The Power in Your Smile: This May Get You Laughing More Often
This May Get You Laughing More Often
I want to talk about the 2-second bridge to new friendships; the quick fix to your bad day. I want to talk about your first day of school and about the first friend you made from across the playground. I want to talk about your favorite food and what it feels like to eat it with your favorite person.
We don’t talk enough about smiling. We should be punctuating every sentence – every hello, goodbye, nice to meet you, I’m sorry, and I love you – with a smile. This seemingly small gesture packs an incredible punch. As we shift and grow and begin to experience different feelings and ways of being, we must not forget all that stems from one smile.
The power in your smile is vulnerability at its finest; it screams look-at-me-I-am-the-face-of-happiness and I-know-it’s-kind-of-cool-to-be-moody-and-dark-but-I-feel-so-good. While you might consider a few different ways to boost and whiten your smile, the power behind it comes from within you.
There’s a lot you may not know about this small trinket of sunshine that you get to carry around with you for the rest of time (smiling is free and always will be!). You’ve heard that a smile will get you the job, get you the girl, get you a new friend on your very large and very scary college campus…but what else can smiling do for you?
According to mindbodygreen.com, smiling has a ton of crazy good mental AND physical side effects. Feeling low today? One smile can trigger the release of endorphins from your brain. And in case you didn’t know, endorphins are quite literally your happiness hormones! Not only can the release of these hormones provide a boost to your mood, they’ve even been described as painkillers.
We’re born free, all-access pass to good health and happiness and it really is time that we start flaunting it! A genuine smile makes you more approachable – a quality that could open many new and exciting doors for you. A hearty laugh can fasten a severed bond or get the fibers in your body buzzing with new oxygen. We spend years researching ways to become better versions of ourselves. We spend a lot of money so someone can tell us how to eat and how to feel. It is still important that we remember the tools we were given at birth!
The next time you are walking down the street, smile at someone. The next time you are feeling not so great, smile at yourself. Because we have been conditioned to keep to ourselves, your first few times smiling at a stranger might feel…strange. I say, embrace it! Embrace this beautiful, peculiar thing that is baring all of your beautiful teeth for the world to see. And laugh – uncontrollably and un-apologetically – we will all thank you for it.