Episode Details

As a coach, trainer, and facilitator, one of my great strengths is empathy. I’ve learned how to tune in to other people’s emotions, which means that I can help guide them to better places.

When I’m working, I can stay attuned to others while maintaining my own power.

But as a civilian, living my life every day, I can easily get swamped by other people’s energy. My superpower turns into my kryptonite.

When I’m around happy people — energetic, bright, optimistic — I match their vibe. When folks are negative, cynical, depressed, worried, and dissociated; same thing. I feel myself hollowing out, draining, deflating.

I come home from an entrepreneurial meetup or lunch with a prospect feeling hopeful and excited, possibilities buzzing — and if someone in the family is in a bad mood, within 30 seconds I can’t even remember what I’d been excited about.

In short, the opposite of buoyancy.

How to Balance Empathy and Buoyancy

One way to be immune to other people’s emotions is to ignore or override them. That’s not what I’m going for.

The cover of my new book, The Buoyant Leader, features a rubber ducky. I’ve loved the image since my daughter first suggested it as a visual theme for the concept of buoyancy, but I love it even more when I apply it to my own life.

Because it shows me how to protect my boundaries. It has an impermeable membrane, so it won’t pop like a balloon. It won’t take on water, and won’t become the water.

At the same time, it doesn’t ignore the water. It moves, bobs, submerges, and pops back up.

That is to say, it’s sensitive to its environment without merging with it.

Shallow and Deep Work

So how do we do this?

Sometimes, it’s enough to simply decide to. To imagine yourself encased in an energetic membrane (for me, obviously, a giant rubber ducky suit), protecting your energy — whether joyful or reserved, outgoing or introspective, silly or serious — while you stay in touch with the needs and desires of others.

For some folks, simply practicing this visualization can lay down new patterns.

For others, this will be a band-aid or worse: an useless exercise in “positive thinking” that eventually erodes confidence when it doesn’t work.

If that’s you, I recommend getting support in first understanding the protective purpose of losing yourself in other people’s energy fields.

Eg: You might have learned that being happy when others were miserable is selfish.

You might have learned that the way to stay safe is to blend in.

You might have learned that the only way to be loved is to mirror those around you.

Or any of a thousand unique lessons, specific instructions coded into your nervous system so deeply that they seem unarguable.

Breaking those patterns requires deeper work; typically guided by someone skilled in supporting you to uncover and disconfirm the predictions that were baked into your nervous system.

The Benefits of Buoyant Leadership

Once you can choose how to respond to other people’s energy, you can choose how to support them.

Once others see that you can hold your own energy in the face of theirs, they’re much more likely to come to you — and trust you — with their concerns.

When your nervous system is regulated, you can be creative, nuanced, and light. Qualities that are much more likely to lead to positive outcomes.

And rubber ducks can make life more fun, as many of us learned watching Sesame Street.

Your Mission

Change always starts with awareness.

The next time you walk into a room and feel your energy shift, try this — pause, feel your feet, and ask yourself: “Is this mine?”