Photo courtesy of Elina Fairytale with Pexels.
How are you?
Fine, alright, pretty good, ok.
Frankly, I'm tired of being "fine" and tired of hearing "fine." So I've decided to be:
fabulous
fantastic
terrific
great
never better
How many times a day do you ask someone how they are? How often are the responses "Ok" or "alright" or something equally bland? In some professional development session once upon a time, someone taught me that we all move around engaging in surface level talk about our day, the weather, etc. Frequently, we don't even hear the answer because we say greetings in passing and keep walking. And, rarely if ever do we stop to go deeper and have actual conversations about real topics outside of work meetings.
Recently, I noticed that if I say "fine," it's in a fairly monotone voice, and I get a "fine" back from the other person. And I decided I'm tired of being fine. So I decided to be fabulous.
For the last few weeks I've been experimenting with more exciting, mood elevating terms: awesome, fantastic, fabulous. . . and guess what? It feels GREAT! It lifts my mood and makes people smile. Today when I gave one of my fabulous replies, someone paused and said, "Fabulous? Really? Tell me more." This changed the energy of the interaction which occurred at the end of a busy day when we probably would've passed each other and kept walking. We paused to connect. It felt great.
I challenge you to try a different response than "fine" and see what happens!