What can you do with a smile?

Help yourself and others.

The Ripple Effect © Kathryn LeRoy

Hello friends,

Exercise makes me smile.

I exaggerate. I don’t always start out smiling, but my online yoga teacher seems to know when I am about to give up on a strenuous flow or difficult balancing pose.

That’s when I hear:

“Turn up the corners of your mouth.”

” Close your eyes and smile.”

Some days I want to slap the screen, but I try.  I take one deep breath and turn up those corners while I push harder and keep going.

How can a simple smile accomplish so much?

French psychologist, Guillaume Duchenne, studied the emotional expressions and the muscles responsible for our smile. He found that the zygomatic major muscle in the cheek and the orbicularis oculi that encircle the eye socket work together to create a smile. But he also discovered that . . .

“The zygomatic major can be willed into action, but that only the “sweet emotions of the soul” force the orbicularis oculi to contract. “Its inertia, in smiling,” Duchenne wrote, “unmasks a false friend.” —Eric Jaffe

I prefer to focus on those smiles that can make a difference in the world, those “sweet emotions of the soul.” Those smiles can ripple across our families, friends, and anyone we encounter.

That’s the smile that keeps me pressing on when giving up would be so much easier. Beyond perseverance, smiling offers health benefits. A smile can help you:

• Feel better

• Live longer

• Affect how others perceive you

• Retain what you were born with—a smile

Smiling, like laughter, is contagious.

Let’s see how our smile can create a ripple effect this week.

Flowers Make Me Smile © Kathryn LeRoy

Smiling can even help adjust your attitude.

If you want to dig into this topic, the psychological study of smiling will lead you down a delightful rabbit trail of smiles, or consider this newer study.

Need a musical lift? Try listening to Michael Bublé and what happens “When You’re Smiling.”

“We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.”
—Mother Teresa

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”   
—Thich Nhat Hanh

Find a little wonder this week. We marveled at many wonders this week on a visit to the Houston Museum of Natural Science Museum and Burke Baker Planetarium.

Pre-show, at the Burke Baker Planetarium, Houston Museum of Natural Science © Kathryn LeRoy

With gratitude,

Kathryn

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