How’s your smile these days? I ask this question because you may not realize all the good things that happen when you smile. Want to think about that with me for a bit here? (If so, you have to promise to smile while you’re reading this—a way of practicing for what comes next!)
The basic smile anatomy: The zygomatic major and orbicularis oculi muscles interact so that the corners of your eye sockets circle around your eyes into crow’s foot shapes. Your lips move upward and your eyes sparkle. The smile may last only a few seconds, but it’s universally recognizable and may be mirrored in a returned smile. A genuine smile—instantly differentiated from a weak or phony one—is called the Duchenne smile and it changes lives.
Your smile may be one of your most important attributes, one of the things about you that makes you attractive and interesting to others. Because smiles are contagious—a neurobiological fact—the look on your face can cause someone else to feel good about themselves. Your smile can begin chaining happy faces together. You might even think about smiling as your purpose in life! You could think of yourself as living proof that God smiles on the world God so dearly loves!
Back to you. How IS your smile? What or who invites your grin? When do you smile? How many of your facial wrinkles come from smiling most of your lifetime? Who smiles because of you? Perhaps most important: How are you going to put that cute smile of yours to work today?
Here’s my challenge to you: How might you change someone else’s life today because your smile is genuine and contagious? Exercise those zygomatic major and orbicularis oculi muscles today and see what happens.
It could make you smile!
