How are you?  

What was your response?  

I was just waiting to see what was your response.  

Now most commonly, people’s response is “good, tired, busy, or fine.”  

Okay, they’re not that exciting.  

So when that happens, it’s almost like a formality when you say hi to someone, it’s “hi, how are you?”  

“Yeh, good, how are you?”  

There’s nothing in there, right, it’s like we’re on autopilot when we do it.  

So I listened to talkback radio the other day and I was fascinated.  

This guy, Neil Mitchell, he’s on talkback radio, callers are calling in and the first thing they all do when they call in (now they’re probably listening in so they can hear others ask) is they say, “Hi, Neil, how are you?  

It’s so funny because sometimes he gets reasonably frustrated, because it’s like, I’ve just answered every other caller before you with the same answer, which is “good.”  

But there was no need to say it, we do it out of habit.  

Here’s the thing, though, if you can say something a little bit different, or a little bit that was unexpected when I say “how are you?”  

And this is something that my mentor Matt Church does, and I absolutely love it.  

So when people ask him, “How are you?”  

He says, “I’m happy.”  

And it’s really funny, because when he says “I’m happy”, most of us who might have just been on the call listening in, it’s almost like, Oh, why are you happy?  

Like you want to naturally ask a follow up question, “Why are you happy?”  

So I was just on a call with a client of mine and the whole team were sitting around a table, and we were talking about exactly this.  

And one of the girls said that every now and then when someone says, “how are you?”, she says, “I’m wonderful.” 

And it’s interesting, and I asked her, “how do people respond when you say that?”  

And she said, always they go “oh”, almost like they’re taken back because they didn’t expect it.  

Secondly, then they go, “oh my gosh, why are you wonderful?”  

And it opens up a more interesting conversation than just, “how are you?” “Yeah, good.”  

So when you next ask someone, “how are they”, just pay attention to what they say and you’ll find these common responses that come up.  

But when you are asked, “how are you” just try answering with something different, something unexpected and something that will make the other person go, “tell me more.”  

Just a little bit more interesting in our everyday, and get us off that autopilot.  

Because after all, You are Valuable