The Power Of The Smile

This January we’ve been working on Balance as our theme for the month. Many of us are bringing our lives back in check. We’ve made New Years Resolutions, or even New Life Resolutions. Yet sometimes, as part of this, as we become serious about where we want this year to go, we can forget some of the basics, some of the fundamentals. I can’t help but share this extract from my latest book that talks about the power of the smile. I hope you enjoy it…

Smile. Go on. Do it. Now.

How did it feel?

I tried it once. Obviously, I’ve smiled more than once, but I remember when I tried it as a strategy for the first time. I wasn’t in the mood to smile but I forced myself to use my 43 facial muscles to smile. It was fantastic. My mood lifted. I felt better.

Despite my time on this planet I hadn’t discovered this. Sure, I smiled a lot and was a positive person. But I hadn’t realized that I could choose to smile when I didn’t feel like smiling. The act of smiling would then lift my mood and even help me smile more. I could choose to be sad or I could choose to smile and be happier.

I’m not trying to share some amazing life-changing experience. I didn’t develop some psychedelic high or anything crazy like that. But my mood ever so slightly improved. For the cost of just beaming a small smile the benefit of an uplift in mood is extremely worthwhile.

There are pages across the internet that will also tell you that it takes more of your facial muscles to frown than to smile. The truth is we’re not all the same, we smile in different ways. There are different types of smiles and frowns and some of us even recruit a different number of facial muscles than others to form our unique smile. What’s important is that smiling improves your mood. When you’re down, angry, depressed, grumpy, obnoxious or irritable it will help lift you up.

Smiling isn’t a miracle cure nor is it a prevention, but it can help. And the best part – it’s free. You can smile any time you choose to.

Never go a day without smiling. No matter how hard it is, when life’s really got you down, chose to smile.

If you liked this extract then please check out the book on Amazon.

Main photo by Daniel Go.