Day 18: Looking at you

This one may sound lame to some people, but I woke up today with an interesting idea for something new to try. I have a bad habit of rapidly looking away from someone when I visually greet a stranger or even greeting someone I know fairly well. I'm not quite sure if it's a self-confidence thing or perhaps a bit of shyness, but I set out to concentrate on practicing my eye contact today.

Every person I passed today, I made it a priority to focus on keeping those few seconds of visual contact when greeting them or just passing by. I obviously wasn't doing some creepy, constant stare, but more of a brief, steady glance. It's a habit I'd like to get into rather than nervously looking around the room.

Keeping it up at work was fairly simple, as knowing most of the folks there made it easy. The tricky part was when I hit up Coffee Underground after work to chill out, listen to my Zune, and read a little bit of Nick Hornby's last book. I wasn't staring at anyone in particular, but I did catch a girl at a nearby table look in my direction a couple times. Typically, I would immediately dart my eyes down, but I crammed down the nervous habit, smiled and held the gaze until she broke it off both times. That felt really good. :)

Perhaps not the most monumental of new things to try today, but it was exciting to me. I realize this sort of thing comes naturally to many people, but I'm vastly out of practice.