One of the best ways to grow as a person is?

Today, I was accidentally re-connected with my Gym instructor for four years, from Melbourne. He belonged to same age group as mine and was quite a character himself. He was more like a friend to me than my Gym instructor. He came from a small village in Wellington, New Zealand, somehow landed in Australia, to do something big in life. He didn’t study more than school level, so found it easy to get attracted to a profession; which required less or no education at all, and that was Health, Hygiene and Fitness. Like I mentioned in my earlier post, every one of us, are instrumented with a feature, which is distinct, special, and extra-ordinary. And for him, it was his natural charm, convincing power, soft-skills. He used it all to his advantage and in no time, he became the STAR fitness instructor at the Gym at high end Melbourne Central. He was assigned to train me initially and soon enough we became friends & had nicknames for each other.

He had this amazing trust in me, somehow. I remember how he asked me to come with him to the hospital and sign the consent form as his guardian/friend before he underwent a surgery. I was very touched and since that day I never treated him as my Gym instructor, rather as a friend, close friend and may be like a family member.

He was reminding me today, of this weird tendency of mine then, to assemble people of diverse professional background to socialize together. We used to have fun watching: the types of things were discussed between them, how they behaved with each other, how they accepted-reciprocated each other’s conduct and how they open up as never before.

In no time; all of us in the group; started going to the same hair-dresser, used same dry-cleaner, used the same taxi driver, used the same Thai-take-away joint, used the same Gym instructor, used the same perfume shop and used the same travel agent, used the same coffee shop.

And when we got together once a month: senior manager of a Big five consulting found it rather more interesting to talk to our hair-dresser friend; while fellow Gym instructor friend got busy with my lady boss giving her health tips all evening. Taxi driver friend was busy pushing his business card at everyone and owner of the Thai café was offering 5% discount to all staffs of our company, Deloitte & Touché then. And me – I love serving as usual, observing & thinking; aren’t you having a time of your life? I was not wrong at all. That customary continued until I left Melbourne for good.

There was NO wisdom involved then – but today when reminded; I think: one of the best ways to grow as a person is to find friends who are opposite from us. These types of friends will encourage us to get outside of our comfort zone and try different things. They'll also give us a reason to see the world just a little bit differently than we did before. No? What you think?

How about I let you think about it - but for now I want to wish you a very goodnight and a much needed sunny day tomorrow. Love you all and yes….that’s right..S…M…I…L…E a lot tomorrow:)