Amit Kumar

One thing that I do is I just have cards on hand.

It's an easy reminder to me, more than like the stationery itself.

It's just, oh yeah, I could express gratitude to somebody else.

Why not go ahead and do it?

The research, of course, suggests that people are more impacted by these expressions than we expect.

So I was waiting at the gate.

I happened to be sitting next to a woman who was clearly getting frustrated with something on her phone.

She tried asking a couple of folks nearby for help in Spanish without much luck.

And so in doing so, I kind of learned that she didn't really speak English.

I guess an aside, mind you, the last time I took a Spanish class was in

11th grade.

So I'm probably always, you know, listeners can't see gray in my beard on a podcast, but that was a while ago.

And so, you know, I'm probably always speaking in the present tense.

not really communicating effectively.

And so this is a case where I think concerns about competence really loomed large here.

I have very little confidence in my ability to effectively communicate in Spanish.

But nevertheless, in sort of knowing my own research, I thought I'd just try to help her as best I could.

And so in my broken Spanish, I kind of pieced together that she was traveling to the US for the first time.

She was trying to get in touch with her

brother to pick her up when she landed.