Dyslexia Book, Day 3 of 30:

😊 Confidence Building Challenge: Smiling at Strangers

😊 Smiling at Strangers

Throughout this book, I’ll include a few comfort challenges intended to push you out of your comfort zone to test and allow you to build your confidence. This first one is my favorite, smiling at strangers.

When I was in 8th grade I went to the grocery store with my mom. I pulled out a shopping cart for us to use and noticed that there was an old lady standing behind me, so I gave her the cart and then pulled another one for myself and my mom. As we walked into the store my mom made a comment I’ll never forget: “Cliff, that was very nice of you to give that lady your cart, but if you had stopped, looked her in the eye and smiled at her, you would have made her day.”

I imagined that moment in my head. I realized that if I’d taken a moment and flashed a giant smile in that ladies direction she would have likely smiled and beamed back at me. Then, when I went into the store she likely would have continued smiling. Then, for the rest of her time in that store, even when she stopped beaming, her lips would likely be at a slightly more smiling position than they normally would have been. She definitely would have felt better and more happy. I resolved to stop and smile at people every time I had the chance to do so from now on.

Around this same time, I read “How to Win Friends” by Dale Carnegie for the first time (https://www.audible.com/pd/How-to-Win-Friends-Influence-People-Audiobook/B002V5BV96, I still re-read this book often). Turns out he has an entire chapter about the importance of smiling.

A few years later I read Tim Ferriss’ “The 4 Hour Work Week” (https://www.audible.com/pd/The-4-Hour-Workweek-Escape-9-5-Live-Anywhere-and-Join-the-New-Rich-Expanded-and-Updated-Audiobook/B0031AS3BE), and one of the challenges he issues his readers is to stare down people who are bigger than you when you walk down the street. If they get annoyed and come up to you just say “Oh, sorry I thought you were someone I knew, you guys look a lot a like.” I decide to combine Ferriss’, Carnegie’s, and my mom’s advice and developed a new challenge for myself:

Every time you pass a person on the street, lock eyes with them and try to flash them a smile that will make them smile back. The bigger their smile, the better. I often walk in airports and imagine I have a giant happiness momentum behind me, when an unsuspecting pedestrian locks eyes with me I aim to emotionally knock them over with how much happiness and positive energy I channel into them through my smile and my eyes.

Overtime, smiling at strangers has become a habit for me. It’s also resulted in my resting facial expression being a smile. It’s insane the number of friends I’ve made because I have this habit. People just want to come talk to you.

Smiling, like everything else, get’s better with practice. There is a finesse that is needed to make a stranger look you in the eye. There is a nuance to how you need to crinkle your eyes and what you need to feel inside to make your eyes sparkle. If you smile really really wide you can look like you are trying to eat the other person, if you smile too small the other person won’t even know that you are smiling. So, practice.

It’s one of the most important things to practice. Practice in the mirror every morning, and practice with other people. Eventually it will become a habit. Mastering this habit and doing it automatically is one of the most powerful things you can do to increase your confidence and overall happiness in life.

The other cool thing here is that not only are you spreading happiness to others by making them smile. The second you smile, physiologically you are making your brain feel that you are happy and then you become happy in reality, in addition now another person is smiling wide at you, so you smile even wider, and your brain becomes even more happy.

So, Challenge:

For the next two weeks get 3 strangers to smile at you without you saying anything to them. Just by you looking them in the eye and smiling at them. Keep track of this on a notes app on your phone to make sure that you’ve done it.

Now that we’ve got the baseline of confidence let’s dive into a method that’s been essential in helping me develop my dreams and goals, which in turn also increased my confidence:

Post 4:
30 Moon Wishes, and 3 Top life goals

Dyslexia Book, Day 3 of 30: How to Dream

Cliff Weitzman is the founder of Speechify, a free productivity software that lets’ you listen to any reading 3x faster than most people read (iOS, Mac, Chrome, Android). He is featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List, Studied Renewable Energy At Brown University, and his signature move is a backflip ;) The best way to keep up with him is to follow him on facebook here.

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