I have just commented on a Twitter post about smiling… Thanks Clare Seed at Tidal Training! https://www.tidaltraining.co.uk/
10 reasons to smile
It makes you attractive
It changes your mood
It helps you stay positive
It makes you seem successful
It lowers your blood pressure
It relieves stress
It is contagious
It boosts your immune system
It releases endorphins
It lifts the face and makes you look younger
All great….. but to me the most important thing is that it makes other people feel better. I smile a lot especially at people I don’t know. At school we had something called the Dean Close Hello! Whenever we walked around school we tried to encourage everyone to say hello to each other. Even if you didn’t teach them or know them and for the kids it was a challenge! Especially with mobile phones but phones could be taken off you if you wandered around looking at them from lesson to lesson. I always said hello and smiled! Some of the pupils did look at me strangely but I was used to that! Even if it worried them, just smiling made me feel better!
Generally, If you smile at someone I do think it is difficult for them not to smile back. A smile is something that is easy to pass on. Much like yawning, smiling is contagious.
Yeah right, I hear you cry but honestly a DR…Eva Eitzo a psychiatrist, who co authored a book called The Beauty Prescription, ‘The complete formula for looking good and feeling beautiful’ describes how we have mirror neurons that fire up when we see action! Mirror neurons enable us to copy or reflect behaviour we see in others and have been linked to the capacity for empathy. It’s a great tool if you meet someone that you don’t know and should make them feel better and then you are on to a winner. If you make them feel better, especially if you do not speak their language….it warms peoples hearts.
Admittedly if someone is feeling really sad, bereft and down you may feel that smiling is not the way forward but…even a big smile and a suggestion of a cup of tea will make them feel better….
On googling Smiling I discovered that even forcing a fake smile according to another DR…. Sivan Fincal can legitimately reduce stress and lower your heart rate making you feel better….and this is a cracker…A study performed by a group at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that people who could not frown due to botox injections were happier on average than those who could frown. Not that I am promoting botox…but hey if you are not a happy person it might help!!!
I hope you are smiling now!
This is not what I was going to blog about today but as I read more I got sucked into it! Keep smiling everyone…try it out tomorrow…when stuck in traffic…which I hate…try smiling and see if it makes you feel better but even more importantly, smile at everyone tomorrow and see if they smile back…then you feel happier and you have made someone else feel happier.
Would love to hear your views at hello@juliekentmbe.com
JK
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