Laughter and Smiles

Find a mirror and observe your face for a while. Look very carefully at your face. It is said that the face is a reflection of the mind. Is your face shining or gloomy? Is it tense or relaxed? Is it joyful or irritated? Or is it more or less blank?

Smile at yourself in the mirror. Watch your smile. Does your smile look natural and comfortable? Is your facial expression too hard to express a big smile because of tension?

Relax your shoulders and close your eyes. Then smile gently and feel your brain. Can you feel your face and brain become relaxed with your smiling? Soon you will feel the same comfort in your heart, as there is an energy line that connects your heart to your brain.

Now laugh intensely, shaking your whole body. First, make your face laugh, then your chest, your belly button, your knees, and finally your toes. When you are laughing, every energy center in your body is wide open, from the top of your brain to the bottom of your feet. Now you will be brimming over with energy.

Incidentally, we are 30 times more likely to laugh if we are with others. Laughing makes us more productive and seem more competent at work. Simpler jokes are considered funnier than complex ones. Laughter helps deal with stress. Even smiling helps.

 

Smiles

During 2010, an interesting study was conducted at Wayne State University. Its purpose was to find out if a smile could influence humans’ life expectancy. Scientists studied baseball cards with famous baseball players produced before 1950. It turned out that players who did not smile lived around 72.9 years, players with a slight smile lived 75 years, and those with really wide smiles lived 79.9 years. Hmmm.


There is a connection between a smile and mood: even if you are forced to smile, you start feeling better. A wide smile equals 2,000 bars of chocolate. Our smile can influence others. People cannot keep scowling if you smile in front of them. Smiling is contagious, so we lose control over our facial muscles and smile back. A smiling person also looks more attractive and professional.

Benefits of Smiles

Scientists have found that a human fetus starts smiling in its mother’s womb. In his TED talk, “The power of smiling,” Ron Gutman said that child smiles 400 times a day on average, while just a third of adults smile more than 20 times a day.
The theory of interconnection between a person’s emotional state and their facial expression says that our mood and well-being improve when we smile, even if this smile is artificial. Smiling affects the production of endorphins in our brains and blood then transfers them through the whole body. Scientists believe that such “joy moderators” can seriously lessen physical pain and emotional discomfort.

My favorite task after I wake is to look in the mirror and smile. Try it now, or tomorrow, or everyday. Amazing how much it helps to start the day with a smile.

Smiles Work

NYU students smiled, on average a little over once a minute when they were with a smiling confederate and averaged only a third of a smile per minute when they were with a confederate who did not smile.

We judge people and objects to be more pleasant when we are smiling in comparison to when we are frowning, so if you want your interviewer to think positively about you, try smiling.