Smile and Discover How Your Life Changes

Some time ago, I proposed the challenge of going a month without complaining. Well, now I propose another challenge: smile 5 times a day and see how it makes you happier.

Choose any reason to smile and notice the changes. Surely there are plenty of things in your daily life that can draw a smile out of you: your children, a friend, your family, a coffee in the morning, a funny movie, a TV series, a book, an acquaintance you run into on the street, or anyone you interact with during the day. Find your reasons, smile, and watch how your life changes.

And to help you finally decide to do it, here are the benefits of smiling:

1. It conveys a positive message

Smiling tells your brain that everything is fine and helps it release the happiness hormones: serotonin and endorphins. This creates a circle of positivity: the smile conveys well-being to the brain, and the brain responds by releasing happiness hormones that will increase the likelihood of smiling.

2. Smiling makes us feel better

Charles Darwin already spoke of this phenomenon as the facial feedback hypothesis. It is clear that smiling responds to a state of well-being, but what does not seem so obvious is that the mere act of smiling makes us feel better. When we are going through a bad time, we should put on a smile; this will improve our emotions. The simple gesture of smiling already produces a change. That is why, when someone is going through a bad time, it is beneficial to make them smile.

3. Other people's smiles also make us feel better

Closely linked to the previous point. Simply someone else's smile makes us feel better. A study carried out with neuroimaging techniques has shown that another person's smile activates the reward circuit in our brain, a circuit related to happiness. Source of the study

That is why many hospitals have professional clowns to make people smile.

4. It lengthens life

Positive people live on average 7.5 years longer than negative ones, as shown by Bruno S Frey, of the University of Warwick, in an article published in 2011. Not only do they live more years, but they also enjoy better health.

5. It helps your immune system

Depressed patients have a weaker immune system and a worse prognosis in cancer. Optimists adhere better to treatment and do more to take care of themselves; pessimists neglect themselves (Alfonso Berrocal and Martínez Pintor of the oncology service of the Hospital Universitario de Valencia).

6. The smile is a social glue

Smiling brings us closer to other people. What impression does a serious or frowning person give you? And a person who smiles at you? There's no comparison, right? What a person who is smiling at you conveys is more pleasant and contagious.

The smile is evolutionarily contagious, and if not, let's remember when we were children and played at looking each other in the face to see who would lose the smile first. It's quite a challenge to our own brain.

7. It helps you relax

Nothing like a bath of laughter and smiles to relax us. It is a good physical exercise that gives a vibrating massage to the whole body. Laughing before going to bed reduces insomnia.

There are many benefits to smiling and no negative effects. So it's pretty clear: smile 5 times a day and notice how you become happier.

I invite you to try it for a month and to leave us your comments.