Yes – just yes. It has to… right?! And do you know what? There is evidence to suggest it is true. The act of a smile, or even just arranging your facial muscles in that kind of shape, is believed to cause a reaction in your brain that increases a happy mood.
I believe that the impact of this seemingly tiny action, is powerful. I believe that a smile can improve our day, our moods and that of the people around us. Smiling isn’t always easy, there are times when it doesn’t seem possible, but what if someone else started it for you? Doesn’t the offer of a smile from a friend or stranger sometimes feel like a turning point? You could be that fresh start of emotion for someone else.
What does a smile mean?
Well, arguably, it could mean everything. It could be the difference between a new friend or someone you will never properly know. It could be the difference between bursting forth into giggles rather than tears. It could be the difference between a day where you achieve more than you thought you could or one which you write off as ‘just another one of those days’.
A smile is a uniquely glorious ray of sunshine that sweeps across your face like it has never swept across the face of any other. It is yours. And to offer it to someone else is precious. Your smile highlights what makes you happy. It holds within it your heart, your name and your welcome to others. An ‘Insert-Your-Name-Here Smile’ is all yours. A ‘Becky Smile’ is all mine, My cheeks lift, I have dimples that don’t match one another and laughter lines running to reach my upturned lips. It is a ‘Becky Smile’ but it is also a Duchenne Smile.
Duchenne is the name given to a genuine smile, recognised by the specific changes in the eyes as well as the mouth – so named after the neurologist Guillaume Duchenne. In 1862, he identified the facial muscles involved in spontaneous smiling. I cannot imagine anything better than to have the spontaneous, genuine smile of all of humankind named after me. We all have our own Duchenne smile and days full of them are always better than days without.
‘I love you but I just can’t smile’
Did you ever play that game? Where you would go round the group and say – Becky, I love you but I just can’t smile – with your face straight and solemn – even a twinkle of a smirk will eliminate you
from the game. Well, it is true, sometimes I can say solemnly – Life, I love you but I just can’t smile – and on those days I would easily stay in the game. Those days can’t be completely fixed by a smile but when you can’t offer a Duchenne smile, you can organise your face into an upside down frown and maybe, just maybe something in your brain, or heart, will flip a switch.
In 1989, the psychologist Robert Zajonc asked subjects to repeat elongated vowel sounds. A long eeeeeee and a long uuuuuuu. The participants reported feeling good after the ‘e’ and bad after the ‘u’.
So try it? ( I dare you!) A long ‘u’ – you are almost pouting; you are totally catwalk ready (!) but you are also a toddler (or a 28 year old) who has been denied an ice cream. A long ‘e’ – you are almost smiling…I can see it!! Don’t deny it! And so Zajonc’s hypothesis is that even the placement of these facial muscles effects the brain activities associated with happiness.
I’ve got another one for you. A different study group clenched pens between their teeth. If you place the pen upturned between your teeth as if you were still going to write with it, guess what? You are practising that pout again. But if you place the pen horizontally and hold it in place cheek to cheek…you are working your way to a smile. And if you are trying it right now, right this second, then you are certainly making me smile! Thank you for indulging me! It is thought that the participants in these studies felt happier through creating facial expressions similar to that of a spontaneous smile due to the temperature change caused by the bloood flow from these muscles to the brain. So even when you have been forced to raise your cheeks to hold a pen in your teeth by a blog article, you are starting a process in your brain that creates good emotions.
What makes us smile?
I think the answer to that is different for each of us but perhaps sometimes those things and the smile itself are shared between us. It doesn’t always need to be something extraordinary. And sometimes the most ordinary of things that make us smile are the best things of all. They are everyday things, things that others pass by but to you, they are making a happy you. A little bit of heart singing is happening.
I describe it sometimes as things that speak to my soul. My best example of this is Lilac Nail Varnish. I came across a particular shade of Pastel Purple Polish maybe ten years ago and it clicked. This is the colour of my soul, I just know it. And that’s as simple as it needs to be. That colour makes me happy, it comforts me, it soothes me, it belongs on my finger tips and my toes ahead of every sandal-wearing-summery day. That’s the power of a smile to me – the impact of a pot of nail paint the height of a matchbox is sometimes the difference between a Stressed-Out Becky and a Zen Becky. Simple but true.
Passing a street musician and sharing a smile is one of those moments too. A shared song, a shared moment of recognition for their talent and their joyful music. Fleeting and over too soon, but a smile from them that you could pass to the next person you meet.
Sometimes when there is a particular kind of breeze around, I close my eyes and picture myself breathing in the seaside. You know that kind of cold, slightly wild wind that rushes through your eyelashes whilst the sunshine is warming your very core? Well, sometimes I need to imagine I’m at the seaside with my face turned to the sun breathing in that hurrying fresh air because the seaside makes me happy. It makes me smile.
Finding these things are important; knowing what makes us smile is knowing what we hold in our dressing-up box to fight the days that feel like a fight.
Smile with all of you
Something else that speaks to my soul – ‘Eat Pray Love’, I’m sure I’m not the only one to say that. And one of my favourite quotes, definitely from the film – maybe from the book too, is when Ketut tells Liz to smile with her whole being ‘even smile in your liver’. My liver is serious. I mean that organ is doing important work and yet if you can imagine even the most crucial, hidden parts of yourself smiling then it may just radiate out of you. And it might be the smile someone needed to see today.
A smile is hope. It is you. It is passed to me. It is a gift. It is a turning point. It is a new beginning. It is utterly impossible. It is life changing. It is simple. It is powerful.
It is something to think about. It is something to talk about. It is happy. And we all need as much of that as we can give to eachother.
Love, Becky x
www.beckyleesillustration.co.uk
These are my own thoughts and ponderings and illustrations.
One of the main values of my artwork, and the illustration business I run, is the Power of a SMILE. I hope that you will find within my drawings fun, colourful designs and powerful meanings. I would love to hear what makes you smile and whether this is something that is important to you too:
Article Notes:
Further Reading
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/emotions/smiling-happy.htm [09/09/2020]
https://uh.edu/engines/epi883.htm [09/09/2020]
A Feel-Good Theory – A Smile Affects Mood, The New York Times article by Daniel Goleman from 1989 – https://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/18/science/a-feel-good-theory-a-smile-affects-mood.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all [09/09/2020]
One Smile (Only One) Can Lift a Mood, The New York Times article by Daniel Goleman from 1993 – https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/26/science/one-smile-only-one-can-lift-a-mood.html [09/09/2020]
The Brain Behind that Happy Face, The Science Mag article from Vol 262, 15/10/1993 – https://science.sciencemag.org/content/262/5132/336.3 [09/09/2020]
‘Eat, Pray, Love’, by Elizabeth Gilbert
Becky Lees Illustration 