It doesn’t really cost anything to be nice.
There’s a story that’s been going around for many years and is credited to Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. He is best known as head coach for the University of Alabama football team where he led the team to six national championships and thirteen conference championships in twenty-five years.
As we head into fall (and football season!), it’s important to remember that life lessons appear in many forms, and from unexpected places. In our everyday lives we come in contact with people and have an opportunity with each interaction to be a force for good, and to help other people just by being nice. As the story from Coach Bryant illustrates, it’s often the easy, right, and free thing to do—just be nice.
"I had just been named the new head coach at Alabama and was off in my old car down in South Alabama recruiting a prospect who was supposed to have been a pretty good player and I was havin' trouble finding the place. Getting hungry I spied an old cinder block building with a small sign out front that simply said Restaurant."
Coach Bryant meets the owner of the restaurant, who thinks that the stranger is out of place in their small southern town, but he’s proven wrong as the men talk. A simple act of keeping a small promise has a big effect on how the men view each other, and how a favor is returned decades later.
Read the full story on the Stories, Etc. blog.