Smile

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,
but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. ~Thích Nhất Hạnh

After reading last week’s blog about body language, did you do your homework and think about how people perceive you.  Did you make a list of characteristics that you wanted to be known for? Did you practice changing your posture to emulate those characteristics?

I went to my speech class on Monday, and like I usually do when my students are giving their speeches, I video them and then put it up online for them to review and reflect on and see how they looked and sounded while giving their speech. While loading up the videos I looked to identify the student that was speaking so I could attach his name to a file for easy access. I saw myself on camera walking across the room to help the student fix something on the computer. And there I was....looking at myself from an other's viewpoint and I noticed that I didn't look happy. Since I had just written the blog about perception and body language, this short video clip of me caused me to think more about it than I normally would have. You see, I had actually put 'happy' down as one of my top things that I wanted people to think about me or describe me as; I want to be known as 'a happy person'.

So that convinced me that I really needed to practice what I preached, and change my body language to show what I wanted people to see.  I put a smile on my face...sounds easy doesn't it...but I realized that a smile isn't my natural face.  I realized that I smile when I am making eye contact with someone else, or when I see something amusing,  but not 'just cuz'.... So began my week of me practicing to look happy.

The first thing I became aware of was I walked differently when I had a smile on my face...  A smile causes my shoulders to go back, and I have a longer stride and a brisker step when I smile. I found that the smile on my face had changed my body language in general.   

It wasn't 10 minutes into my experiment when I found myself coming towards a fellow teacher.  He said, "I could see you smiling all the way across campus, Karen, you must be feeling great today!"  My smile got bigger.  "Actually I said, I am feeling good...it's a beautiful day...how could one not be happy."  That made him smile, "I guess you're right, " he replied.  I said goodbye and walked away wondering if it was just a fluke, or if my little experiment was actually making a difference about peoples' perceptions of me.

About an hour later I walked into one of my classes with my smile still 'goin on' and one of my students remarked, " Mrs. Spencer, are we going to be doing something fun in class?" I replied, "I thought  we always did something fun, but why do you ask?"   The student said, cuz your face looks like we're going to do something fun."   I looked at him quizzically and he grinned.

Then a few days later I was walking out of Sam's Club (still practicing my smile) and a lady sitting on the bench said, "You look like you're having a really great day!"  I said, " I am having a great day, life is good!"  She laughed, " I can see that!".

One of the biggest 'Ah Ha's'  this week was that not only was I changing peoples perception of me....I was feeling happier myself. Thích Nhất Hạnh was right....Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

But perhaps the more important thing that struck me, was I also noticed each person that commented about my happiness also had a smile on their face.  So not only can my smile be a source of joy for myself, but for others as well.  The cool thing about a smile is that you can pass it forward.

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

I can't say the research and results are complete... but I'm going to continue practicing my smile.

Post your thoughts on the blog or email me at smallsteps4bigresults@yahoo.com