YouCantMissThis.com- By Bones Rodriguez

SO today I gave away some flowers, kinda kick-starting www.ContagiousGiving.com .

I had done it before, but today I got a lot more than I did before, and took a bag, and went on a Saturday, when it was MUCH more busy. Here's the point:

I want to make GIVING contagious... the idea is that someone feels good for getting a gift, so they want to pass that on and have someone else feel it. So, while I was giving out the flowers, I felt great; and many of the people were grateful- after the initial skepticism. In fact, I can say that I honestly noticed the AURA of the train change, and people smiling and all of that-

a great return on some flowers.

I could see that people were watching me, and just kinda hoping that they were going to get one, and I could see the relief when they did. However-

Some people didn't want one.

and that would have been fine, but I realised this:

"No" is contagious too.

If one person said "No thank you", I had a harder time with other people accepting. If I didn't push a little, there would have been far more "No thank you"s than were genuine.

By that I mean that many people WANTED a flower, but were so distrusting of me, or the situation, or whatever that they said no. As an example, there was a girl who, when I asked if she'd like one, said this:

"Oh, I'm afraid I would crush it"

-Which if you know anything about sales, is a YES- she wants one, but needs to be assured that her objection isn't a problem. So I said "That's OK, I've crushed several of them", and then she took one- VERY HAPPILY.

(I realized a second later that a better reply would have been "But you'll crush ME if you don't take it")

So, both "yes" and "No" are contagious, and frankly, people are more predisposed to say "no" than yes in any situation, so I guess that means we get to work a little bit harder.

I learned a bunch today- I hope YOU get to learn some cool things like that too!