Dear Readers, Happy Friday and I hope you are enjoying your day!

I went walking on the Mueller Lake Trail on Sunday and was not with my workout buddy as she was in Chicago enjoying the sights. So I had on my Ipod and was running and walking and running and walking and noticing people giving me slightly perceptible looks of encouragement, thumbs up, and in one case a high five after I did a sprint, I even had a groundskeeper look on and say are you okay, as i passed him after some exertion, I smiled and said thank you (gasping)

This encouraged me to keep moving, but more importantly, it was an opportunity to engage and nod and thumbs up and high five others who might have needed it just as badly as I did. It struck me then how many times we focus on how awful and evil the world is when that simply isn’t true. Inherently, people are good and they want to help others. There are definitely bad apples out there to be sure, but try not to let a rotten one or two on a branch stop you from seeing the whole tree.

Think about it!

And while you are “thinking about it” do something too.. My friend and World Champion of Public Speaking, Ryan Avery is doing a 31 days of kindness challenge #31daysofkindness (for more details see below)

For my birthday, I typically don’t ask for presents, I ask people to do random acts of kindness and then tell me about it, leaving it open to the giver what they want to do.. There have been some pretty creative ones. Buying broke students pizza, paying for someone’s coffee. Really think about what you can do (doesn’t have to cost money) to make the world better. Sounds pretty daunting till you think about one step YOU can take, then it seems pretty easy!

http://ryanavery.com/join-us-for-the-31-days-of-kindness-challenge/