I decided to take a day and be the nicest most compassionate person I could be, I thought this would be fairly easy because believe it or not I am actually a pretty loving compassionate person as is, but what I wasn’t quite prepared for what my day would have in store for me. I defined my day of compassion as being the most loving, nice, caring, and giving person I could possibly be. I acted this way to everyone around me, my friends, random people at school, and then everyone that came into yogo bowl (where I work). With my friends and other people I used a lot of nonverbal behaviors that would help to get it across that I was in a really great mood and I wanted to do whatever I could to make them happier. Nonverbal behavior like what I was doing can be facial expressions, body language, or certain verbalizations that allow others to pick up on how you are feeling, this was first studied by Charles Darwin in 1872 and then further supported and furthered by Ekman et. al. when they found that certain facial expressions etc. are read the same all over the world (1987). In addition, to giving lots of smiles and speaking in an incredibly high pitched voice I gave lots and lots of over the top eye contact, because I already give lots of eye contact I wanted to make a point of increasing that. I did so in order to hopefully cause the eye contact effect in the people I was interacting with, the eye contact effect is when someone looks at us straight in the eye and holds that gaze it activates the social areas of the brain and causes an increase in arousal (Senju & Johnson, 2009). So to everyone I encountered I tried to make friendly conversation, keep eye contact, get them something or do something for them if I could etc. The hardest part was how much of my conscious energy had to go to do this, it took so much of my energy that I had to count the cash register three times at the end of my shift to finally have the totals correct. It was difficult for me because I’m usually a compassionate person to an extent, what I mean is I talk a lot of crap and I joke around a lot. If I’m giving you crap then I like you, if I don’t mess with you then I don’t like you. However, giving people crap, even if its friendly, was not a part of my day of compassion so every time I wanted to joke with my friends I had to retract my statement and just smile. This lead to my friends thinking I was a little off that day, but it ended up being a very positive thing because when I came home from work my friends had gotten me brownies and left me a note saying that they had noticed that I was in such a good mood so they wanted me to continue that with brownies! My friends also continued to comment on how I was acting strand and creepy because I was being so nice and smiling so much, which I thought was pretty funny. There was on situation that I could not be compassionate and nice in and that was because these two young girls came into yogo bowl and were acting really shady and sassy and I was not digging but at first I just smiled and didn’t say anything. Then I found at that both of them use to work there but had been fired for different reasons and that’s why they were acting so weird, when I could not hold back from being mean is when they were leaving I was in the back and I heard them knock something over, and when I went to check it out they had stolen some gummy worms and knocked some containers over. I could not help but be mad because it was so unnecessary I had never done anything to them and it was just so immature and rude that I just had to vent my frustration, so I said a few things to some other people who happened to be in the store and the lady ended up saying “bless you” a couple times to me, so even when I wasn’t being super super nice people still responded positively to me. I do think people noticed how nice I was being but to the people who didn’t know me that were just me either having an extraordinarily good day or that I was some super sweet saint. Those people most likely attributed my actions to either of those reasons because they don’t know me and they are going off just one encounter with me or in some instances very few. Being so overly nice also benefited me at work, I got more tips that day than I have ever gotten. Although, I did benefit from being so crazily nice I like being myself better there is such thing as too much. The way I am now is still really nice and compassionate and I’m still overly nice at work because it is a part of the job but at home and in school I just want to be me. It was extremely hard to be constantly thinking of how what I was doing was affecting other people, and making sure that I don’t do anything to hurt or offend anyone at all and in any way. Behaving in such a compassionate manner took up a lot of my conscious energy and lowered my mental capacity because I was so preoccupied with thinking about smiling and using my “nice phone” voice as my boyfriend Adrian calls it. I definitely believe that it is worth being nice and compassionate to others but I don’t think giving someone a hard time in a fun-loving and joking manner is a bad thing. I think that me behaving in that manner encouraged the people around me to mimic my kindness, my friends were in a better mood and my customers interacted with me in a nicer manner and seemed to really enjoy their yogurt. I would try to have them model my behavior and try to reinforce their behavior with positive feedback and smiles. I do not think that participating in this day will affect my behavior in the future let it be a month from now or a week, I think this because I didn’t like not being able to be me. I didn’t like not being able to joke around with my friends, and have to be so nice it felt fake. I also know it won’t affect my behavior because as soon as my day was over and I was able to act like myself I did and I explained to my closest friends why I was acting so weird.
Citation:
Ekman, P., Friesen, W. V., O'Sullivan, M., Chan, A., Diacoyanni-Tarlatzis, I., Heider, K., & ... Tzavaras, A. (1987). Universals and cultural differences in the judgments of facial expressions of emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(4), 712-717. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.53.4.712
Senju, A., & Johnson, M. H. (2009). The eye contact effect: Mechanisms and development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(3), 127-134. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2008.11.009
