Smile at strangers. Specifically on campus, but you can extend your friendliness frontier beyond the confines of USF St. Petersburg.
It doesn’t have to be a fully committed, wide-toothy grin kind of smile, but maybe something along the lines of, “Hey, I noticed you, and I hope you’re having a good day.”
Even the most mistrusting, cynical people can handle it. I promise. I’ve been there. It doesn’t take much effort, and you usually get a good response.
“One smile can make a difference.”
This is what we’re taught in school from a young age, but I think that as we get older, these human interactions are lost in the commotion of daily life. We lose touch with these minor actions because we are so focussed on what we have to do next.
How many times have you rushed to class, plugged into your phone so you don’t have to participate or be social, or simply because you don’t want to “deal” with anything? You may not realize it but your walking-to-class face is very intense.
“One smile can make a difference.”
Obviously, supporting that statement with evidence is difficult, but you never really hear people complaining that a stranger smiled at you while you were walking to class. If anything, you tell your friends that somebody saw you and made an effort to smile.
Smiles lead to compliments, conversation and comfort. In class, in the elevator, in line getting food. Like I said, you don’t have to commit to anything, but a smile can make somebody’s crummy day a little less so. That little bit of kindness may be the only positivity they’ve experienced in a while.
And what they don’t tell you is that this sort of habit changes you. Smiling at strangers feels right, especially when they reciprocate the positive vibes. You’re not going to change the world with the curvature of your mouth, but smiling only spreads goodness.
