Last year I took the conscious step of trying to heal myself. This year I want to smile more.
Today I was reminded of something that I used to do whilst my daughter danced at The Urdang Academy in London.
Every other weekend we would travel to London for her classes. She saw very little of the city; we would travel up, she would spend 8 hours in a dance studio, eat and travel home, but I got to explore, shop, eat and observe. I used to try and make eye contact with people, endeavour to walk round with a smile all day just to see if I could get a smile back. It was VERY hard work!
Generally speaking, people don’t seem make eye contact in big cities. New York was different. Or maybe New York was different because WE were different, we were on holiday, we were happy, we were smiling and people respond to that. So here are some things that make me smile:
My children make me smile; they make me cry too, but mostly smile. I cannot think of a better reason to smile.
My friends make me smile; they also make me laugh, proper belly laugh spit out your drink laugh and last year in my ‘healing phase’ I found a new friend. I also found new friends that I haven’t met yet; lots of smiley faces have been shared. Thinking about people like this and remembering conversations- that makes me smile.
When I walk to work and drivers slow down to let me cross the road safely; THAT makes me smile. I have three difficult junctions to manoeuvre across when walking to work, some days the drivers don’t even bother to indicate and I spend ages hesitating at the side of the road. On other days I hit the jackpot and get let across all three. That’s a good start to the day! They can’t know that I got hit by a car when I was fifteen and spent months in hospital. They just slow down and take a brief pause in their day for me.
Cooking & baking make me smile; I ‘stress bake’ which means that if life is challenging I go into the kitchen and bake.I find it therapeutic. If the urge to bake happens when there aren’t enough people in the house to eat the resulting baked goods I give them away; take them to work, share with friends. I hope that makes them smile too.
Thinking about our next adventure coming up later this year, now that really makes me smile. More on that coming soon.
Some of my memories make me smile now and that’s a good thing because it means that part of my self-healing has taken place and it’s time to find more reasons to smile.
So what makes you smile? 
Challenges Choices Changes 