The Power of a Smile

Think about this for a moment.  How important is a smile to you?  How does it make you feel, to smile, to be smiled at?   For me, a smile can turn the day around. The Power of a Smile can instantly transform a frown or bring sunshine to a gray day. Yet how often do we take "the opportunity to smile" for granted?  Again, for me, I know I do.

When I was still working, I had a pic of a jester printed and stuck on the wall that said SMILE.  As you entered my office that was the first thing one saw, and no matter how down, stressed, frustrated or anxious a university student was, when they left my office they always left smiling, and, they quickly learnt never to enter the office without a smile.  I recently received an email from a graduate student, saying how she misses being encouraged with a smile, that this became the one thing she looked forward to when returning to student residence, know her spirits will be lifted.  

Sharing this with you has me smiling with memories, it makes one feel that nothing was in vain, that someone's heart was reached.

How often now, as we find ourselves in some or other frustrating health or physically challenging situation, do we smile....even randomly?  Are we so focussed on our own issues that we cant just smile at a stranger, at something funny and let the Power of our Smile affect those we come in contact with.

I challenge you today, next time you feel downhearted, frustrated or challenged by your health situation...dig out those pictures that make you smile, think back to moments that made you laugh and smile....as you walk about in a shopping mall, make eye contact with someone really looking down and SMILE....just smile for the sake of smiling...you will love how it makes you feel, and you will smile more when you see the reaction on peoples' faces.

A smile is a powerful tool, you can even break ice with it

Why is a smile important to you?

Chatting to my son some 3979ft above sea level, flying at 800kph and 7143km away from Berlin this evening, gave me a new (although known) perspective to how remarkable life and technology is, high in the air chatting to me and watching the soccer world cup match on tv....amazing!

This got me looking at myself with refreshed eyes.

What could I claim as my identity now that my "shakes" (essential  tremors) has toppled me from my self-assured  perch?

I have let go of expectations. I no longer judge "success"--for myself or others--by what people do, but rather by who they are. I am more accepting of their flaws and of my own. My focus is on being rather than doing, on surrendering rather than controlling, on treasuring sweet moments here and now, rather than striving to scale the top of table mountain in record time.

Now, when people ask me what I do, I say, "I am JOY champion!" 

My "shake" has opened my eyes to the true meaning of life.

I just pray and ask the Lord to "give me oil in my Lamp" daily, and keep me filled with joy, hope, peace, understanding, wisdom .....  and lots of faith.

 Greetings to you....

HALFWAY there...Be INSPIRED

Do you sometimes feel that your sense of creativity has abandoned you? Maybe feeling a little stuck and not able to get much out of you? Finding it difficult to get inspired?

This is more or less how I’ve been feeling for quite a while. Out of creativity. Out of ideas. Out of imagination. Out of inspiration. (Which explains the lack of posts lately). OK well I wouldn’t say totally out of ideas. It’s more like blurred or vague ideas that I couldn’t get my mind to really develop.

And I hate that feeling. I hate feeling stuck. Because usually, I’m the kind of person that gets inspired easily, and thoughts and ideas come flowing right at me. So standing in front of a blank paper and not being able to fill it really drives me crazy.  Or as the thoughts come to me it's like I go into a "brain freeze"...what now?

But then the other day, while I was having coffee with my friend in one of my favorite coffee shops, I saw this:

: “When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it”. Wow.

It’s funny how we always wait for inspiration to hit us, to strike us, and to take us by storm. How we sometimes think that it is inspiration’s job to come to us, and our job to wait for it. Feeling uninspired is something very normal, and we all feel not very creative at some point and run short of ideas. But in life, we gotta work for everything and we gotta realize that waiting gets us nowhere. Even when it comes to finding inspiration. Seeing this quote made me realize that it’s also on us. We gotta give inspiration a hand, a chance to find us.

And so I decided that this is exactly what I’m gonna be doing from now on: Meeting inspiration half way. Whenever I feel that I am running out of inspiration, of creativity, I will go and meet inspiration and creativity halfway. And when I find inspiration, I will not stop there either. Because, like I once wrote in one of my very first post somewhere: “it’s not what inspires us that really matters, it’s what we do when we’re inspired“.

May you and I both take a leaf from our own thoughts.

Be inspired........