Overdo It

A friend of mine recently shared an interview with me. It was an interview with Serena Williams and during this interview she explained that every day she tells herself, “Something wonderful is going to happen to me today.” And then it does. She said one day she was shopping at Walmart (you read that right, haha) and a spot came open right by the entrance. In that moment, she realized, “This is my something wonderful!”

It might sound silly, but I thought it was worth a try. So, last Monday, I went in for my annual mammogram. As some of you may remember that last year, I had a pretty terrible breast cancer scare. After four mammograms, two MRI’s, one ultrasound, and two needle guided biopsies, I was cleared. But walking into that facility brought those memories and that anxiety back.

When I checked in, I quickly learned that my appointment was booked for a different facility and not this location. Without missing a beat, the woman helping me quickly called back to see if they could squeeze me in for an appointment, and they did. It was so nice to be able to get this dreaded appointment over with, and I quickly thought to myself, “This is my something wonderful!” This thought was later followed by, “What if this is my only something wonderful today and the results are bad?” I tried to replace that thought with, “Even so, that will be really hard, but I’m going to try to remember this something wonderful.”

I thanked her for her help. Later, as I was about to walk out the door following my appointment, I remembered a post by George Couros that I saw on Instagram. He was talking about how a flight attendant went out of her way to grab him a plastic spoon from her own bag since he had forgotten one, and they didn’t have any on the plane. He was so grateful for this small kindness that he thanked her twice and then made sure to go back a third time to make sure she knew how grateful he felt. His whole point was that he would rather overdo it with gratitude than under due it.

Remembering this, I turned around and went back to her check in station. She seemed a bit surprised to see me again. I said, “I just wanted to say thank you again for your help. You didn’t have to do that but the fact that you did, it was a huge help to me today.” She smiled and politely said it was no problem. We both went on with our days.

She didn’t know about my anxiety around this appointment, and I’m sure she meets many women who are battling cancer among other hardships, but she took 2 minutes out of her day to save me hours. I was so grateful. Truly something wonderful.

So, this week, be on the look out for your something wonderful and if it was made possible by someone else, please be sure to let them know. Thank them three times. Make it weird, haha. Overdo it.

So many of the not so great things are overdone. Why not hype up the little something wonderfuls too?