You have an urgent appointment at 8.30 in the morning. For some reason the alarm doesn’t ring. You miss the appointment. Now you’re in a bad mood. You decide to go to the diner around the corner for some breakfast. You sit in the booth and seethe over the missed appointment. After ten minutes the waitress comes over to take your order. You give her lip for taking her own sweet time. She’s had a rough morning too, but you don’t know that. You are gruff and short with her and don’t leave her a tip. Now she’s in a foul mood. Her boss is having money troubles; he sees her taking a break and yells at her. He tells her to get to work. She yells back, she calls him names; she takes out all of her frustration on him. She gets fired. Now rewind the day. You missed your appointment, its ok you can try to reschedule it. You’re at the diner. You can see the waitress is busy so when she comes over ten minutes late you don’t say anything. You give her a smile. She also smiles. She feels a little better. Later when the boss yells at her she quietly gets back to work. She doesn’t get fired that day.

She keeps her job because you smiled. We affect the world around us in profound ways with even the slightest of actions. Everything we put out into the universe eventually finds its way back to us. Some call this ‘Karma’. If you are negative and act negatively your life will reflect that. Newton said that ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction’. He may have been talking about physics but this law holds true even in our daily lives. The next time you’re going to lash out at someone or something, think about how you would feel when it comes back to you.