We are well aware that it is true that happier people smile more, but it might also be just as true that smiling people are happier, have less depression, and maybe even enjoy longer life. For a long, long, time now, we have been curious about the benefits of smiling. The earliest recorded scientific study was done in the 1860’s by French anatomist Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne, using electrical currents to make people’s faces smile.
Whether you knew it or not, you have a smile muscle! Your smile muscle goes from your mouth to your cheekbone and it is the physical mechanism by which the corners of your mouth curve upward when something causes you to feel happy or joy. Of course, you can force a smile, but you can easily tell if a smile is genuine. A true smile also activates an additional facial nerve connected to the tiny muscles at the corner of your eyes. Laugh lines (also called crow’s feet) are truly a symptom of genuine joy.
In an article (How Smiles Control Us All) excerpted from The Face of Emotion, Eric Fenzi, MD, PhD, says one study concluded that those who smile bigger, live longer. Looking at the photos players had taken for baseball cards showed a correlation between those who had a big smile and a long life. If you would like to live a long and happy life, smile more, because the guys who had the “broadest smiles lived, on average, seven years longer than those who smiled the least.”
If smiling has not traditionally come easily to you, there is help! Here is a website with 51 Things That Will Make You Smile. A couple of my favorites are to have a child do your hair and commit a random act of kindness. Of course, YouTube makes it pretty easy now. Watch the episode of The Carol Burnett Show where Tim Conway was the dentist learning to use Novocain and shoots first his own hand, then his own leg. It is only 2 minutes and 48 seconds long, but it has had over 1,700,000 viewings. It may just be that Harvey Korman is genuinely out of control laughing, but I think you will find it can make you smile.
This week, get serious about putting on your genuine smile. It will be good for you and for everyone else you come into contact with. Tell others to smile more because it’s the way you are going to have a long life.
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Rev. Debra Basham
Voice: (269) 921-2217 Email: debra@scs-matters.com https://scs-matters.com http://ImagineHealing.info http://SurgicalSupport.info Small Changes … Infinite Results™
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” ~Mother Teresa Tips from 5 April 2010 to 6 August 2012 are here: Archived Tips |