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S2E3: Keeping Track of Your Emotional Wake (Plus Amazing Bob Ross Christmas T-Shirt)
•Dianne Whitford•Season 2•Episode 3
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In today's episode, I am talking about emotional wake: how people feel once you leave a room. Is it positive or negative? What do you do to control it and clean it up if you need to? How blinding IS my Bob Ross Christmas T-Shirt? You might have to check out the YouTube below to find out the answer to that last one.
Hey everybody. Welcome to the Coffee Break podcast. This is Dianne Whitford and it is our special Christmas episode and I am wearing a special Christmas shirt. So if you're watching this on the YouTube, you'll be able to see my Christmas shirt, which does have Bob Ross on it. And here it is. Have yourself a happy little Christmas. What I wanted to talk about today is emotional wake. The first time I heard about emotional wake was in a book by Susan Scott called Fierce Conversations. And it's just like what it sounds. If you imagine a boat on a lake or whatever and it's going along and all of those waves that are coming out behind it, that is a wake and you can leave an emotional wake yourself. You're not a boat, you're not swimming around on the water, but you are leaving behind you a feeling that can be felt by other people and they can pick it up. So it is really, it is really true that attitudes are contagious. So, for example, when you go into a room and you interact with people or whatever, and when you leave, the way they feel after you leave is your emotional wake. Now, the good thing is that that wake can be positive. It can be cheerful and happy. Have you ever met somebody or can you think of somebody who every time you interact with them, they're energetic and happy and they leave you feeling good and they leave you feeling happy. Even if you started out kind of not feeling that way when you first interacted with them. That's somebody that has a positive emotional wake. The bad news is that emotional wakes can also be negative. So you interact with somebody and they bring you down. They're always looking at the negative. They're- the way they speak to you or the way they interact with you makes you feel bad, and that's a negative emotional wake. So for me, at Christmastime, I go up and down. I, when I'm stressed out and everything, I tend to emote that all over the place and people pick it up and they feel it. When I'm happy and excited, I try to bring other people up too, and I'm not always successful. But at this time of year especially, I think it's important to put as much positive energy out there as we can. The idea behind cleaning up your emotional wake is when you have a negative impact on somebody, that you do what you can to repair it. It's true that people say, you made me feel this way. You made me feel bad. You made me feel sad, whatever. And that's true sometimes. And people also like to say, I'm not responsible for your feelings. I can't help how you took that. I didn't mean it. And that's also true. The idea behind emotional wake is you recognize the impact that you're having on people and you do what you can to minimize it and clean it up when something happens that you didn't intend. So while you can't control how other people feel, you can control what you say and how you say it or how you interact. And by doing that, minimize the negative impact that you might be having on others or those around you. There's no super easy way to tell when you're having a negative impact on somebody due to your own emotions. It takes a lot of self awareness to not only be aware of how you're feeling, but how the way you're feeling is making you show up to other people. Whether you intend it or not, even little things that you say can have an impact on others. Taking responsibility for that impact is not taking on other people's emotions. It's making sure that in the ways that you interact with others, you're being responsible and you're being clear and transparent and you're being not just self aware enough to know what you're feeling, but you're socially aware enough to tell how how your feeling is impacting the people around you. In my opinion, throwing around something like I'm not responsible for how other people took it. I'm, you know, they're making themselves feel bad. They're the ones taking my words in the wrong way. It's really easy to say that and it's a really easy excuse I believe. Because that kind of gives you license to say whatever the hell you want and act however you want. And just absolve yourself of responsibility for how your actions or, the things that you say might've made other people feel. At the same time, us being impacted by other people's emotional wake, we need to be aware that that's what's happening. And by the same token, it's very easy for us to say, Oh, that person made me feel like shit. I feel bad now. I feel sad now I'm mad. I picked this up from somebody else and now my whole day is ruined. And that also takes accountability away from ourselves. So we're saying this person is responsible for how I'm feeling. I'm not. So there's kind of two sides to it. One, do what you can to leave a positive emotional wake for those people around you and when you're around somebody who is maybe not being as positive to recognize when their feelings are influencing your own. When I think about emotional awake and how you can clean it up and how you can control it, I think the two keys to it are self-awareness, being understanding how you're feeling and social awareness, understanding how other people are feeling.
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And then cleaning it up can sometimes be as simple as,"I shouldn't have said that" or"I apologize". And by the way, apologizing when you actually hurt somebody is not something you want to avoid. I know that a few weeks ago- or actually I guess it was a few months ago now- we did a podcast on over apologizing and saying, you're sorry when when you had no control over whatever happened. This is not the same when you hurt someone's feelings. When you make someone feel bad, when you do something wrong, you do have to apologize. And so that's one of the simplest ways, when it's heartfelt and comes from the heart, to apologize to somebody. That can help clean up an emotional wake. Sometimes just acknowledging what you've said so that the person realizes or understands that you noticed it, you saw it, you're going to self correct. That can also help clean up an emotional wake.
Dianne:
Probably one of the most effective ways, the one that I need to practice more often, is when I'm in that bad space and I know that I am putting out this bad energy, is to go away from other people. Spend some time by myself for a little bit, get myself back under control and really do what I can to not lay those that bad mood or that bad, those bad feelings on other people. And then too, when we're having a positive, when we're feeling really positive, do what we can to share that, right? Good vibes. Putting them out there into the world makes them come back. I really believe that. And when you put out good vibes, you get good vibes back. Making somebody else feel good makes me feel good. So the more that I can do that, the more I feel good. It can help me focus less on everything negative that's going on in my life and focus more on the positive. Before I go, I just want to remind you that if you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, you can do so at www.coffeegritandinspiration.com/subscription. You can check out our YouTube channel where you'll be able to see my Bob Ross Christmas shirt in its full eye-blinding glory. You can check out our Pinterest page. We have a lot of boards up there with self-development topics on there and then of course the blog we're posting there every Monday and Friday and then of course our podcasts on Wednesday. Also, if you haven't already, there is a way to submit a topic. If there's a topic that you'd like to hear about on the podcast, if there's a question you'd like us to answer, of course we can keep it anonymous. If there's anything you'd like to hear about, we would love to hear it and you can send those to dianne@coffeegritandinspiration.com or you can go to the blog and in the Contact Me menu option, there's a form there that you can fill out. You can also go to our Podcast page in the blog and there's a form there that you can fill out. So lots of different ways that you can use to submit ideas to us and we hope to hear from you soon. I think that's about all I have for today. I think it might've been, this might be a little bit shorter than normal, but I think that's probably okay. I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas, if you celebrate it. Lots of time with family, which could be good or bad, hopefully you had lots of yummy food to eat and, uh, maybe presents if you do that. I hope you take care of yourself and take care of your family and have a wonderful rest of the year. Bye now.
