The other day I was out doing yardwork.\u00a0 I was feeling blue, frankly.\u00a0 Not from the yardwork–that’s mundane, but not depressing.\u00a0 Rather, I was bearing the accumulated weight of inner angst and social disappointment as I edged along the sidewalk.<\/p>\n
Along comes a pedestrian.\u00a0 I paused the weedeater to allow her to pass.\u00a0 As she walked by, she unexpectedly gave me the nicest smile.\u00a0 [It didn’t hurt that she was an attractive 20-something-year-old female.]<\/p>\n
Though it might seem like a small thing, it immediately buoyed my spirits.\u00a0 I was surprised what an impact the simple gesture had on my attitude, not just for a few minutes, but lasting well into the next day.<\/p>\n
This has gotten me to think about smiling, and how I should be doing more of it.\u00a0 Smile academic Marianne LaFrance<\/a> offers the following reasons to smile<\/a>:<\/p>\n smiles have multiple psychological and social effects like opening up social connections, reducing interpersonal conflict, softening embarrassing situations, enhancing first impressions, upping the likelihood of positive results both personally and professionally, to say nothing of increasing the likelihood of having a more satisfying private life, and maybe even a longer one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So I’m striving to smile more often, and working on my smile.\u00a0 It’s kind of lame to practice smiling, but I noticed that my smile looks a bit more “Botox” (feigned) than I like.\u00a0 And though it’s sometimes challenging to distinguish between a fake and genuine smile<\/a>, I want mine to look as Duchenne<\/a> as possible. LaFrance explains the difference<\/a>:<\/p>\n People think they can tell by looking at what the overall face looks like, but in fact there is one muscle [that shows sincerity]. It\u2019s a muscle, called the obicularis occuli<\/em>, that encircles the eye socket. Most people don\u2019t pay very close attention to and it\u2019s very hard to deliberately adopt. So when people genuinely smile, in a true burst of positive emotion, not only to the corners of the mouth, controlled by the zygomaticus major<\/em>, but this muscle around the eye also contracts. This causes the crows feet wrinkles that fan out from the outer corners of the eyes and its also responsible for folds in the upper eyelid. Most people can\u2019t do that deliberately.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n If my anecdote isn’t convincing enough, here’s a short TED talk which highlights the benefits of smiling.<\/p>\n