Mini Ep. 107: Emotional Contagion

Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member, has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in jiu-jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in jiu-jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access. And if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free. Go to BJJ Mental Models.com and check it out today. Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome back to BJJ Mental Models. I am Steve Kwan and BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent jiu-jitsu approach. And in this mini episode, we're going to spend a few minutes talking about a concept called emotional contagion. Now, this is a sociology concept. Might not feel like this is directly related to jiu-jitsu, but it is. We have always maintained at BJJ Mental Models that in order to fully understand jiu-jitsu, you need to attack it from all angles. And that includes the social elements of jiu-jitsu, which in many ways are just as, if not more important than the actual training that we do on the mats. So, emotional contagion is a concept that to the best of my knowledge, first appeared in the late 1800s and was first defined as an actual term in 1985. The idea behind emotional contagion is, as the name says, emotions are contagious. I want to clarify that this is not some weird woo-woo conversation about karma or some sort of philosophical concept. This is actually something that to the best extent that we understand, actually touches on our physiology. Humans and related mammals have mirror neurons in our brains, which encourage us to mimic the behaviors of those around us. This comes up all over the place. If you've ever hung out with a group of people long enough, you may have noticed that you've started to adapt their mannerisms and maybe they've adapted yours. That is your mirror neurons at work. Part of the way that we signal our willingness to participate in a community is by mirroring the behavior of the people around us. The end result of this is that emotions and behavior can spread almost contagiously from person to person. A good leader will understand this and will realize that their behavior and the way they conduct themselves will impact the community around them. And when you are running a gym or you're teaching a class, that becomes especially important because a flippant comment or losing your temper can have a tremendous long-term impact on the rest of the community. So, as a leader, it becomes especially important to manage your emotional state and not lash out and take it out on your students when you're having a bad day. It is easy to get into this mindset of, well, words don't matter and emotions don't matter and we should never let someone's words impact us. But the reality is that people's words and behaviors do impact us. They impact us at a deep psychological level. And I'm sure that you have examples of this in your own life where someone said or did something that was out of step with your expectations, that you did not feel was appropriate. And maybe that happened years ago and you probably still carry memories of that to this day. And that's an example of how contagious our behavior can be. It's one thing when you're a student in the room. Even then, I think that you should do your best to manage the emotional state of the people around you and create the best example that you can. But it's especially important when you are in a leadership position, whether that be as a coach or a gym owner or really just a senior person in the jiu-jitsu community that people look up to. The way that you conduct yourself does matter. And it has always felt to me that people in the jiu-jitsu space don't take the responsibility of that role serious enough. When we say or do something, it reflects on the people around us, on the community around us, on the sport at large, and it can leave a lasting impact on the people that we train with. I have worked in team environments where one single person was just so negative that they made the whole place suck. I hated working there. And when that person finally quit, it was like a a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. My life got so much easier. And that really made me realize that it only takes one toxic person to ruin a team. That is the power of emotional contagion. If you bring a negative energy into a room, it can spread and impact and infect the people around you, especially if you are coming in from a position of authority. We need to manage the emotional state of our team. We need to take accountability for that. And when people are poisoning that well, we need to shut it down. It's easy to run away from that responsibility and say, well, I don't want to censor the people around me. I don't want to manage what people say. So, I'm just going to let them be them and I'm going to let them say whatever they want. But what will happen is you will at some point get someone in the room who brings in tremendous negativity, who starts gossiping, who starts name-calling, who starts really making the culture worse just by their very presence. And if you tolerate that, it will spread. So, one of the main goals of a leader, as Leaf Babin said, is that culture is not what you preach, it's what you tolerate. If you tolerate that negative behavior, it will spread amongst your team. Our job, not just even as the coach, but as people in the room is to speak up and take action when we see someone in the room doing something that we don't think is in line with our culture. Sometimes that's an obvious transgression. Sometimes it's not so obvious. It's just people gossiping or bringing in negative elements, childish high school behavior that we should be done with by the time we get into an adult environment. Think of jiu-jitsu as a professional environment. How would you act if this was your job? Because for many people, it is their job. For your coach, it is their job and they should treat it accordingly. In a workplace environment, you would not allow people to act childishly, to spread negativity, to make things worse just by their very presence. Part of how we deal with that is by managing emotional contagion. None of this is to say that we should suppress critique. That is a different thing. Positive critique comes from a place of wanting to help and improve the community. That is very different from someone who is criticizing and being difficult for the purpose of harming the people around them, for the purpose of damaging the community because it makes them feel bigger or more important. And that type of negative criticism is very different from the kind of positive constructive criticism that we really we should be encouraging. The spirit with which the criticism is delivered matters tremendously. A lot of people might say that this is a bit fluffy and that we should be tougher or more stoic than this. Man, it would be nice if that were true, but we are all human beings and we are all subject to the limitations of human physiology and this is just how our psychology works. We need to understand this and act accordingly if we want to build the best possible teams. I think that this kind of social element of jiu-jitsu is not discussed nearly enough and that's one of the main pillars of what we talk about at BJJ Mental Models. You can get more like this at BJJ Mental Models.com. We have more mini episodes like this, plus full-length episodes that expand the conversation, as well as our newsletter over 15,000 strong. All of that is completely free, so please do sign up if you haven't already. And if you would like to level up with us, check out BJJ Mental Models Premium. It is the world's largest audio library of jiu-jitsu master classes on strategy, tactics, concepts, philosophy, mindset, and other things that don't fit cleanly into traditional jiu-jitsu instructionals. We also offer amazing coaching help if you want people to review your video footage or if you want support on accelerating your jiu-jitsu business. Please check out BJJ Mental Models Premium. You can find that and our podcast and our newsletter at BJJ Mental Models.com. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you soon.