“If you’re not using your smile, you’re like a man with a million dollars in the bank and no checkbook.”
– Les Giblin
You may have been told to smile as a kid and there’s a good chance you passed the advice on to your own children. We tend to view smiling as an indication of being happy and who wants to come across as anything but happy?
But, did you know that smiling does a lot more than signal happiness to your friends’ eyes?
The Power of a Smile
Smiling has many possible benefits. Here are 5:
- Mental agility – “a smile on your face, and in your voice, will increase your own mental agility,” says Chris Voss [1]. “When people are in a positive frame of mind, they think more quickly, and are more likely to collaborate and problem-solve.”
- Calming others – a smile is catchy and it sets a relaxed tone to your voice, says Voss [1]. He argues that this is true even when you smile as you talk over the phone.
- Longevity – researchers, studying the smile intensity of Major League Baseball (MLB) players, on their cards, found a correlation to longevity.
- Stress reduction – “smiling during brief periods of stress may help reduce the body’s stress response, regardless of whether the person actually feels happy or not.”
- Mood improvement [2] – Researchers found that a minute of smiling improves one’s mood, even if it didn’t happen in a social setting. And “results suggest that adults who act happy … for a minute a day are likely to elevate their mood for at least a few seconds.”
Smiling is a very powerful tool when it comes to your health. It has possible mental, social, and emotional health benefits and it may even help you live longer.
Do you smile deliberately during your day?
Please share in the comments below.
[1] Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. HarperCollins.
[2] Neuhoff, Charles C., and Charles Schaefer. “Effects of laughing, smiling, and howling on mood.” Psychological Reports 91, no. 3_suppl (2002): 1079-1080.