Approach and Acknowledgement
How do you acknowledge someone? Acknowledgement goes along way, whether you acknowledge someone positively and negatively. When I see people acknowledging others with smiles and positive attitudes it is usually in a setting where everyone knows each other and are happy to see each other. Quite often though I see the exact opposite when people are acknowledging someone they don't know or someone that is representative of a business or group.
When we run into this situation, we often approach it with our guard up or have a predetermined prejudice against this person. We all have been guilty of this at some point and time. We approach the situation with a bias. This bias makes us have to work so much harder to get to know this person, let alone tear down the bias wall we had already built before the encounter ever happened. When we approach this situation from a positive point of view and drop the bias, the possibilities of creating a welcoming situation increase greatly.
Think about every time you have had to meet with or deal with someone who is a representative of a small business or a group or even a corporation. When the initial contact is started from a negative mindset, what are the real possibilities of a positive outcome? Not very high and more often than not you leave the situation in a worse frame of mine then when the encounter started. When we approach this same situation from a positive mindset the chances of a positive outcome for both of you increases. You also have the ability to carry on with your day in such a much better mood. This positive mood can then build upon itself and can carry you through out the rest of your day and on top of it, the person on the other end gets to do the same.
When we choose this approach, all though not always easy to do. We gain a greater appreciation for the people we are surrounded by that we don't even know. We start to realize that they are just as human as we are and probably have the same daily issues that we have. We take notice of the effect directly or indirectly that we have on them just through how we choose to acknowledge someone. So next time you are ready to give someone a piece of your mind (a negative piece of your mind) ask yourself, is this really going to accomplish anything or am I just going to be stuck just as unhappy as when it started. Most of the time you are going to just as unhappy and a lot of time you will walk away feeling worse.