Smiling Can Trick You Into Happiness
Sometimes we feel sad and our families respond by telling us to smile more. It’s not exactly the right kind of advice to give, especially if it invalidates our problems, including those who have had chronic battles with depression. However, despite this invalidation, there might be a good reason to smile intentionally.
According to researchers at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and Texas A&M University, smiling can make one happier. Once a hotly debated topic amongst psychologists, more research is underway to determine if the act of smiling itself can actually make us genuinely happy.
Utilizing meta-analysis, the aforementioned researchers determined that facial expressions do in fact, elicit some impact on our overall feelings. For example, if we are frowning, we are more likely to be sad, and if we are smiling, we are more likely to feel happier.
That being said, it’s not reasonable to assume that you can just smile your way into happiness. Despite this, smiling once in a while may prove to be fruitful, for better or for worse.
The Benefits of Smiling
While smiling is often involuntary responses to random things in our environment, it can be just as powerful to voluntarily smile upon a whim. The reasons why we may want to smile more voluntarily include:
- Looking more attractive, successful, and younger towards others, fostering further acquaintanceships
- Attracting more positive emotions from within, invoking self-confidence
- Unconsciously elevating the moods of others through social contagion
- Increasing your immune system and lowering your blood pressure through various hormones like dopamine, which induce pleasure and pain relief
Tips for Smiling More
It’s not easy to consciously smile all the time. After some brainstorming, I’ve come up with the following suggestions:
- Conjure up prior memories of when you were last happy
- Remind yourself when you get up that you will try to smile for at least 1 thing today
- Do something nice for yourself
- Practice smiling while in front of the mirror…then graduate to people
- Create physical cues to remember to keep smiling, but don’t over-exert yourself either
- Immerse yourself with funny and uplifting shows, movies, and music
- Spend more time with positive-oriented people
- Take note if the other person you are talking to is already smiling and follow their lead
While smiling is not always natural, faking it until we make it will eventually trick us into becoming increasingly happier. While it cannot cure any conditions, perhaps our circumstances will be easier to manage.
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