What does a smile really mean in the grand scheme of things?

Imagine you’re walking by a person on the street. They look you in the eyes and give you a big smile. I bet you feel better already. The energy of that smile travels over and makes you smile back.

It’s infectious, and I bet it’s what you need right now.

But, why?

Yes, life is challenging all over the world in these uncertain times. Everyone is battling something and could use a little pick-me-up in the energy department, but there’s more to it than that.

You need to know that a smile is possible right now. It’s a sign of hope.

When you see someone else filled with joy, you know it’s possible for you too. Even if you don’t have anything on your mind to smile about, the act is simple.

Smiling is something you can do for yourself anytime, even if you’re not feeling happy at the moment, and it leads you down the road to more positive energy. Even if your life is full of things you can’t do, you know you can, as the saying goes, turn that frown upside down.

Smiling takes effort, though. Why should you bother? Isn’t it better to walk around with a mean mug, so others know you’re about business?

Here are three reasons you should make a point to smile more each day.

A smile lifts you when you’re feeling down

When you’ve been upset about something, how often do you think about cracking a smile? Not much, I’m pretty sure, but making a point to smile can help quickly pull you out of your funk.

Scientific studies suggest a smile can trick your brain into thinking you’re happy. Your body will produce endorphins, a natural painkiller, to alleviate your sadness.

Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Texas A&M, wrote a paper looking at 50 years of data testing whether facial expressions can lead people to feel emotions connected to those expressions.

Nicholas Coles, a UT Ph.D. student in social psychology and lead researcher on the paper, found these results:

Using a statistical technique called meta-analysis, Coles and his team combined data from 138 studies testing more than 11,000 participants from all around the world. According to the results of the meta-analysis, facial expressions have a small impact on feelings. For example, smiling makes people feel happier, scowling makes them feel angrier, and frowning makes them feel sadder.

Making a point to smile more, especially in difficult times, could be just what you need.

A smile helps ease your anxiety

Feeling anxious is pretty much standard these days. There’s so much to worry about. It’s no wonder people are doing all they can to escape their emotions, like drinking liquor and taking anti-anxiety drugs. Why not try a simple smile?

Smiling helps to relieve stress and calm anxiety.

It might sound silly, but if you treat smiling like exercise for your mouth muscles, I bet you’d remember to do it more. It feels like it takes more effort than a frown when I smile for no reason, and my mouth needs me to keep it turned up, or it falls back into that flat neutral zone.

The more you smile, the stronger and easier it gets to do the action, and the better you’ll feel. Associating what makes you anxious as a negative is most likely part of the cause of your fears. If we smile while thinking about what’s giving us anxiety, it can become more of a favorable opportunity in our minds.

It is similar to an area of growth or chance to prove you have what it takes to succeed in life or your day-to-day work.

A smile can help you live a longer life

The secret to a long life has a smile a day included in its ingredients. Yes, there are plenty of angry older people, but for the most part, growing old takes looking at life with the proper perspective. You have to see the positive and smile in response to help your attitude remain light and keep a youthful mind.

There’s something about using your facial muscles to smile that turns up the number of years you live.

A research project at Wayne State University was done in 2010, tracking the longevity of baseball players who smiled in their baseball cards. This study found that the span of a player’s smile could predict their life span.

Players who didn’t smile in their pictures lived an average of only 72.9 years, while players with beaming smiles lived an average of 79.9 years. Not a huge difference, I know, but my guess is the smiling players had a better quality of life and isn’t that what really matters?

How you feel about yourself and the life you’re creating is an essential part of waking up and facing your days.

Keep smiling to uplift your life

Make a decision right now to remember to smile. I’m not talking about just every time you see someone, more about when you’re alone, even when you’re on your laptop getting work done. Remember to smile. Are you driving to work?

Smile.

You know it feels magnificent, but how come you don’t make a point to smile more throughout the day? Yeah, maybe smiling when you’re alone looks ridiculous, but who cares. A smile is a reward for all the stress and strife you’re facing in uncertain times. Give yourself that gift and get over how it may look to others.

Remind yourself to smile, almost like you remember to stretch or workout. You’ll feel better, and when you pass someone else and help them lighten up, they’ll probably end up smiling too.

Spreading joy has never been more effortless.

