require skill development, and strengthen our sense of purpose and achievement.
With nothing to do, the mind is unable to prevent negative thoughts from elbowing their way to center stage.
Worries about one’s love life, health, investments, family, and job are always hovering at the periphery of attention, waiting until there is nothing pressing that demands concentration.
As soon as the mind is ready to relax, zap! The potential problems that were waiting in the wings take over.
Helping your agents refocus on building (or rebuilding) their businesses is the best thing you can be doing right now.
It inoculates them and your office from the negativity and worry that destroys.
