Did you ever have one of those days that, to your surprise, turned out to be so good, even though you felt like you got up on the wrong side of the bed? Can you think of when that switch happened?
The other morning I was just not feeling my day at all. I had to go into work early, work late, jump on a bus home just to quickly turn around and go to the airport to catch a late flight that night. The long day loomed ahead of me like a giant mountain I had to climb. Without coffee.
Once I got into work, I couldn’t even start working early because none of the outlets in my office suite were working, and my computer was dead. “There goes my productive quiet time”, I thought.
But a shift in this energy occurred during my first meeting. Everyone on my team was in a good mood, and our interactions were so light, it felt like weight had lifted off of the day and time passed quickly. I felt very on top of all of my tasks, and my last call of the day (which started around 5:30pm) was so pleasant; my colleague told me how nice he thought I was. Great way to end the workday.
And I really think this good mood just raised my frequency and attracted more good. On the way home from work, I nearly walked onto the bus to go to my usual stop (which I’ll call Stop A), when I actually needed to go to a different stop that day so my fiancé, Michael, could pick me up. I was about to walk right onto the bus when the driver was trying really hard to get the attention of the man in front of me. I had to wait so the driver could ask this man a question. It turns out the driver wanted to make sure the man was going to Stop A. That made me snap out of it and go “Oh! I need to get on another bus!” and I took my ticket back from the driver and got on the right bus. (Mini) crisis averted. I took the right bus back, Michael picked me up and we went home for a quick dinner.
Then when Michael went to drive me to the airport, as I went to load my bags into the car, I realized I didn’t have my travel pillow and thought about how nice it would be to have it on the flight. But since I was already outside, I thought, “Ah it’s too late, I’ll leave it home”. But when I opened the trunk of the car to put my bags in, there was my travel pillow! It turns out I hadn’t taken it out of the car from our trip last weekend. Wonderful. And the night continued in a similar fashion. I got to the airport, and the check-in and baggage lines at Newark were packed, but thankfully I had checked in already so I didn’t have to go through them. In contrast, the security line was actually the shortest I’d ever seen it. I flew through. Employees were polite. And as I sat at my gate journaling about all of this good fortune of the day, two of my friends I was meeting later in Vermont were going through the ringer with flight cancellations and delays out of JFK. Unfortunately, one of the two actually had to take a flight the next morning. But thankfully my flight experience had no drama; I boarded on time and landed safely in Vermont as planned.
I couldn’t help but feel that good begets good, positivity attracts positivity, and ease attracts ease. And someone else’s good mood could kick it off. Your own good mood could kick it all off! Writing this now, I’m thinking back to how powerful an effect my colleagues’ moods seemed to have on my entire day and me. Thinking about our own power to do that to someone’s day (and hell, to our own day!) makes me think we’re all pretty magical.
Have you ever had an experience like this, maybe one of those days when everything seems to be going “right”? Or have you experienced a shift in your day because of someone else’s mood (good or bad)? Let me know in the comments section!