Thai people are smiling people

21 Oct Thai people are smiling people

Getting up early on a Sunday for a special reason…

It is Sunday, 7 o’clock in the morning. Should I get up? Well, actually I have a day off today so I could turn myself around again and go back to sleep. But I do not want to, I rather want to make the most of the day and explore as much as I can. So, I put on my dress, my flip flops and go for a coffee at the local market. While enjoying this quite strong ice coffee I look around and what I see is a few local people that all have something in common: They do not rush, they do not stress and they all do smile. This ist what makes me happy and yes, it is also a reason why I like to get up early.

The “struggle” of the daily (german) life…

Time flies by – it has been 4 weeks already since I started this job in Thailand. Before I got here, I lived a quite busy life in Germany. I studied a lot, had two jobs beside and went to the gym 4-5 times a week.  My daily life was structured, I followed my routines and stayed focused.  If somebody would have asked me if I felt stressed in some moments, I would have disagreed.

Finish this, go on with this, and then? Repeat?

My lovely workmate: Always smiling, never stressing and doing a good job!

Thailand kind of change my point of view in different ways. When I look back, I am aware that I actually stressed myself a lot. At this point I want to emphasize the term “I stressed myself”.  The stress I am talking about was not caused by any third parties – but only by myself. Every week, every day, I challenged myself so much that there was no time to notice the rush.

No matter if we are talking about my apprenticeship or the exams in my studies – I finished both earlier than expected and completed both with better marks than everybody else did so far. I always had the need to prove myself that I can do it – which is basically good thing, at least when you do not put yourself under pressure. I am not telling you these personal things because I am proud of it – I share it with you because I want to let you know how the culture and the people impacted and changed my mind. I am sure that there is more people around, living their daily life and forgetting what life is about: To live, to enjoy and also to take breaks sometimes.

The Thai lifestyle: Stop complaining & stressing – start smiling!

Little Jasmin. She does not go to school because her parents can not afford it.

Life is different in Thailand. As I said before – if you get up early to have a coffee at the market you catch at least 10 smiles of local people. And if you accumulate these 10 smiles with the other 10 smiles that you caught on the way to the market you already count 20. The remarkably thing of all these smiles and good vibes around is, that those people are mostly poor and may not have a reason to smile. But they do – because they do not stress themselves, they see the glass as half full and not half empty – they live for the day and not for tomorrow.

It does not matter if it is a Sunday morning and they are still sleepy – they are happy and never burden you with problems. Even with only little English they try to communicate: most of the times, the conversations I had with locals stopped after “Good morning! Where do you come from? You like Thailand?”. But anyway, that is enough to spread some good vibes around. And that is what it is all about, isn’t it? 😊

Being ambitious is good – as long as you take your breaks…

Cleaning and smiling on the boat.

What I want to express is: Life is not about being the best, not about being rich, not about being ambitious all the time. In these terms I do not want to say that I am not ambitions anymore – for sure I checked out the gym prices before I even unpacked my suitcase and of course I hired a bike while everybody drives around with scooter (these are just two spontaneous examples :D) – BUT and that is the lesson of today’s article: I take my breaks and I spend more time with smiling to others.

Change your mindset and start to adapt the “Thai smile”…

The always smiling massage girls from next door.

While writing this blog post I may got a little emotional in some parts – it was not my intention to spam you with any kind of “live your dream and travel the world” quotes from google, please do not get me wrong.

I share my experiences to motivate people in changing their perspective, to smile more and not to forget to take breaks in daily life.

You should give it a try – what about tomorrow morning? 7 am? 😊