Intentional Smiling for a Quick Happiness Win
You already know how to get a quick happiness win using a Notecard Gratitude. Would you like to know another way to get a quick happiness win?
Smile! :)
You may already have experienced this quick win when you’ve smiled at someone. Maybe you’ve smiled at your spouse, your kids, a coworker, a friend, or perhaps even a total stranger. Usually, you’ll get a smile in response and this makes both of you feel happier.
If you haven’t smiled at someone recently, give it a try and see what happens. I enjoy smiling at strangers because it is often unexpected and I almost always get a smile back. If I don’t get a smile back, it’s a reminder to me that the person probably really needed the smile that I offered today!
There is a lesser known way to use a smile for a quick happiness win: smiling for yourself.
You may notice that you smile when you think of someone you love or when you are writing your gratitudes for the day or when you see a beautiful flower or sunset. Positive emotions make us smile automatically. But did you know that it works in reverse, too?
It turns out that your mind doesn’t care why you’re smiling. The mere act of smiling will make you happier, even if it has no basis in emotion. You can use this “quirk” about your brain to make yourself happier.
At random times during the day, when you think of doing so, smile. Even if you don’t feel like smiling, curve the corner of your mouth upward and hold it until you begin to feel a shift occur. Start with a small smile, like the one Mona Lisa has. If you feel your smile wanting to expand, go with that feeling, but otherwise, just keep the smile small to begin.
Once you feel a shift of negative to positive emotion, embrace the emotion. You may even want to find something to be grateful for in that moment to enhance the positive feeling. Remember, we can use our happiness “tricks” together for even greater effect! :)
If you find that the physical act of smiling works to shift your mood more positively, you can try integrate this practice intentionally into your day. Just as you might be doing with your gratitude writing, choose a habit (like brushing your teeth) that will act as a trigger to get you to smile.
For example, if you choose teeth brushing as the habit, each time you finish brushing your teeth, smile. Hold the smile until you feel the shift to a positive emotion. (You might feel silly doing this at first, so stick with it!) Once you’ve developed this new habit, you might find that you really look forward to brushing your teeth! :)1
On our path to increased happiness, we are working against our brains which by far prefer to latch on to “negative”2 emotions rather than positive. When we stumble upon a trick like Intentional Smiling, that is both simple and easy (well, in my opinion — your mileage may vary), it is worth our time to investigate and at least give it a try.
Are you smiling right now? :)
I don’t have kids, so I don’t know if this would work, but here’s an experiment for you parents to try (and let me know how it goes!): Join your kids when they brush their teeth and teach them to “force” a smile afterward (or before?). If you do this repeatedly, do your kids enjoy brushing their teeth more? Be sure to smile with them so that both of you feel the positive emotions. :)
You might notice that I put the word “negative” in quotes when I refer to emotions. I do this because emotions are not actually positive or negative. We categorize emotions into “good” and “bad” buckets because we don’t like feeling some of them but ALL of our emotions are good because they are trying to tell us something.
Emotions are simply information. Some of them are not fun to feel, but even the difficult ones serve us by alerting us to something we need to pay attention to.