Interacting With Others Is Energizing

“Interacting with others is energizing”. That was a thought I had around a week ago, and it has been stuck with me ever since. It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to most - also not for me-, but I thought it’d be nice to expand a bit more on this thought.

First, let’s see what brought me here. On a not very eventful week of my life, I go to the office once or twice. This involves cycling to the station, taking the train, seeing people on the way, seeing people at the office, talking to people, etc.

Even if I don’t go the office, I usually still have online meetings. Granted that it doesn’t happen every day, but still most of the days. I also see my partner every day, of course. And, on weekends, we sometimes go somewhere, or I have some plans with friends.

However, the past two weeks have been a bit more calm: a large proportion of coworkers were either on vacation, or working remotely. So I ended up not going to the office nearly as often, because no one was there. We also had virtually no online meetings, since most were on actual vacation.

In addition to those things, I also did not have anything planned with friends, and ended up not interacting with that many people, besides my partner. After a week and a half like that, I noticed how much impact interacting with others actually has on me.

I became slightly more negative, and also nostalgic in regards to my years in Lisbon. Maybe the approaching of the 5th anniversary living in The Netherlands did not make it better. Of course, it also depends on the interactions, and the people with whom I interact.

Positive interactions makes you more positive, and negative more negative. And the lack thereof, likely also more negative. Important to say that this applies to me, I think it can be generalized to a lot of people, but it definitely won’t be the case for everyone.

Now, that’s what I wanted to say. Go out and say hi to someone!