Post title: A smile and friendly greeting
This one might seem like a weird one, and it’s one that I would have been slightly skeptical about myself.
But it’s the use of a simple smile, and a good morning.
The place where I moved to with my partner a couple years ago (I won’t embarrass them by saying where it is), was not exactly the most friendly place, or neighbourhood that I had ever lived. In the time that we had been there we had probably only said no more than a few words to our neighbours and most of them (the neighbours), carried a ‘scowl’ on their faces that wouldn’t have looked out of a place on a bad guy from a Liam Neeson film.
But several months ago I saw one of my neighbours and instead of doing the usual ‘keep my head straight, and don’t engage routine’, I smiled at them and called out ‘good morning’, and asked how they were doing.
You could see the shock on her face, before she recovered and returned the greeting.
This continued for a few days where we would greet each other and she would do the same to my partner.
One day she invited us in and we sat and talked with her, and she spoke about her family. We learned about how she had lost her husband a few years ago, and that prior to that her son had also passed away after a long illness.
To cut a long story short, we would have never gotten to know any of this about her, or had an opportunity to get to know her, if it hadn’t been for that very simple act of saying hello.
Just a very simple act, but after reading and looking at the website, it just set me in mind of this.
User: Nikki
Post date: 21:09
20 September 2026
Reply
Thanks for posting this Nikki, and it’s really not weird. You would be amazed at what can come about from those kinds of ‘simple acts’. The smile that you give someone in the morning could be the thing that helps set that person up for the rest of the day, and makes the difference between they’re having a good day or a bad day. These things really do have a ripple effect upon us depending upon our positive and negative interactions with the people around us.
The ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’ that you address to someone in the morning can have the same effect. For some people that interaction can sometimes be the only exchange that they have with another person for the rest of the day, and that ‘hello’ to them has a far bigger significance than just a simple greeting.
It doesn’t cost us anything to be nice to each other and it can be priceless to the person on the receiving end.
Take1step Admin.