A couple of years ago, I was a sales clerk at a furniture store. While I was working there, I met a lot of really interesting customers. Some were very nice, some were not-so-nice, and some were incredibly memorable.

One of the most memorable customers was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. By magazine cover standards, her beauty probably wouldn’t have made any covers. She was probably in her mid-60s. She had grayish-white hair and looked like your run-of-the-mill grandma, except for one very distinguishable feature. She smiled all the time. She even had these great dimples that served as exclamation points on either side of her pleasantly upturned mouth.

As she talked she called me “sweetie” and “honey” and smiled, and I would have given her anything in the store if she would have told me she needed it. I wanted her to shop in the store every day that we were open! All of her smiling made me wonder what she had to smile about. She didn’t look particularly wealthy. She had a nice husband who shopped with her sometimes, and she looked like a grandma, so I figured she probably had children and grandchildren. I hoped she was a believer, because I figured her smile would be an incredibly effective witnessing tool.

My experiences with this beautiful smiley woman made such an impact on me that I decided to make a conscious effort to smile more often. I quickly realized that it’s a little harder than it looks, but with practice it gets a little easier. As I started practicing, I noticed that people smiled back. Smiling more made me want to be nicer. People started being nicer back.

We do everything at warp speed these days, and I think it surprises people when we stop, look them in the eye, and flash our pearly white smile at them. So, do your own smile experiment and let me know how it goes!