We don’t always feel like smiling. Sometimes I find myself walking from my house a few blocks, my head full of thoughts about what I have been doing or am about to do, when I pass by somebody who smiles and nods a greeting. Almost instantly, my life in that moment is transformed. I start thinking instead about the smile I received, the place I am in, the delight of that instant of time that is the present. The next person I see gets a smile.
The transformative nature of that smile is unknown. All I know is that I received one and passed it on to another. I also know how my consciousness changed in that moment. What I don’t know is where the smile originated and where it will end up. The possibilities are mind-bending. The ability to change someone’s life, even for a few minutes so enormous that if we were to take it in we would smile at every person we ever saw on every occasion we saw them.
The fact remains that we don’t always feel like smiling, and that we are seldom conscious of the impact anyway. My intention is not to encourage a smile when one is not forthcoming; rather to make the point that whatever energy we put out – and a smile takes as much energy as a grimace – is contagious and is returned to us even though we might not recognize it.
In which case, the person’s life you could be changing is yours.
In Peace
Warren Redman
www.EFitInstitute.com
1-866-310-3348(EFit)
Warren Redman trained in the UK as a psychotherapist, facilitator and coach and has developed his own unique style of Emotional Fitness Coaching. He is president of the Emotional Fitness Institute (formally the Centre for Inner Balancing), writing about, teaching and coaching people in Emotional Fitness. He is the author of fifteen books, including the Award-winning The 9 steps to Emotional Fitness, Achieving Personal Success and Recipes for Inner Peace.
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