13 Days of Self Care – Smile as Often as You Can
This is the 13 Days of Self Care. I have been inspired by a wall hanging I have in my home which gives 13 ideas to spoil yourself and value who you are… This is, in essence what Self Care is.
Day 12 of 13 – Smile as often as you can.
The good ol’ smile! Everyone has one and most of us smile more than we frown. As I sat down to write this, the first thing that came to my mind what that saying:
It takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.
So I decided to do some research about whether this has been scientifically proven. From my (very small) research I discovered that in fact it hasn’t been proven and it is an ongoing discussion. Some people think that it does in fact take more muscles to frown, others think that it’s just that we smile more often so it takes less energy to smile than it does to frown. I also discovered that we all have different smiles and so the question stands “which smile uses the most or least muscles and which smile do they mean when they say it uses less muscles to smile?”
It is however proven that more people will respond to a smile with a smile than they will respond to a frown with a frown. That might not seem that unusual, it does prove that the smile is contagious so why not do it more and spread more love and joy to the world.
There is also research that says smiling can increase our mood and make us generally healthier people. Even a fake smile can have the same effects. I would agree with this research and have exercised this personally. On days when I don’t feel ‘happy’ I have tried smiling and laughing to see if it can help lift my mood. Most times it works even though I was faking it to start with.
Have you ever tried laughing just for the sake of it? Try it, it’s actually really quite funny and you end up seriously laughing, which is good for the soul. You can probably think of times when you have had such a great night with friends that you have laughed and laughed and your jaw is sore from smiling and your abs are sore from laughing. Either way, at the end you feel happier for it.
So try and smile as often as you can. Watch things that make you smile, be with people who make you smile.
You Are Worth It.
Take Care on the Journey!
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