"Do you ever stop smiling?" One of my neighbors asked me that question on Monday, June 2, 2008 while I was walking back home from my mailbox after I got home from my job at LuxuryRealEstate.com. I was pleasantly startled by the question because it was asked by the young woman before me in a slightly exasperated way, as though it had been building inside of her for some time. She said that she has seen me on numerous occasions walking nearby and I always have a smile on my face. She found herself worrying that I was either hiding something or crazy.

I assured her that neither is the case and that I most assuredly do stop smiling from time to time. Looking back, I wish that next I would have pointed out that I find much to smile about in life and I try to just prepare for hard times and then not let bad things or hurtful words cause me to be unhappy, bitter or unforgiving. But what actually came out of my mouth was, "I guess I'm just a happy-go-lucky kind of guy." That's not strictly true because I do strive to plan and live wisely instead of just throwing caution to the wind, but I am most certainly happy.

Despite my less-than-profound answer, the young woman said that she was glad that I was happy because when she sees me smiling she often feels a desire to smile, as well. I like sharing happiness with other people, even if it's completely by accident, so I was filled with joy to hear that and I smiled even more. I thanked her for stopping me and telling me all of this. Then I introduced myself so I wouldn't be a stranger and she introduced herself. I love making new friends.

I bring this up because I read an interesting article in CNN on the same day as this experience, entitled "Want to be rich? Don't get too happy." I was fascinated by this article because, according to its findings, people who claim to be perfectly happy and content are not usually as successful as people who are somewhat less happy. I personally find it a bit questionable to try to quantify happiness since everyone's definition is probably slightly different and there's no clear way to delineate between the different numbers on a 1-10 scale. Also, I'm sure that a person's answer would change on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis.

For the purposes at hand, though, I'll just push these objections aside for the moment and talk about something interesting I find from the results. People who rated their happiness as 10 out of 10 on the scale were less likely to be as successful as moderately happy people. Also, perfectly happy people were less likely to save money or plan ahead for hard times, while less-happy people exercised a bit more protectiveness and foresightedness. I think that if the survey takers were to check up in the next few months or years on the people who claimed to be perfectly happy, they would find that their happiness wouldn't always last.

Life has a way of pulling the rug out from under us when we get too comfortable. I apologize if I sound too pessimistic. I just want people to be wise and not be too unhappy all the time or too happy if their happiness is based upon a false hope. I recommend living wisely so that we can be very happy but never perfectly content to stay the way we are. I want to always grow and so I do not intend to be perfectly happy in my current state. However, if I worry too much about my imperfections or desire to grow too quickly, I will probably waste time and energy being miserable or sorry for myself. I prefer being happy for a long period of time by making small improvements each day. Out of small and simple things are great things brought to pass.

Do I ever stop smiling? Of course I do. But the trick is that I start smiling again and again.