'Have a nice life.'

She had her sales pitch lined up, and above the din of the call center, she was hurling it my way.

As the VP of Marketing at a flashy tech unicorn, I was a big fish for her.

The trouble was, I’d left that role a week earlier.

So, I politely interrupted, ‘I’m not sure I will be very helpful to you. I don’t work there anymore.

‘Oh. OK,’ she said. As a cold caller, she probably gets told NO a hundred times a day. But then she paused and said something that stuck.

‘Well, have a nice life!’

Interesting!

Have a nice day, have a nice weekend; I’ve had plenty of those, but this might have been my first ‘have a nice life.’ And she sounded like she really meant it.

‘Hey, you too,’ I said, ‘have a nice life’. And then that was it. She probably dialed the next phone number on her list, and I returned to driving around the suburb to try to get my three-year-old to sleep. But, she took three seconds to care, to acknowledge that my life had changed, that I’d made some big decisions, and that I sounded pretty happy about it all.

When we care, it can break through the daily noise. When we encourage someone to do something that scares them, like asking out their crush, applying to their dream university, or applying for a big job, these moments can change lives. Sometimes just asking someone if they are OK can change their life too. When there are opportunities to be kind, to care, to encourage, even if it feels a bit weird, I say take it.