Day 4: is it other people, or is it just me?

After spending a few days out of office, I was back to elevators and experiments. Another quiet day: people seem to take stairs rather than an elevator. It seems to be difficult to find an elevator filled with people.

Again, I waited in a lobby for other people and when a person showed up, I got to the same elevator with him. I smiled, thought of positive things and actually started to think about my own feelings and attitude. I felt like I should say something to this person, start a discussion with him. I never get that feeling in an elevator, usually I just want to stand there quiet and get out as soon as possible.

So maybe the experiment isn't about how you can affect other people, maybe it is changing yourself? Interesting.

Day 3: First results(?)

Frustrated by previous days of experiments (or actually lack of people to experiment with), today I waited on the lobby for people to go to an elevator. I found my first victim and walked after her to the elevator. I smiled and thought positive things about her. The result: she spent the whole time looking at her shoes and seemed quite uncomfortable. Not what I was looking for.

I found my next victim on the afternoon. This time we were both waiting for an elevator in the lobby. Again: smile and happy thoughts. Suddenly this person started to talk with me. I knew this person by look, but we have never done any work together and I even don't remember his name. But he asked me how I am doing, how is business with my customer and so on. We talked for the whole ride from 7th to 1st floor.

Strange. People never start to talk to me in an elevator. Maybe this experiment is working after all?

 

Day 2: no results yet

Seems like all the people in my office are avoiding the elevator. Only once I ended up in an elevator where there were other people in. I did the test: smiled and thought about happy things, but the other people left the elevator on the next floor. I think I might have gotten a curious look from one of the people, not sure. But I wouldn't yet call this a result.

Plan for tomorrow: I will wait on the lobby and when other people go to an elevator, I will follow them. Let's see what happens.

Day 1: The experiment begins

So, the idea is to see what effect your own attitude and mindset has on other people. This is done by a simple experiment:

Step 1: Walk in an elevater filled with other people. 

Step 2: Smile, but don't say anything

Step 3: Think of all the positive things you can about the other people in the elevator (no matter if you know them or not). 

Step 4: See what happens. 

The idea behind the experiment is that by changing your own mindset you have a big effect on the other people. Since I have tendency to be quite skeptic about experiments like this, I decided to try this on my work place and document the results on this blog. 

Day one of the experiment: nothing to report unfortunetaly. For some reason all the elevators where empty for the whole day. So nothing to report so far. I'll have to continue tomorrow and see what happens.