I used to see RAOK in my Tweet deck and I couldn’t figure out what it meant. Then it hit me: Random Acts of Kindness.

In real life we call them good deeds and I was reminded of one that happened to me years ago in far away California.

We were on our way to Woodland Hills to give a marketing seminar for our clients at Funrise. It had been a long trip from New York to LAX and I was starving. Whoa! Is that a Denny’s up there? Let’s duck in for something we can gobble down quickly.

And that’s where I met Tim Tallent, our waiter. He understood our predicament immediately and magically brought out our food right away, all the time talking good naturedly. He was funny, too, and by the time we left I felt as if I’d made a friend. Turns out I had.

Time gave me his card, and I gave him mine. When I got back to New York I decided to write about Tim in my monthly column for Target Marketing Magazine. It was all about how he lifted my spirits that day. I sent a tear sheet of the article to his boss, too.

Tim sent a Thank You note and seven years passed. Then yesterday I got an email from him. Click here to read it: Tim Tallent’s E-mail

All the best,
Lois
loisgeller@loisgellermarketinggroup.com

So now when I read the letters RAOK, I think of great people like Tim. Now it seems he manages the whole restaurant.

If only the lady behind the counter at Subway today had smiled and said something, anything, rather than slowly fill up all of her little silver trays with various Subway stuff, I might have ordered a sandwich and written about her today, too.

Well, one of my friends said “just fake it until you make it”. Another friend said that you need to think of the alternative, and figure ” … well I’m alive.”

When I was very young my Mom took me to the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City and we heard Norman Vincent Peale talk about the Power of Positive Thinking. We knew that it worked, even before Rhonda Byrne The Secret.

Then this week I read in the New York Post about the fact that happiness is contagious. When you interact with a happy person, it increases the likelihood that you are happy by 15% (according to The British Medical Journal).

So the more happy people you know, the higher the likelihood that you’ll be happy too. The study from Harvard Medical School used 4700 people and the findings said that happiness is more contagious than unhappiness.

I have to be happy each day because I have a great guy who works with me, and he’s always upbeat and has a smile on his face. His name is Pepper Huff, and even if our business should get slow he’ll always put a smile on my face. He adds energy to our office.

So, get rid of the sourpusses in your life, and get together with positive folks. The economy? It will take care of itself, either way.