The power behind a Simple Smile.
It's massively under-valued, if you ask me!
I’ve been listening to a few podcasts recently, and for one reason or another they are encouraging me to give a big ol’ toothy smile out into oblivion to prove some kind of theory.
One was about gratitude and the connection the smile has towards experiencing greater inner peace. Another about the power we have over our thoughts, and a smile can be a small yet impactful enough change to our physiology to regain conscious control of our thoughts.
Strange, huh?
But the more I did this, smile like a crazy person to myself in the car, I got curious… I wanted to see for myself, with the support of some science and academic writing, if smiling really does have that big of an impact!
I’ll loop you in next time on the specifics for my smiling experiments, but for today, I wanted to share with you some of the benefits of SMILING!
SMILING reduces stress.
It is proven that smiling reduces the amount of cortisol (the stress hormone) racing around one’s body, it’s because the cortisol is replaced with naturally emitted endorphins. We’d much rather be filled with endorphins!
SMILING is contagious.
Nine times out of ten, when someone smiles at you, waves at you, wishes you ‘good morning’ or a ‘good day’, pays a compliment - that feeling of euphoria and happiness spreads to another. And it’s this never-ending, ever-spreading circle of natural endorphin happiness.
SMILING boosts our mood.
When you picture someone in a good mood, someone who’s happy, joyful, successful - whatever word fits for you in relation to that ‘good mood’, who do you picture? I am almost certain that your person would be looking up to the sky, with a tall posture, head held high and a smile plastered on their face. Why don’t you try for a second, just smiling ear to ear? For no other reason other than you can? Come on, a big ol’ toothy smile like I’ve been doing all week!
The POWER behind a SIMPLE SMILE is that we have the POWER to bring that good mood to us now. We don’t have to wait for something good to happen to us to smile…
How good does it feel to smile, just because you can?
Pretty bloody good (as we’d say in ‘Straya 🇦🇺)
I’ll be back to you in the next newsletter with my experiment (be sure to subscribe so you can read along!) and how one can implement more smiling throughout your own day. It sounds bizarre, but in a world that is all things creatively-chaotic, cortisol-inducing … it may be a timely and healthy reminder!
Big smiles, ‘til the next one!
☀️ Georgie