The Power of a Smile

Recently I made an interesting discovery about smiling. I feel better when I smile. I also look better. After making a short video of myself for an online public speaking class, I was pleasantly surprised.

“Well, look at that,” I says to myself. You actually look younger. And better.  And that very expensive dental work from a few years ago... thank you Dr.Gottlieb! Even Rev.Mike, when he saw the video said, It takes off 10 years.  Who knew?

Well, Ron Gutman knows. He’s the founder and CEO of the online health information app, HealthTap. He’s done quite a bit of research on smiling and writes in a column for Forbes online that it’s an “untapped power.”

Did you know a research project involving photos of major league baseball players in 1952 found that the span of a player’s smile could predict the span of his life? Players with broad, beaming smiles lived an average of 79.9 years to the sober player’s measly 72.9 years...a seven year advantage just from smiling.

Also, he found that smiling is evolutionarily contagious. We see someone smile and we want to smile. Ultrasound shows that developing babies are smiling in the womb, and continue to smile a lot after birth. Children smile a lot...up to 400 times a day. Smiles are cross-cultural, basic and biologically uniform expressions of all humans...even cannibals in New Guinea.

Also, we activate happiness circuitry in our brains when we smile, and smiling can actually make us healthier and less stressed.

Even though I’m into health and fitness, this is the first time I realized that my perpetual serious demeanor was a health hazard. I mean, I’ve always been serious. And I thought that might help preserve my face from wrinkles.  Why smile and get those pesky laugh lines?

But now...I know differently! And I’m learning to flex those facial muscles for good health, happiness and longevity.

Plus... I have another reason. I’ve often complained about my raspy speaking voice, and I decided I want to become a better public speaker.  And I just accepted that I couldn’t sing and never would, but secretly I wanted to sing. I hear other people singing and wish that I could express myself that way.

So recently I hired a vocal coach. And the first thing he’s teaching me is to bring my voice up into my head, my facial mask, and to do that I need to open my mouth wide in a smiling way. He comes to my home and we work on speaking the first half hour, and then...believe it or not...on singing. He’s very encouraging. I’m hearing these hoarse unattractive sounds coming out, and he’s playing notes on the piano going up, up, up. And what do you know, he had me actually singing up the scale. Then I was trying Eidelweiss. He says I’m a soprano. Really? Seriously? I actually had an emotional moment, realizing I had this hidden potential to sing.

Am I going to perform? No. I’m not ready for prime time. But I’m going to keep working on this and see where it takes me.

In closing, let me quote an anonymous poet from the Internet:

“Smiling is infectious,
You can catch it like the flu.
Someone smiled at me today,
And I started smiling too.

And so it is.