Do you know that feeling when you walk into a room, and straight away you can sense something in the atmosphere?

Maybe there’s just been an argument going on and you feel the tension?
Maybe there’s a lot of laughter and smiles and you can pick up on that lightness in the air?

There’s an old story called “The grumpy bus conductor” that looked at what’s the impact of one grumpy bus conductor on all the people who come into contact with him in a day. Someone hops on the bus and is confronted by his snappy rudeness. They get to work and they then take that vibe into their day. And everyone who’s in contact with him that day is transporting that negativity into their own environment. Let’s say he deals with 500 people in a day. And each of those 500, are in contact with another 100 people. That’s 50,000 people who have been affected by one person who’s radiating anger and impatience in their corner of the world.

I was thinking about all this because I saw it in real life a couple of weeks ago.

I’d just finished leading a five-day retreat in Portugal for our meditators. We’d booked out the main house, so we had looked at other options for those on the waitlist. We managed to find a great little guest house right next door and so we booked that out. It was our first time having students staying in this lovely little place.

At the end, after everyone had left, we checked in with Joao, the owner of the Guest House.

He was gushing. It was the best week of his entire 8 years of owning and managing his guest house. He couldn’t stop raving about how calm and kind and easy our students had been. He said the hardest part of running his business is dealing with stressed guests. And very often it’s sorting out their stressful interactions with each other.

For 5 days he didn’t have any of that. For the first time in 8 years, he’d been able to take a proper break each day, go surfing and spend time with his friends. It was stunning for him how different the energy in the building was with a group of people who were not dumping their tension and stress in the environment.

Our impact on our environment is bigger and broader than we realise.

At the end of today will you be a net giver of stress and irritation or are you a net giver of kindness and positivity?

– Jillian Lavender is co-founder of London Meditation Centre and New York Meditation Center. For more about retreats, go here.