Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Smile

Ohk, so it was again a big break from blogging, for me and this time there was no reason as such. Anyways, following the old saying of better late than never, I've decided to scribble something today. I was wondering if what should I begin with and this was not because of dearth of ideas, rather because of so many contemporary things happening in the areas of terrorism, economics, politics, sports these days, all at once. So, I decide to defer my opinion on these issues for some other time and meanwhile, I've my favorite thing to talk about – Smile.

Mother Teresa once said, "Peace starts with a smile." There is no second opinion on the ability of smile to completely change your mood, your outer appearance, and the impact you have on others: possibly even more so than positive words of affirmation and encouragement. Smile is one of the best expressions of emotions while somebody is having pleasure or is in good mood (apart from those regular formal gestures). You know what is the best part of an emotion is? It is that facial expressions are universally almost the same, regardless of what part of the world we are from. This does suggest that we as humans are hard-wired to express and respond to emotions in a particular way, rather which it being brought about through our conventional or cultural wisdom.

The sight of a person smiling triggers the observer's brain area associated with feelings of happiness or pleasure. Remember this old saying: "If you smile, the whole world does indeed smile with you" If ever you're feeling low, or life seems to be handing you just a bit more than you can handle, a very good place to begin feeling better is in your very own bathroom mirror. Practice smiling at yourself early in the day, or before you leave the house, because it can change how you're feeling, and therefore your whole day may change because of it. This does work so for your own sake - try it if ever you need to.

Even if you aren't near a mirror, and you're feeling less than average, learn to become aware of the smile process, and practice smiling and actually feeling the difference in your inner feelings. The difference may only be small at first, but it may be enough to change your day, and more.

Like everything in life: If at first you don't succeed, then fake it 'til you make it!

Regardless of how you're feeling right now, please smile at least once for the sake of this post. And keep smiling as often as you can - because it does suit you; you know - it really does!


 

1 comment:

Quaintzy Patchez said...

:) long time!

Well, like they say "We laugh and cry in the same language"

and this reminds me of that movie (Page 3 or Life in a Metro) Konkona Sen Sharma looks into the mirror and says "Kya main sach mein muskuraana bhool gayi hoon?"