making other people smile is not always the superpower you think it is

​Many people discover an amazing superpower early in life. They discover they have the power to make people smile.

When they want peace in their life, they make the people around them smile.

When they are feeling sad or down, no sweat, they make the world around them smile.

Then one day they wake up exhausted. It's like in those superhero movies when the superhero's powers suddenly run dry. They still have a burning desire to make everyone around them smile, to save the world, they've simply run out of the physical energy to do it.

May is Mental Health Awareness month, so I'll tell you that kind of exhaustion is sometimes called depression. Depression is often dealing with the fact your superpower is gone.

Part of the depression comes from the reality that when you spend your life surrounding yourself with people you know you can make smile, there's a good chance you didn't surround yourself with people equally invested in making you smile.

You've conditioned people to show up for the smiles - not to produce them.

One of the things I've said about 2021 - this will be a year of living authentically. And one of the most inauthentic things we can do with our lives is make people smile.

Now you're asking, what's so wrong with smiles?

Nothing.

Nothing is wrong with smiles unless they come at the expense of your own. Nothing is wrong with a smile unless you wake up one day willing to do ANYTHING to make someone else smile. Nothing is wrong with a smile unless recognizing a friendly smile in your life becomes more important than you being able to recognize you.

In this training I led yesterday, we talked about the idea of neighborhood reciprocity. People living near one another with a shared passion for helping each other out. You help me; I help you. Not because it's the 'right' or 'moral' thing to do, but because that's what makes the neighbors feel like they're living in peace.

Maybe reciprocity is behind all peaceful relationships. This burning and shared desire to make each other smile.

When people read that quote from Dr. Leaf - some folks may think there's a harshness to it. This idea of I'm tired of worrying about what everyone around me thinks about me so I'm changing who the people around me are.

Maybe it is harsh. I know it feels harsh thinking it and saying it.

And doing it.

But what doesn't feel harsh? What doesn't feel harsh is waking up every day feeling like you can go be the real you. When you wake up free from the prison of the pressure to please everyone around you each and every day - you discover you actually have the capacity to make more people smile than you ever imagined.

Maybe because you begin wearing a smile you never knew you had.

In some ways, it's like discovering a brand new superpower.