PDF File Click Here

1. Smile 

“You’ve had 10 minutes to cry and pout. Now, smile!”

My mom often said these words to me and my siblings when we had gotten into trouble and afterwards sat around feeling sorry for ourselves.

I thought she was downright cruel back then. She forced us to smile and she would not accept a whimpering little tilt of the lips. We had to give her a big smile, teeth and all! Now that I am a mom of two, I know she was right to teach us this very important life lesson.

Dwelling on negative things only makes you feel worse and, on top of that, you bring everyone down with you.

Smiling, even when you don’t feel happy inside, makes you feel better. It also has the contagious power to make the people around you feel better too. Win Win!

According to Dr. Ronald Riggio (link to the full article below), every time you smile you activate the messaging in your brain that benefits your health and happiness. He also notes that every time you smile at another person, their brain coaxes them to respond and return the favor by smiling back.

Smiling is such a simple thing to do yet its impact is so powerful. How wonderful to have such a tool readily available to improve the quality of each day for yourself and others!

Make your smile the first thing you put on in the morning and see how many compliments you get on your outfit😊

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201206/there-s-magic-in-your-smile

2. Listen

“The first duty of love is to listen.” ~Paul Tillich

This quote makes me wonder if perhaps Mr. Tillich is one of very few people who know about the duty to listen because I don’t find a lot of people in the world who actually do it.

My fiancé is a good case in point. He is a wonderful human being … but he’s not a good listener. His upbringing combined with a professional life spent being “the boss”(i.e. working in an environment where everyone was required to listen to him) – he learned to talk. Listening, not so much😳

A few months ago I was so frustrated with him. I complained to one of my besties, “I’ve practically written him a manual and he STILL doesn’t listen!” She inquired, “What’s in the manual?”

I rattled off a whole list of things, “One, be interested in what I am saying. Two, the look on your face should SHOW you are interested in what I am saying AND that you understand. For example if I say something funny, laugh, or at the very least smile. If I say something crazy amazing, act excited! Three, do NOT interrupt my story with your own story that you think is somewhat related. Four, do not immediately start telling your own story the minute I pause in telling my story. Instead, ask questions relevant to what I am saying and keep asking more questions.” And so on …

I’m a pretty good listener so I’m probably expecting too much from my poor fiancé😊

What’s interesting is, the more I practice listening, the more I realize how important it is. I’ve found it to be more than a social courtesy. It is a much-needed community service. From the grocery store to the doctor’s office to my teenage daughter’s best friend, I find people bursting with the need to be heard, understood, and validated. Only someone who truly listens can help them to feel this way.

So, how do you practice being a better listener?

Here are the basic Do’s and Don’ts :

1. Pay attention and maintain eye contact.

2. Don’t interrupt.

3. Think about what the speaker is saying, not what you are going to say next.

4. Show you are interested in what the speaker is saying by nodding (or smiling or frowning) at appropriate times. This will make the speaker want to keep telling you her story.

5. Ask relevant questions; get the speaker to tell you more and more of the details and what is important to her and why she is telling the story.

6. Don’t try to show understanding by launching off into your own, somewhat related (or totally unrelated😳) story. Reflect and restate what you think the speaker is saying. This is how you show understanding.

7. Don’t jump at the first pause in the conversation to start talking. Keep listening. Ask, “What else?” Encourage the speaker to keep talking. This lets her know you truly care about her and what she thinks and feels. This is how you connect and deepen your relationship.

When you listen, you give a great gift. You show respect and love.

If you want to improve your relationships and the state of world around you, every day, spend more time listening and less time talking.

As Maya Angelou said: People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.

Listening is the best way to make people feel special, important, and loved.

3. Own Your Zone/Acts of Kindness

A leader in my ladies group inspired our team, calling us to action, “Own your zone.” What she meant by this was, focus on the areas you can help others in your zone … your family,  neighborhood, church, school, work, etc.

If you let yourself think about a whole world of people and problems, it’s overwhelming and you become paralyzed … I mean you can’t fix EVERYTHING.

An easy way to avoid the paralysis – own your zone. Pay attention to those people in your family, neighborhood, work, and school. See those needs and do what you can to help.

It’s true, you can’t help everyone. But you should not let that stop you from helping anyone.

Here’s a short list of ideas to get you started:

• Give a gift card to the disheveled man at the corner of the intersection. I like to give gift cards to 24 hour restaurants so they have somewhere to go, day or night, and a place to legitimately sit and be for a while. Without the protection of paying customer status, they are usually asked to vacate the premises. If you don’t have any cards (or cash if you don’t mind handing that out), make eye contact with him and smile and send up a prayer for blessings to come into his life.

• Leave a surprisingly big tip for the server who took great care of you at lunchtime.

• Offer to help the elderly gentleman struggling to get a case of water into his cart at Costco.

• Donate $10 to a charitable cause near and dear to your heart (I had to throw that one in here😊)

• Offer to babysit for a single mom.

• Say a cheerful “Good morning” to your family, your co-workers, and your strange neighbor Rudy.

• Pay a visit to your friend whose husband passed away last year. Yes, she’s still grieving and she needs to talk with people who don’t go silent and awkward every time she mentions his name.

If you want more ideas, check out this article: https://www.goodnet.org/articles/52-big-small-good-deeds-to-help-change-world-in-2019

Now go out there and have some fun making a difference in the world!

It will make your heart happy😍