A little over a week ago, I was leaving the Comedy House from one of my favorite pastimes, attending the Improv Jam every Tuesday night. An Improv Jam is an opportunity for improvisers to get up and play in a open format and to enjoy the art of improvisation. Think of it for improv folks as the same thing as open mic night is for either a singer or for a stand-up comedian. As I’m leaving the venue, I run into Tia, one of my improv friends. Tia wanted to let me know how much these videos mean to her and how much she enjoys them.

The reason I share this story is that as I’m driving home and thinking about the beautiful emotion that she shared with me about this. It inspired me. Whenever you think to give somebody a compliment, any compliment, do it. Don’t filter yourself. We tend to filter ourselves too often about the compliments that we can pay to people and the nice things that we might do for people. It really hit home with me because it’s something I’ve been trying to do more and more of in my life. Remove those filters, especially those filters that stop me from doing those nice things. Especially the little things.

Just a nice little compliment, “Oh, you’re shoes look really nice today.” Or, “Did you lose a little weight recently?” We have to be more positive in this world. We have to look for those opportunities to share a compliment with somebody else. The bigger reason is not so much what it does for that individual, it’s what that individual will turn around and then do for somebody else, and what they’ll do for somebody else, and what they’ll do for somebody else. It will have this huge ripple effect.

It has been scientifically proven that the act of doing something nice, even just as simple as a compliment for somebody else, pays big dividends energetically for you, for the person you gave it to, and for everybody they give it to down the line. It’s just a huge, huge ripple effect that you create by just a one simple little task or one simple little action that you can do for somebody.

It reminds me of a story that I heard from Dr. Wayne Dyer back a couple of years ago. I was listening to one of his audio programs, and he talked just about this exact phenomenon.

He had been talking to his daughter about this ripple effect and how things can ripple energetically. Later that day, when she was exitting the Jersey Turnpike. She pulled up to the tollbooth and as she paid her toll, she also gave the tollbooth operator extra money to pay the toll of the person coming up behind her. She did it purely without attachment, because you can imagine that she had to go down the road without knowing what the effect was going to be. She did know that it would create a ripple. Who knows what that person behind her did with those good feelings. I’m sure that they probably were asking themselves, “What can I do?”, “Can I pay for the person behind me?”

You never know what a nice deed can do for that person. I this finds a place in your heart to do something nice for the next person that you see. Whether it’s in a tollbooth, it’s in Starbucks, a comedy club, just a simple act of kindness multiplied a million times will change this world. This is something we need with all of that’s going on right now in this election cycle, the most divisive election cycle we’ve seen in years. We need more positive. We need more smiles. We need more coming together.

I’m putting it out to you as your task because it’s my task, as well, to create more positive energy in this world and in this universe. We can overcome these divisive times and head to something better.