The Good a Smile Can Do

Hey team, so here’s our last Monday Message for August. We’re getting ready for school to start. It’s going to be pretty exciting. It’s hard to believe that the summer is already gone. I wanted to talk to you. Monday Messages, core values, focus. So I read this quote by Mother Teresa. Absolutely, that woman was an amazing woman. Her quote said that we shall never know the good that a simple smile can do. And that sparked me to think of our KRAs. Key Responsibility Areas, Key Results, things that we should do.

I remember a number of years ago when I wrote the KRAs for officers, for on-site officers. One of the very first things I put down was to smile. You know you’re doing your job if you’re smiling. The job we have is not always easy. We run into a lot of difficult people, and we have to deal with them. But a smile can change things.

You really never do know the good that a smile can do.

You run into people sometimes in their worst place at the worst moment in their lives. If you can smile at them, you can maybe impact their life for the good in a better way. Have a better, I guess it really boils down to, for me, it is my constant statement: “How are you doing today, Chad?” “I’m living the dream,” and I smile. “I’m living the dream.” Now, people look at that, “oh, something like it’s a nightmare, whatever.”

You know, I run into that all the time, and people look at me like they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for me to say something negative, and it’s not that way. It’s just not that way, not for me.And I look at it from a different way of saying things and bringing people to an understanding that every day of life is a true blessing. It really is. And the reason I say that is because I’ve survived a lot in my lifetime.

I’ve had pretty much nothing. And yet hard work and determination have brought out more for me.

I remember I was standing in a Costco, and I was just looking at stuff. The lady folding the Costco clothes because we always mess them up. She asked me how I was doing, and I said, “I’m living the dream,” and she had that same comment, that same kind of attitude, like, “Oh yeah, you know,” because she’s standing there folding laundry. She’s folding clothes, and that’s her job, and she’s standing on her feet all day long, and I’m sure it’s not exactly always fun. I get it. Not everything in life is fun and enjoyable. It’s not sitting on a beach or hanging out in a backyard listening to people’s sprinklers go off in the early morning. But life is a dream.

And the reason I can say that, and what I said to her was just a few months ago, I had my second cancer surgery, and I found out that I needed to have a meniscus surgery. So I had that, and after I tore my meniscus, and I also had a hernia surgery, and yet I’m still alive today, and I have such joy. And then I walked away. Sometimes we look at life through our lens, through our very narrow lens. We don’t see the big beautiful backyard behind me because we’re looking through a straw. I look now at life in a different way, and I can smile, and I realize that like I wrote for the KRAs many years ago.

I believe that we can infect and affect people’s lives in a better way if we smile. Sometimes it can change our lives.

I’ve said this in leadership many, many times over. If I’m feeling down, sometimes the best way to get up is to help someone else. I will go out and give to somebody else, give time, give resources, give a smile, a bottle of water to somebody out on the street. I give to someone else, and all of a sudden, I see my own spirit seem to be lifted up. So on this Monday Message, as we’re sitting here talking about our KRAs, which fits into our core values because to be valuable because nothing less will do. Sometimes it only takes a smile. It only takes a smile to be valuable, to make somebody else feel needed, acknowledged, noticed.

That’s what’s one of the things Thankful Thursdays are about that we do every week here. And I so hope and pray that each of you will start sending in little thank-yous, little Monday messages, correction Thursday, right, Thankful Thursdays, that you’ll sit on your phone and do 35-40 seconds and say, “I’m thankful for Johnny because Johnny blank. Johnny smiled at me. Maybe that’s all he did, but it lifted your spirits. You’d be surprised what a smile can do.

So as you get out there, smile as you’re moving into September, smile as you’re moving into this winter, smile and be thankful and be valuable, because nothing less will do. All right, God bless you guys. Have a wonderful rest of your week. I’ll see you on Wednesday for Wednesday Workshop. See you on Thursday for Thankful Thursday, and I hope to see you real soon. Remember, the prize wheel’s out there spinning around, and on there is a VP lunch. I would love to take you to lunch, so if you win, you and I, we’ve got ourselves a meal coming forward. All right, God bless you guys. I’ll see you soon. Bye-bye.