Be a positive influence today and you will see an unusual outcome.

This was an email message I got from one of my favorite people, Doug Addison on July 4. I thought to myself, ‘how can being a positive influence give me an unusual outcome?’ Let’s say we encounter 5 people each on any given morning. I get up and see my husband, greet him with a smile and a kiss. His reaction is to be warm towards the children, smile… you get the picture. I have affected positively my husband who in turn has been warm and caring to 3 children. Now I answer the phone with a smile and a hello. I make sure at the end of the conversation that I allow the other person to hang up first. No one likes to hear that cold click. (Thanks to Bob Burg for this positivity hint.) In turn, my phone caller has a lighter heart and her job is made a little less stressful. She goes to her next task less stressed. I am at the grocery store. I see an older lady reaching for a box of cereal that is too high. A helping hand lets her know she is not alone. She in turn is more pleasant to the cashier and her grand children when they come to visit. The cashier is pleasantly surprised to be called by her name, which I see on her name tag. Her co worker comes to get the cashbox key to do a refund and she shares a laugh with him. On the way home, a tourist looks bewildered on the subway and in broken English ask directions. I take 3 minutes to explain the correspondance he is looking for and his blood pressure goes down enough notches so he doesn’t yell at his 10 year old who asks for the fourth time,"Are we there yet?” The neighbour who graciously handed me the package I received when away is thanked by my daughter who made a cute card. He is careful to not let his dog mess up his other neighbour’s plants when he was walking simply because he felt good about his kind deed and the card. Today was of course an imaginary day. But these are scenarios that can happen to us on a daily basis. What is the unusual outcome? Maybe Doug didn’t mean this outcome when he posted this message and it came to my inbox. But… Count up the number of people affected by small kindnesses. The 5 orignal people plus the people they spoke with after my short kind intervention. I have counted at least 15 depending upon how many grandchildren the elderly woman in the grocery store has. What if we lived like this all day long? What if we did this every day. What would your corner of the world look like?