For my birthday this year I made a few new goals. One is a physical goal- work out at least 30 minutes per day. Another is to lift someone each day (haha -not physically but emotionally). I have found the best kept secret to be happy today is to make someone else smile. I promise it works every time!
The physical goal is easy- I just have to get off my booty and GO. The other is to look for ways each day to lift someone up. It’s not a new goal, it’s one that my mom has taught me my entire life. When I was a little girl my mom would stop people in the grocery store or on the street and give them a compliment. I noticed how it changed the way they walked and acted. I have done this throughout my life, but want to concentrate on it now. I was walking out of an airport the other night when I saw an elderly lady in a wheelchair and loved her dress- so I told her. The look on her face was unforgettable. She looked at me like she had never been told something like this before. She said, “Thank you, thank you!” It didn’t take much effort and seeing her light uplifted me.
I believe we are all connected. We are all trying to get through this life with happiness and meaning. So why not look for ways to help each other instead of pulling people down? I watch people who don’t feel good about themselves and they seem to be taking from other people’s buckets to fill their own. They don’t realize if a person fills up someone else with compliments and just being nice- in turn, it fills their own bucket. Doesn’t it make you feel good to make someone else smile? Try it- give someone you don’t even know a compliment. My mom taught me that you can always find something good about a person if you look. So look and tell.
One way I have tried to lift someone that I don’t even know and probably never will is by being a considerate driver. Each morning I drive my daughter 20 minutes away to get to school. I told her that any chance I get to let someone in the wild traffic I will do it. It doesn’t take much to see a smile and a wave of “thank you”. It also helps set the tone of the day going forward. I’m sure I don’t do a lot right, so having kindness in my head at the very beginning of the day is a GOOD thing! Hopefully, it is also making an impression on my daughter who is 15 and learning to drive. Really it doesn’t take much just to be kind and think, “It’s not about me.”
TRY IT, YOU’LL LIKE IT…
Alka-Seltzer (and agency Wells Rich Greene) started the 1971 slogan, Try it; you’ll like it!
