Monday, May 2, 2022
There’s a humming frequency, a vibration of “normal,” purring in the background of everyday life. But many people don’t usually break through that hum, they just go about their business doing normal, everyday things and thinking everyday thoughts. Wouldn’t it be nice to create a wrinkle in that hum, so to speak, to be a pleasant disruption to what we’ve come to know as “the usual.” You can be, as Maya Angelou put it, a rainbow in someone else’s cloud today. It’s a simple formula. Be a pleasant surprise, and the universe will respond with a pleasant surprise, right back atcha!
Pay for someone behind you, in the drive-thru at the Starbucks. Soften your voice, compliment someone kindly, and tell them how much you appreciate them. Give a server a big, fat tip. Surprise visit your parents. Whip up a romantic meal for your partner. Whisk someone away for a getaway weekend. Give away money, randomly. Breakup the normal routine and instantly make people feel appreciated, surprised, and uplifted with a small gesture or kind word. These acts of serendipity break through the hum of normalcy, and they make you standout.
You needn’t write a best-selling book or to be the keynote speaker at a prestigious event, to create a wrinkle in the drabness of someone’s day. You can be a ripple that shakes up the humdrum of normalcy, in even the smallest acts. Just think of something out of the normal spectrum of existence. You can get creative. Practice coming up with small ways of being an instant rainbow. Think of ways of coloring the grayness of normalcy out of what people have come to expect from you. Eventually your bright influence will snowball into a tidal wave, reaching many more people. How are you going to use your good ideas to disrupt the dullness of your day? You can think of something.