Smile
Pencils
Find a pencil or a pen. Hold it in your fingers and close your eyes. Now it is time to place the pencil horizontally in your teeth or your lips as if sucking on a straw.
What will you choose?
Try it!
What did you choose?
Walking into the Gym
On the days my exercise routine takes me to the gym, I arrive pretty early. I have been told I look like I am mad when I step into the welcome area. Really I’m not, I am just lost in my thoughts, trying to process and preview what lies ahead of me during the day.
On more than one occasion, Rochelle, who manages the front desk has reminded me to smile.
Muscles to Smile
Forty-three to muscles to frown and seventeen to smile.
That claim has been circulated for years. Yes, there are 43 muscles in our faces, and most are controlled by one nerve, the Facial Nerve. However, there has been no definitive answer to the number of muscles needed for each of those actions.
But what we can say is, we choose to shape our faces, displaying a desired emotion.
By contracting or expanding our facial muscles in different degrees and combinations, we can produce thousands of different messages. These can communicate
our overall emotional state,
our short-term feelings about our immediate environment,
our mental well-being,
our personality and mood,
our physical health,
our creditability
and whether or not we view others as being creditable.
Back to the pencils
There was an experiment about 30 years ago where the researchers used ‘pencils’ as I described in the first words of this post.
The researchers asked the volunteers to hold a pen/pencil in either their teeth, like a dog with a bone, or their lips as if they were sucking on a straw.
A group of people was asked to read some cartoons and rate how funny they thought they were.
The group that held the pencil with their teeth rated the cartoons funnier/more humorous than those who held them in their lips.
WHY?
Their facial expression started with either a ‘frown’ or a ‘smile,’ which influenced how they perceived their environment.
I move through my day with more energy when I set my mind to think positive thoughts. Nothing changes about what I have to get done; I perceive and act on things differently. Nothing else changed.
Our face often shows how ‘happy’ we are, and research proves, starting with a smile helps us process things in a more positive manner.
