Doesn’t that look like a happy Zoom screen? Would that not provoke a smile on your lips? I promised to talk about something new this week. My meditation experiment is still on going, I am deep into Week 3, feeling good about it, but on to something new…
Smiling. 🙂
Is it cliché to talk about the power of a smile? The power of changing your body language to demonstrate openness and compassion? I believe that there is a certain level of power or at least change generation that occurs when you smile and show the world you are ready to accept whatever it has in store.
So, I smile sometimes when no one else is.
I smile when others are frowning, or just have a simple straight lipped gaze.
I smile when no one else on Zoom is smiling.
I smile when one of my bosses texts me in the middle of a board meeting over Zoom and asks me what I am grinning at. I mention to him to look up at the screen and notice that no one else is smiling. I see his eyes gaze up from his phone to his computer screen. I see him notice my smile. I see the edges of his own mouth move towards a smile. And suddenly, not only is he smiling, but others have caught on, subconscious or not. The Zoom screen is filled with Hollywood squares of my colleagues smiling. Success!
Smiling is an indicator of longevity. Smiling correlates with strong relationships, mental well being and long fulfilling lives. Smiling can trigger your own mood to improve as happy hormones increase and cortisol and adrenaline decrease. Smile helps your blood pressure lower and regulate. Those happy hormones are endorphins, produced by your brain when you are smiling, so stress and pain levels decrease. Smile=Happy!
I have been working with a coach on handling difficult situations and difficult emotions. One technique that she shared with me that I have read about from others includes:
Identify the Emotion- spend some time thinking about what you are feeling, try to name the emotion- not just happy or sad, but really get to the core of the feeling.
Challenge the Emotion- think about why you are feeling this way, try to get to the core of why are you having the emotion. What prompted it? Does the situation actually demand you feel a certain way? Was the situation/challenge/problem driving your emotion or were you internally driving it?
Understand the Emotion- here is where you give yourself some grace and space. It is ok to feel whatever you are feeling and for however long. Try to feel how it feels in your physical body so that you can identify it easier if it happens again. Some emotions “feel” a certain way, like butterflies in your stomach, or a tightening of muscles.
Replace the Emotion- you get to play a little here with what feels right to you. Try to replace a negative or bad feeling emotion with a better feeling one. Try to see how it would feel if you could smile, open yourself to a new concept or idea and not take things so personally.
Visualize yourself with this new Emotion- meditation and visualization can help with this step. I find this step very hard, but enjoy playing with it. It is very hard for me to visualize colors and “things” in a visualization exercise, but it is easy for me to feel a “feel”. So, I play with feeling different emotions in relation to different scenarios in order to train my brain to react differently the next time something happens.
Of all of the above steps, I believe the most important one is understanding. Giving yourself the grace and space to feel the feel. Wallow in it, spend some time with it. Give yourself a time limit if you have to, but just be in the emotion so that you understand how it feels in your body, how your mind is dealing with it, then be at peace with it. All of that is worth the investment of time if you want to change how you approach something the next time it rears its ugly head. Understanding is self compassion. And practicing self compassion allows you to show up in the world as you want to.
I want to show up smiling on Zoom.
Here is my TV debut where I did a lot of smiling. In this case, I was smiling because I was so nervous!! I can’t believe I am sharing this with all of you, as I really don’t like looking at myself on video, but part of this blog is not only to share with you but also to help me practice too!
https://www.wtnh.com/news/health/connecticut-nurses-honored-for-national-nurses-week/
Be well,
Teresa
Additional Readings and Resources:
Good Vibes, Good Life, How Self Love is the Key to Unlocking your Greatness, Vex King
Your Happier: The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type, D Amen
The Happiness Project, G Rubin
T. Otterbring. (2017). Smile for a while: the effect of employee displayed smiling on customer effect and satisfaction. Journal of Service Management, 28, 2.
E Jaffe. (2011). The psychological study of smiling. Observer. Retrieved at https://www.psychologocal science.org/observer/the-psychological-study-of-smiling/comment-page-1
C. Neurofibromas, et al (2002). Effects of laughing, smiling and howling on mood. Psychological reports, 91, 3. doi.org/10.2466/pr0.2002.91.3f.1079