Gaonomics

I have signed up to various e-newsletters to receive information about things I find relevant and interesting and the other day I received the following words of advice from one of these “word of the day” services:

“If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning ‘good morning’ at total strangers”.

I think this is a great reminder, because I have this concept which I call the nice girl syndrome, which means that you are only able to show your true feelings at home to your loved ones, but outside you put on a smile even though you may not feel like smiling.

I am not saying that we should start scolding strangers on the street or take out the frustrations we have with our family on our colleagues at work, but I think we should learn to speak up and voice our opinions, disagreement and dissatisfaction to the people concerned, to prevent boiling over at the wrong times and in front of the wrong people.

There is an art to this, called assertive communication, which teaches us to communicate effectively without getting emotional and while still getting our message across and maintaining good relations to the people, we are communicating with. It is without a doubt a difficult skill to learn, and it takes time, efforts and lots of practice to master, but I believe it’s worth it to be able to smile to the people, who deserve our smiles.