Good Morning,
I am a huge fan of practicing random acts of kindness and senseless beauty. I give flowers to women at work on Valentines Day; I buy sometimes two cups of coffee at the local coffee shop, one for me and one for some random coworker, etc. When I go on vacations I try to buy little gifts for my coworkers and include the reception staff and facilities staff because of how they are often overlooked. Being nice is natural and a lot more fun. It is also hard to keep being nice in our fast paced often cut-throat world.
This makes reading ‘The Power of Nice’ by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval (http://www.thepowerofnice.com/) even more enjoyable. This book contains many tales of niceness and how this niceness has translated into multi-million dollar deals. That is, people simply being their nice selves are winning in the end.
The book points out that genuine niceness, being yourself, has many benefits in our world today. There are many historical references to this fact and even one biological fact. Vampire bats are friendly community eaters. That is, they share and will often allow other bats to join in with them, even if they did not help find the evening’s meal. Those bats which exhibit selfish tendencies are actually shunned by the other bats and NOT invited to join in, even if they are hungry. The bats remember who was being a team player and who wasn’t.
People also remember nice. I remember having a really bad day at work some years ago, and I know I was having a bad day because several people kept asking me what was wrong. My normal smile was replaced by a scowl. After a large team meeting, where I tried to calm down and be nice, I expected my new team to think I was just a bitter man. When my boss asked those people to talk about me from what they knew of me, each and every one of them recited times where I was kind and thoughtful to them. I am so very happy that those bad days do not happen that often. We choose our attitude, but sometimes it is still hard.
Nice is as powerful as it is pervasive. It is remembered and shared. Being nice to one person can cascade to being nice to many people as they pass it along. It’s like paying for the car behind you at a toll booth for no reason other than just to do it. I often imagine how many people do the same thing and pay for the car behind them afterwards.
It is a great world out there, and with all of us flexing our NICE muscles, it can be an even better world!
Now team, get out there and start flexing!
Enjoy!
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