For when you’re struggling talking to people, here’s a universal lesson from a bad day of sales calls.

People are like mirrors.

They reflect our own disposition.

I used to reach out to at least 15 strangers a day as part of the Heineken Sales Team. And I had to learn this the hard way.

Whether this is only in our heads or not, what we see in other people, how they feel and their overall mood, is a reflection of our selves.

So when we’re in a good mood, everyone’s happy from our point of view. The whole world smiles back at us. But bad moods also mean the opposite. Everything is gloomy, sad, or wants nothing to do with us.

On a particularly bad day of sales calls, this was exactly what I had to learn to understand.

I could’ve sworn the majority of the people I talked to that day wanted me out of their sight. I thought, they were annoyed at my face. But really, they were just mirrors. They weren’t in the mood to talk to me because I wasn’t keen on talking to them in the first place.

Their scrunched up eyebrows were my scrunched up eyebrows reflected back at me.

Lesson learned: You get what you give.