John R. Miles

It's hard not to think of your work and look at the work of Bob Waldinger and the Harvard study of advanced aging.

And I think it's interesting because these small moments that you are talking about, they happen to us every single day.

But how much of our life are we missing, do you think, based on your research, just by staying silent?

I just want to touch on something you just said.

When I was at Lowe's, one of my favorite leaders, I thought he was one of the best I've ever worked with, was a gentleman named Steve Szilagyi.

And at the time, Steve was a senior vice president, ran all the distribution centers, so had 30,000 employees.

Big job.

And I remember every time you would ever meet him, he would always have this huge smile on his face, which is something I think we should always do with our kids, that social mirroring.

It's hard.

And you would greet him and you would say, Steve, how are you doing?

And he would always say,

I am outstanding.

And I asked him about it one time when we were on a trip and he said, I used to do like everyone else said.

I used to say, I'm doing OK.

Or I would just say it's good.

But he said, I realized when I started saying it's amazing or I'm knocking it out of the park or something that was positive.

it would make him feel more positive.

And he said after a while, it completely changed the trajectory of his day and all his interactions.

So I started to practice as well and it actually worked because when you go into any environment and you're smiling and you're optimistic, you're gonna expect better reciprocity from it.

Nick, I'm going to butcher this name, so you'll have to probably correct me, but I want to bring in Aj Young's rejection experiment.