100 Days of Awesome Day 4: Compliment Everyone

I am feeling anything but awesome today. Our vacation plans were thwarted by Mother Nature, and I am having a hard time accepting. I am angry as can be, but it’s that kind of anger I can do nothing with. (Yell at God? Yeah, that’s effective.)

So the last thing I wanted to do today was spread cheer among my fellow humans by peppering my conversation with compliments. Ugh. But I committed myself to this path, and no matter how hard the trudge, I must forge ahead. (I would rather be trudging up a mountain in New Hampshire, but I’m not … see paragraph 1. But I digress.)

First thing this morning, I had the opportunity to moderate a meeting of about 20 people. Rather than tell each person individually how wonderful they were (or that they were wearing nice clothes or their hair looked good or whatever), I just made a blanket statement at the end, telling them how they helped to make my day better.

When I got to the gym, I noticed someone had left their car headlights on. Remembering the hard time I had yesterday with random acts of kindness, I made sure to alert the front desk staff about the lights. Figured that made up for yesterday’s dog-walking disaster.

On the way home from the gym, I decided to stop at Dunkin Donuts for a large iced caramel latte. (When life gives you lemons, get one of those. It’s a lot better than lemonade.) I recalled that one of the items in my “100 most awesome people” list was the person who makes the best DD coffee, so when I was handed my cup, I thanked the cashier and told her that this location makes the finest coffee of any DDs. She seemed genuinely thrilled to hear that, and it made me smile.

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Sadly, this was my last brush with civilization for the day, so did not have any more opportunities to compliment anyone, except online. Does that count? I probably said a few encouraging things via email. For the record, I was in bed by 8:30 and didn’t get up till 9 the next morning. I will attempt to incorporate some compliments into my next awesome day.