How often, when, and WHY should women smile? Here’s one answer. I’ll tell you why it is time to bring the word “SMILE” back to its origins.
While a smile can be twisted, faked, turned upside down, and turned around from a complement into an insult; while a smile can make a person feel victimized, or vindicated…, in the end it’s none of the above.
When we separate the act of smiling from all of its labels, it is simply a bio-chemical reaction to a good feeling…., or the “learned” ability to create a good feeling in ourselves and others.
I feel good. I smile. You see me smiling, and you smile back. With the power of a magnetic force, a smile draws people toward us. Turn a smile upside down and the reverse is true, people move away from us (literally or metaphorically).
Before I began writing about it, and talking about it, I discovered its power quite by accident.
I was having a “bad hair day.” I had left the house in a hurry to do some errands, and then decided to stop by my favorite cafe for a coffee. Walking inside the cafe, I caught the reflection of myself in the window, and I was horrified. My hair! Look at my hair! I forgot to comb my hair.
Now, I’m of the generation that remembers the famous bathing suit ad: “Just wear a smile and a Jansen.” What the ad was reminding anxious young women was this:
“Don’t worry about your weight, or your shape. Just wear a smile and a Jansen.”
So I auto-smiled as I entered the cafe. It was the only thing I could “wear” that was “off the shelf.” That is, I could instantly put it on. By instantly shifting from a frown to a smile, I could automatically shift from anxiety to happiness…, and a flood of feel-good bio-chemicals followed.
That coffee stop has stayed with me forever. Why? Because in the end it was the SMILE that saved the day and turned disaster (for me and my ego) into a celebration. The smile on my face was the only thing that mattered. No one noticed my hair, my outfit, my fingernail polish, or the shoes I was wearing.
The only thing they noticed was THIS: my smile. How do I know this? I experienced it. Everyone I smiled at, smiled back at me. They didn’t see ME as I saw myself. They only saw my smile, and like a powerful magnetic force for good – that forced smile – shifted my body chemistry and in an instant, the world (my world) smiled back at me.
A wise businessman once told me: “I only do business with people I like.”
So who would you rather do business with, shop with, go on a hike with? A person who is anxious, distressed, and wearing their stress on their face, or a person who has learned the secret power of a smile?
In a similar fashion, wearing a smile at home, in the workplace, and at school, helps us drive our own body chemistry toward the happiness, health and joy we seek in our life each day.
ALEXIA PARKS, author, award-winning entrepreneur, and Virtual Mentor with the United Nations, is also Founder of Alexia Parks 10 TRAITS Leadership Institute.
