Watching and listening to the news gives me the chills these days. There doesn’t seem much good in the world. To make me feel better, I would usually smile intentionally at my fellow human beings but given that I’m taking one of the team and wear my mask diligently to stop the spread of COVID, that seems an awfully big challenge.
So how can you acknowledge and connect with people whilst lacking visual feedback?
Well, there are a couple of options. The first one is to wear a transparent face
mask. Yes, there are plenty of options of see through masks on the market. The main driver was to allow hearing impaired people to be able to lip read. What an achievement!
The downside to these masks is that not all are created equal. So please be sure to choose one which is certified to filter COVID particles.
Another (better?) option would be to make sounds to elicit the same reaction a smile would do. WHAT? I hear you ask.
I’m pretty sure that when you speak with a friend or someone close to you that you listen to them and on occasion make sound like “aha” or “oh”… sometimes even a full “oh, I see now”. These are often used to show that we are listening actively and that we are still with the person who is talking. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to get into the habit and in my experience, the benefits are huge.
So how do we do this to temporarily replace a smile?
How about wishing your neighbor a good morning, make a brief comment on the weather or just saying “Hi” if your eyes meet someone else’s.
I dare you to try it for a week and see what happens.