Your network can impact the health of your business and career. It can also impact your physical and mental health.
The people you talk to, email, chatter with online, work with, and live with —your social network—can be good medicine, or bad. In much the same way that germs spread through communities, ideas and habits that influence health for better or for worse can spread through social networks and transmission can happen even if the people are hundreds of miles apart.
The landmark Framingham Heart Study (conducted from 1971 to 2003) found that if a friend became obese, the chance the study participant would become obese rose by 57%. Your social network influences what you perceive as normal and acceptable. If you see friends becoming heavier, you may accept weight gain as natural, even inevitable.
There is evidence that social networks can help people maintain a healthy weight. Hang out with friends who exercise. As an instructor for a Fit and Fall Proof class, I am inspired by the people who are older than I am and are physically active. Fit and Fall Proof classes are free and offered through the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare https://healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/services-programs/medicaid-health/womens-health-fit-fall-quit-smoking/fit-and-fall-proof-tm
You’ve probably noticed that your mood can change depending on the moods of others. The Framingham Heart Study showed that happiness can spread across social networks. Happiness seemed to reach across at least three degrees of separation, spreading from a friend to the friend of a friend and then to the friend of that friend. Your happiness can spread to people you are not even aware of. Focus on being happy. Your mood can impact not only your immediate contacts but numerous others.
As Jackie Holland, minister at Center for Spiritual Living, points out, “We broadcast our feelings, inner conflicts and thoughts, whether we are aware of it or not.”
Steven Stosny, Ph.D. wrote in Psychology Today, “Emotions are more contagious than any known virus and are transmitted subliminally to everyone in proximity...Even in a crowd of strangers, emotion contagion makes us feel what the rest of the group feels.” Seek out those who make you feel positive and happy. And practice gratitude which can lead to more feelings of happiness and contentment. That’s a good feeling to share with everyone.
Kindness is also contagious. In a 2024 article in Psychology Today, Beth Kurland Ph.D. wrote “When we experience kindness, it can cause physiological changes in our body and a dialing down of our stress response. When we are not in a state of stress or ‘threat’ we have more access to our social engagement system, through which we can experience greater connection, care and compassion...When our nervous system is in a state of safety and connection (such as from the kindness shown to us by another), we would be more inclined to reach out to others in prosocial ways.”
Kindness produces more kindness. Do yourself a favor by doing someone else a favor.
Surround yourself with the people whose habits you want in your own life–health, kindness and happiness. Build your network with people who will impact your life in positive ways.