You may not realize it during your day-to-day life, but you do leave an impression on everyone you come across. When I was a little girl, I never realized it at the time, but my parents put on a clinic on how to treat everyone you meet. I grew up in a small town so we knew everyone and everyone knew you. It was very important for their lumber yard business to be kind to everyone they met or talked to.

Looking back on those memories I wish I would have paid more attention.

Scouring through my Reddit feed, I came across a list from the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. It has been a while since I have read this book. I highly recommend reading it!

Some of the concepts have stuck with me. Others I need more practice at. Looks like I will be re-reading this book again. The list did get me to think about how I treat others I come in contact with throughout my day. Once you put these principles into practice, they will become second nature to you and make your world so much better.

Baby steps…

The very first concept is Smile. So easy in thought but hard in practice for some people. Yes, it will feel weird at first, but I have found that people can’t resist a person who smiles and looks happy.

Every morning my husband and I go for a 2-mile walk. One of the things we do is wave at EVERY vehicle that passes us on the road. I don’t care if you passed us, turned around, and met us again. I WILL SMILE AND WAVE AT YOU. I feel kinda sad for the people who don’t wave back at us. They must get tangled up in their own webs and problems they see no joy in anything anymore. Or maybe we are just weird and they want to ignore us which is highly possible. 😄

It is easy to get caught up in our own little lives and not acknowledge the people around us. There is so much we can learn from each other. If we were all even just a tiny bit nicer to each other, listen to each other, help each other when needed, and just smile, what an incredible world this could be!

One of my favorite lines is from a fantastic movie, “Steel Magnolias”. Dolly Parton’s character Truvy, says, “Smile! It increases your face value!” We should take her advice.