Want more? If you’re struggling with making authentic work, click here to join my (free) email list, and through comics, articles about culture, and living your truth, you can discover how to upgrade your mindset and share your creative writing and art with the world.

And motivate you to do better.

Being a success is overrated.

Why worry about making yourself better when the world is slowly spiraling down the toilet bowl?

Let's get real here, people.

Thinking positively does little to help your attitude anyway, and you just end up feeling like a fake. Facing reality and putting yourself down can work wonders. Take it from me, a generally positive person, at least that's what all my friends call me—I'm ready for a change.

These last few years, I survived a pandemic, watching good people die in droves even after being careful not to spend time in crowds but still end up catching covid. Wearing masks and washing hands only to still, that's right, see more people catch covid. Other self-proclaimed good folks believe they don't even need a vaccine, and it's all a hoax. They seem fine with themselves.

Meanwhile, I lose my job and have to learn to survive and find a new one while everyone else is fleeing theirs. Should I try to be happy? Make it all the better by telling myself positive mantras?

If someone can decide what life means to them and choose how to live it the way they want, even if it's ridiculous, I've opted that thinking positively is getting thrown out the window.

Here's a mindset shift that defies what self-help gurus preach, so we can start demotivating ourselves and get honest about our situations. It's time you gain power from negative self-criticism.

1. Recognize your negative cycle and give it a hug

Criticizing yourself and your appearance after waking up in the morning, looking at your sad reflection staring back, is the new motivation for success. Dominate your mind with negative talk about how you need to lose weight and exercise more.

I bet your hair looks awful. Isn't it time for a new hairdo?

Yeah, your job sucks. Who cares. What are you going to do about it? Nothing. I thought so.

Doesn't this feel good?

Destructive self-talk sculpts an image of yourself that's hard to break unless you recognize you're doing it in the first place. Embrace this downer version of you and let the Eeyore-like side shine.

What? Is all this negativity silly to you? After smelling all your garbage, you should want to clean it up.

2. See your negative self-image as a flame, and fan it

The more you fan a flame, the more it burns. It's time to grow yours into a roaring fire with negative self-talk. How bad can you make yourself feel?

Dare yourself to try. How many crappy details about your life and failures can you drum up? Life ain't always great, so stop pretending.

Give it all you got, and feel that fire rage inside. The worse you feel, the better.

You might get so enraged that you get completely sick and tired of being sick and tired. So what?

Why don't you do something about it? Oh, you're too lazy, huh?

If only you cared enough to think of times where you made the right choices and succeeded. Accept that some things in life work out, and others don't.

Feeling bad about yourself can help make you feel good.

3. Be unkind to yourself to motivate change

The other day I cursed at myself for making a wrong turn and having to re-route the directions to an appointment—one I was already late for anyway. I could have been kind and talked to my brain about how everything will be fine and work out well in the end.

But it didn't. Me being late made everything worse and upset people I care about. Maybe next time I have a meaningful engagement, I should leave super early because I suck at finding new places.

Making sure to step outside yourself and see the bad can help you know what to improve. You shouldn't hide behind positivity if you want to make real change.

You have to be unkind to yourself to know where to grow and get so upset you actually do something instead of just talking.

The end is not nigh

You have triggers that make you feel down on yourself or give up, and you might as well discover them so you know when you're spanking yourself. When we feel at our lowest, we are often about to make a breakthrough.

If you can tell when you're at rock bottom, you can be open for the moment of clarity that helps you see where to go next. Giving yourself a chance to notice what pulls you down can help you know how to climb back up. Or, better yet, how not to spiral down in the future.

Times are tough in the world right now, and we need to be tougher. You can't always fix everything by just thinking positively.

You've seen those old black and white photos of families from a hundred years ago. They weren't smiling, and they were surviving.

They didn't finish a day on the farm, working out in the hot sun, smiling, and telling themselves how happy they were. Looking in the mirror, telling themselves life can be easy and fun when life was hard. Our ancestors had very few options.

It's much easier now, but we act like it should be a breeze.

Life is still challenging, no matter how nicer our living conditions have become—facing negativity and letting it run all over you is how to understand what gets you down and leads to change.

Unless you suffer from chronic depression, you might want to see a doctor and get on medication if that's the case.

The rest of us can learn to live with our negativity and practice some grit.

Cheers to the new you.

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Three Scientific Reasons to Smile More Every Day