Smile At A Stranger

If we smile at a stranger, two most definite things will happen. We will feel better and importantly too, someone else will feel better.

A smile doesn’t happen by accident and it isn’t just a random movement of the lips. It’s a whole concept of a shift inside of us that makes the difference between whether we share or whether we don’t.

Smiling is a conscious decision to share our emotion space, which opens us to someone else’s if they smile back. It’s allowing another person to know that you are willing to give something to them without condition (after all, we never know if they will smile back) and it’s completely free.

The Smile is The Dance With Chance

It’s a way of saying that although you don’t know them, you care enough to share your kindness and acknowledge their presence.

In a changing world where it often seems easier to stay in our own energy rather than take a chance with a stranger, the smile is the dance with chance that keeps our minds and hearts open to love and hope.

Smiling at a stranger may, unknowingly to us, be the hand that reaches out to pull someone back from the edge of desperation or loneliness.

A Simple Gesture to Warm The Heart

In a supermarket in the town where I live, there is a regular visitor. A man who sits in the store, on a bench for much of most days for company. I was told that his mother has recently passed to spirit and she cared for him. Without her the man seems quite lost.

The staff are generous to him, they talk to him and allow him to stay, recognising his need for people around him as he seems shy, isolated, private.

I found it difficult to see the man for a while, to see his pain and not feel able to help.

He reminds me many times to check in on moments of absolute gratitude for my beautiful life with family and friends, and has highlighted in me a previously unrecognised fear of standing alone.

I made the decision as I passed him one day that I would send him an energy hug, risking that he may not want to receive one but trusting that he most probably did. And then the following day I smiled at him.

He looked surprised.

I now make a point of smiling at him each time I see him and he continues to look surprised without reciprocating.

Recently I caught his eye as his head turned a little. I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes as he stared and I sensed he was looking for my gesture. I felt I was reaching him quietly.

Take The Risk & Make Someone Happy

Life is not to live in fear but to embrace it fully with risk, and who knows where a smile may lead?

Take the risk of someone thinking that you are over familiar. Take the risk of being rejected by not having the smile returned. Take the risk that you may find a new friend or partner by opening up your heart, which cannot happen if we all stay in the safety zone.

Smile at a stranger today and smile at yourself in the mirror. If you are a stranger to yourself you may begin to open your heart to you and all of the beauty that you are and have not acknowledged before.

A smile has no cost and yet has the ultimate power to change minds, hearts, lives, and as the saying goes, has no value until given away.

Be brave and start giving today, to become smile rich tomorrow!