Rub shoulders constantly with entrepreneurs and you’d be more inclined to strike out on your own.
We already know that how people around us behave influence us, but to know that emotions can be passed to people around us is revealing.
When someone is anxious, we can sense them. They want people to relate to their anxiety so we can tackle the problem together. But the anxiousness now spreads to us and because of that, we make poorer decisions and do lower quality work.
In his article titled Stop Adopting Other People’s Anxiety, designer Mike Monteiro says the solution is to remain calm under such situations.
Imagine slicing your finger open cutting a bagel,” Monteiro writes. “You freak out. You wrap it all up. You go to the emergency room. Do you want your doctor to scream when she sees it, or to look at it and very calmly say, ‘Let’s take care of that’?
It’s also what Elon Musk preaches about the one thing he learned from his favourite childhood book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Don’t Panic!