Family Health Beauty Info

Keep smiling

Keep smiling

This information comes from InStyle magazine (April 2007, ‘5 ways to improve your mood’, by Robin Powell, pp.184–186)

We often think our physical body and our emotions are two separate, yet they are entwined and constantly interacting. We know we clench our teeth when we’re angry, hunch our shoulders when we’re stress and smile when we’re happy, but these emotions go both ways.

Grit your teeth and frown and you’ll start to feel crabby; tense up your shoulders and neck, and feel anxiety start to flow. In the same way, smiling, even when you don’t feel like it, can trigger positive emotions. Blink- John Gotman explains power of face expressions.

The trick is to smile not just with your mouth, but also with your eyes. A real smile involves all those tiny muscles around the eyes. You may need to practise, but once you are a good smile-faker, researchers have found that the electrical impulses set off in the brain are the same from a faked smile, as those resulting from a genuine laugh.

Pretending to feel good has another impact – on other people. Emotional states are contagious: when you confront people with aggression, they give it right back, and when you smile and greet people with a pleasant manner, they tend to respond in kind.

This flow-on effect means that even if you start your day feeling crabby, pretending to be sunny can create enough warmth around you that you can end up experiencing positive emotions.

Silvan Tompkins practically invented the field of ‘nonverbal behaviour’ through close observation of emotional expressions in people. See his book

See related topic

Improve your mood with exercise

Count your blessing

Be daring

Find a scent

What did you think of this article? I welcome your feedback

Have a lovely day

Lucie

www.familyhealthbeautyinfo.com

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