Smile

When you download Stepping Forward, it puts a smile on my face. This doesn't seem like very much, but imagine what a smile can do.

That smile on my face will be passed on to someone else. Maybe the girl at the shop having a hard time today because she's stuck there while other people come and go as they please. She sees my smile, nothing about it to say anything but 'I'm happy', and it puts a smile on her face. I leave, the smile stays there.

An old man walks up to pay for his bread and his milk. He sees her smile and decides to pick up a chocolate bar for the grandson he has coming over. He smiles as he walks out of the shop, goes home and waits for his daughter to arrive with his grandson. He smiles when he sees them, hands over the chocolate bar with a childish grin on his face and watches as mother and son start to smile.

She brings her son to the park, where he shares his chocolate bar with other children there. They walk back to their mothers smiling, all of them filled with sugar, and four couples of mothers and children walk off to run their errands.

In every shop, the children are happy and smiling and the mothers are happy for seeing them that way. Everyone smiles: there's nothing like a smiling child to make people happy. The innocence of it, and the excitement at being out and about, rubs off on the shopkeepers.

They continue serving customers long after the children have been brought away, passing along the smile to every person they meet. When they go on a lunch break, they go back to that first shop, pass on the smile again, and make sure that someone's day is a little bit better.

It all starts with one little thing: downloading my ebook for free. And remember, when you go out today, to smile.