Is Smiling Overrated? Episode 27
According to my mostly unqualified research, 50% of people say that a smile is the first feature they notice about someone, there are 19 types of smile, we use between 5 to 53 muscles in the process and smiling stimulates the brain in the same way as consuming 2,000 chocolate bars.
“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
This investigation is about smiling. I asked a few friends whether they would like to contribute. Some gave more cheerful responses than my miserable dad friend Jason,
Smiling is overrated
True happiness lies in misery
Most of the time Jason is miserable. His misery makes us laugh. He’s even creating a book about being miserable. It's what makes him the unique, talented miserable man that he is. If you watch him closely he does actually smile and laughs a lot, but he wouldn’t like this caught on camera or published in a blog. On Sundays, we co-host the Random Dialogues Unradio Show. Our listener smiles.
So many of us are caught up in our heads, we might as well smile. Or perhaps encouraging people when they feel down just makes them frown. There’s nothing worse than that cheerful smiling person telling you to “Cheer Up” is there?
My natural resting face is miserable, how about you?
My other friend Rachel Norrington shared this about smiling:
Happy workers are 13% more productive, according to research by Saiid Business school
Perhaps you could add your comments about smiling below too?
I smile a lot of the time because it directly affects our mood and choices. If people walk around with faces like slapped arses they will feel that way and this limits them in a way they CANNOT understand because of their facial expression. Both from a brain perspective or Buddhist perspective #suffering is a state of mind. The Power of Now is also useful in this context😁😁😁 responded Jonathan MacDonald via the post on LinkedIn.
7 more reasons to smile
- Smiling lifts not only your mood it lifts those around you too.
- Alleviates stress
- It is contagious, smiling can be completely unconscious. We often mimic another person’s smile without realising
- Encourages longevity, apparently
- Triggers the release of “neuropeptides” and “neurotransmitters” like serotonin, dopamine and endorphins. Together these three neurotransmitters make us feel good, from our toes to our nose! This elevates our mood, relaxes our body and reduces pain
- Lowers blood pressure
- People find you more attractive when you smile
A smile is happiness you’ll find right under your nose – Tom Wilson
If you put a pen in your mouth it has the same effect on you as if you are actually smiling said Katrina Sargent when we caught up in the Business Buzz office! You can see us demonstrating in the image, just.
Below is a video I created a few years back about smiling. I had a cold sore and was learning how to edit, can you tell!
And Finally
At my Resilient Kids sessions, I encourage the children to smile. We always start with sharing jokes. Well, I share a couple of my terrible ones as an icebreaker, and then sometimes the kids share or write theirs or simply enjoy smiling and laughing alongside us on zoom!
Also, in each Resilient Kids Spaces Issue, I include a bad dad joke, scroll down to find February’s tweet linked in here.
I’ve also collected more dad jokes as a published journey in Thortspace below.
The wonderful rainbow image above was created by miserable dad Jason. It's also for the kids, as there’s a rainbow visualisation at the end of my sessions, the parents love it at their monthly online gathering too.
It’s good to have you here, I’ll send you each episode as it comes.
Keep Smiling?
