I was in a hurry at the supermarket, having parked in a carpark that I probably shouldn't have. As I was quickly scanning the aisles for that precious ingredient that was going to make all the difference to tonight's dinner, a little boy, sitting in a shopping trolley caught my eye and beamed an enormous smile at me. His whole face smiled from his sparkly eyes to cute crinkled up nose and of course, his lovely little baby teeth.
Psychology research has shown that a smile given gets a smile back from others. This engenders a feeling of self-positivity and enhances not only your own mood and sense of well-being, but the better mood and well-being of the other person. And it is catchy.
Smiling, as it turns out, also has truly remarkable effects.
A smile can enhance your life! There is a huge pile of research that says that a smile makes you not only feel good, but they will provide health effects and make those living around you feel positively influenced. A habit of smiling can make you live longer.
In the study Smile to Live Longer, the researchers from Wayne State University carried out a retrospective study. They controlled for education level, job and marital status etc, and found that the larger your smile, the longer you may live - even up to 7 years longer than those who didn't smile at all. Wow! That is 7 years of a longer and smilier life which is happier as well!
In 1988, Strack, Martin and Stepper did a clever experiment to figure out what a smile did in relation to perceiving humour in a cartoon. Participants were told to hold a pencil between their teethwhile performing a task that involved rating the degree of humour in the cartoon clip. Holding the pencil in the mouth this way forced the individuals to smile. Other participants were instructed to hold the pencil between their lips without touching the pencil with their teeth and this forces the muscles to contract resulting in a frown. The authors hypothesised that participants who were led to smile would judge the cartoons as funnier than participants who were led to frown.
Which is exactly what happened.
Try it for yourself and you can also experience this. The pencil can be lengthwise between the teeth, or hanging down from the tip between your teeth. Either way, you get the 'forced' smile.
In the study of how thoughts and feelings influence our immune function and vice versa (Psycho-Neuro-Immunology), the effects of smiles and positive mood on increasing immune function has been very well documented. Smiling increases immune cell activity and function. It’s been shown to reduce stress and lower blood pressure, making the very act of smiling a health giving act.
And making yourself smile actually makes you feel good even if you're not feeling good in the moment. A 2009 study out of Echnische Universität in Munich demonstrated conclusively that the brain's happiness circuitry is activated when you smile (regardless of your current mood). If you're down, smiling actually prompts your brain to produce feel-good hormones, giving credence to the adage, "fake it 'til you make it" when it comes to your state of mind. I prefer to say:
"Fake it until you become it"
It turns out that even how wide you smile has an influence on your life. A study out of UC Berkeley, performed over 30 years in which they examined the smiles of students in an old yearbook, had incredible results. The width of students' smiles turned out to be accurate predictors of how high their standardised tests of well-being and general happiness would be, how inspiring others would find them, even how fulfilling their marriages would end up. Those with the biggest smiles came up on top in all the rankings.
Research also shows that a smile makes us look more likeable and trustworthy to others. We appear more courteous and are seen as more competent. Nice to remember during an interview!
Sadly, we seem to smile less, the older we get. Kids smile up to 400 times a day but adults really don't keep up with those numbers. Over 30% of us smile more than 20 times in a day. But around 14% of us smile fewer than 5 times a day. That's sad. Imagine the sadness within the body as it is bereft of that life enhancing/life giving simple activity.
I love to do an exercise called the 'Inner Smile', an exercise that calls upon the Tao tradition and enhanced with NLP. It is smiling to myself and swallowing that smile down, so that my whole body gets the life enhancing benefits of that smile as it powerfully influences the heart centre, the gut centre and the whole body to calm and balance and fill it with joy.
So I beamed a blinding smile back at that little fellow in the shopping trolley. He helped me feel lighter and happier. I remembered it was not necessary to be experiencing my perceived stress the way I was. And I felt like smiling for others after that. Hopefully I got to influence somebody's mood and positivity for that day and get those average daily smiles up!
If you are interested in learning more about how we can use our physiology to influence our mental and emotional wellbeing contact me. I use this theory in treatment of depression and anxiety and other health sapping issues, as I understand deeply how important the heart and gut are in our overall wellbeing.