Adding smiles into our lives
5 practical and powerful ways to add more friendly smiles, to situations in everyday life.
1 Exchanging: we look for many reasonable opportunities to send out a friendly smile to another person. It may be someone that we pass in the street, a college, a family member etc. As we send out a smile, we get a shot of positive mood enhancing hormones. A good way to do it is to make eye contact and then transform from a neutral expression to a friendly smile. If we are lucky, we get a smile back, boomerang effect and a bonus of more endorphin. So that was exchanging.
2 Pushing: The idea is not to be pushy about smiles. If we are in a company of people that make us smile or if we, hear, read, see something funny, something absurd exaggerated, we may grin or smile a mild smile. The idea is to get into the habit of giving these smiles a “little push “ so they become, Full Friendly Smiles. Here is an example. Suppose someone is sharing with us something funny on our smartphone and normally we would grin about it. The idea is to get into the habit of pushing this grin so it ends with all the characteristics of a Full Friendly Smile. So that was Pushing the smiles.
3 Swapping: this is when we interact with other people and sometimes there are disputes or even conflicts. We are human. The idea is that when we feel we are about to come out with a negative reaction in a conflict, we swap the initial 2 or 3 seconds of the reaction with a forced friendly smile. Best is to explain it with an example. Suppose we are in a conflict situation and someone asks us WHAT WAS THE REASON THAT YOU… and we would like to reply. WELL THE REASON IS. AH-AH swap 1; 2; 3 and then we can come out with whatever negativity that is left there. This short pause, with a forced friendly smile, may dissolves a lot of the negativity, and reduces the intensity of the conflict. So that was swapping.
4 Pasting: it is a bit like swapping but very different. In this method is used when we are on our own. May be there are other people there but we are not concerned with them. We have some thoughts in our head, maybe we are worried, maybe some sad thoughts, maybe we need to come to a difficult decision. Boooom we paste on our face a Full Friendly Smile 1; 2; 3. This simple action can reduce the intensity of our worries and can also help us make a better decision. So that was pasting.
5 Meditating: a very popular subject these days. The meaning is not to introduce a new form of mediation or to dispute anything the guru said. Just borrow a few breathing cycles and do something very simple. As we inhale, we smile a Full friendly Smile, when we exhale, we get back to a neutral expression. This shifting from smile, neutral, smile, neutral releases plenty of this mood enhancing magical cocktail and we are also exercising our smiling muscles that may suffer from unemployment. So that was meditating.