The Ripple Effect

I’m sure you are no stranger to the ripple effect. To sum up, it’s the idea that one action (such as dropping a pebble into a pond) will continue outwards causing increasing ripples. This can be true of both good and bad things. Let me give a couple of examples.

Example 1: As we were going to pick up Seth today, a kid from the apartment complex near ours pulled out in front of me cutting me off pretty abruptly. Then he immediately hit his brakes hard to avoid hitting the car in front of him which had slowed down to turn. I had to slam on my brakes. Our car skidded on the wet road and I ended up having to do some pretty fancy driving in an effort to avoid rear-ending him. I actually did rear-end someone in a similar situation a few months ago so it was “déjà vu all over again”. My adrenaline started pumping pretty hard. My hands were shaking the rest of the drive. I became curt with my children and even yelled at them to settle down and be quiet. My mood was immediately altered. I had been in a pretty pleasant mood before, but all of a sudden I was jumpy, anxious and cross. My kids started being rude to each other and instead of settling down the mood became more tense. I realized that I had to make a choice to let it go and be happy—to try to reverse some of those negative ripples.

My next example is not as dramatic, because I cannot see the longer term effects, but I did notice some small ripples right away.

Example 2: I needed to run a few errands after David got home. I decided to look the cashier at the store in the eyes and speak to him. (Is it just me or does it seem like we go around not looking at and not speaking to cashiers too often? How many times recently have you looked the cashier in the eyes and spoken to them? I know I don’t do it as much as I should.) At first he didn’t want to meet my gaze, but when he did look at me I gave him a big smile and said “Have a great evening!” He smiled back and responded with a very polite, “Yes, ma’am. You too.”

I felt pretty good after being able to elicit that smile, so at the next place I decided I was going to do something else nice. I recently started a coupon binder. I took a few of the really good coupons ($1 off or more) and decided I was going to share them so I walked around and discreetly placed them on different products so that when someone needs to buy that thing there will be a coupon waiting for them. I felt like the Zorro of coupons. It was awesome. I left the store feeling a lot better than I had when I left the house an hour earlier.

Today’s Kindnesses: That was it for today—a smile and some coupons. Nothing big, but hopefully those coupons will help someone else and hopefully that cashier went home from his job feeling happier and feeling a little more valued as a human being.

What did you do today to make the world a better place?