Smiling Through

Smiling Through

Try the 30-Day Smile Challenge, and Change Your Life

Out of the Mouths of Baristas

I just had a great conversation with Kim, one of my two favorite baristas at the local Borders Cafe. She told me about a new philosophy she had for her life.

"I decided," she said, "that whenever I don't feel good or there's someone who is giving me a hard time, I'm just going to smile. And it's working." she said with a playful smile."

Smiling Works

That reminded me of a UCLA research study I read several years ago. Researchers took a group of depressed individuals and did a SMILE intervention with them.

The participants in the study did a daily exercise where they would stand in front of a mirror and smile, for some number of minutes. That was the intervention. Their depression decreased significantly. Smiling worked for them just as it is working for Kim.

My conversation with Kim also reminded me of Thich Nhat Han's meditations in mindfulness that I practiced years ago. He suggested that you smile while you are sitting in meditation.

Thich Nhat Han smiled a lot and I experienced his smiles as genuine. I know enough about his life history to know that he experienced many things that would have made the sunniest personality drop their smile. Smiling also worked for Thich.

Facial expressions impact your aliveness, emotions and behavior. Smiling releases tension and opens up the flow of your life force energy. Your brains relax and their "feel good" neurotransmitters are released when you smile.

Smiling makes a difference for others. Use your own self as an experiment.

How do you feel when you are greeted by a smile versus when you are greeted by a frown or a gloomy face? I come to Borders Cafe mainly because of Kim and my other Barista buddy, Meg. They both smile when they see me.

The Power of Choice

I'm not suggesting that you deny your emotions when you don't feel good. Awareness is important. But like Kim, you have the Power of Choice as to what to do with them.

Experiencing your emotions is empowering. But it is easy to get lost in low energy feelings if you begin to indulge them. It's the universal Law of Attraction that "like attracts like." Low energy feelings and frowns attract more low energy feelings and frowns.

But you can make a choice to do something different. Like Kim you can be aware of and acknowledge the low energy feelings and then release them  by doing something different. Like smiling.

Imagine What Could Be Different

Why not get a head start so that smiling becomes a natural response? Smile more often for the sake of smiling.

Imagine what it might do for you and your business if you smiled before making or answering every call. Before responding to emails. Before every conversation with a client or a prospective client.

What would it do for your life if you smiled more?  For your health? What if you made it a point to look at your loved one more often, and simply smiled just for the sake of smiling.

The 30-Day Smile Challenge

I'm inspired to give you a 30-day Smile Challenge. I'll be joining you.

Here it is. Every day for the next 30 days, beginning today, make it a conscious practice to smile every chance you get and at everyone you meet. With one qualification - have no expectation that anyone smile back. Give your smile as a gift!

Post a lot of Smile reminders around if you need to! And Practice, Practice, Practice!

Do you really want to make a difference in your life and a difference in the world? Smile more!! It's contagious...

Step Into Your Greatness...
Smile every chance you get!

PS I just looked up from my computer to stretch my neck. A lovely elderly gentleman reading Air Space Magazine in the chair across from me looked up at the same time. We smiled a big smile at each other at the same time, naturally. It's already working!

 

 

About the Author

Reggie Odom LICSW, CPCC, PCC is the founder of Inspired Works a Life Coach, inspirational speaker, and lecturer at Simmons College School of Social Work. She is considered a master teacher and unforgettable speaker. Reggie coaches professionals and practice-based entrepreneurs who want more joy and greater aliveness.  http://www.reggieodom.com

Smiling Through $24.99 Smiling Through - Photographic Print

Smiling $10 Smiling

Young Woman Looking Through Lifebelt, Smiling $24.99 George Marks Young Woman Looking Through Lifebelt, Smiling - Photographic Print

Keep Smiling Through $10.9 May 1941 - and the people of April Grove, Portsmouth, are beginning to feel the war will never end. Families are being torn apart, not only by the separations and loss of war, but by more unexpected frictions, as wives and daughters play new and independent roles, and children are forced to grow up too fast. Betty faces conflict at home over the man that she loves; Carol is desperate to escape her carping mother; and Micky nearly brings tragedy to them all. Yet as the war irredeemably changes their lives, the families of April Grove learn to endure - and even to keep smiling through.

Keep Smiling Through (Paperback) $43.11 Nostalgia, romance, laughter and tears all feature in this comedy full of live music, songs and dance from the war years. Maggie’s life is under invasion: Gran knitting for England, evacuee lodgers, helping with the war effort, andnow a fund-raising concert party! Husband Rob is due home on RAF leave and best friend Peg is newly pregnant.

Smiling Through the Tears $9.74 No Synopsis Available

Smiling Passengers Walking Through Doorway Aboard Queen Elizabeth $79.99 Smiling Passengers Walking Through Doorway Aboard Queen Elizabeth - Premium Photographic Print

Smiling Bears $17.95 Few people have known bears as intimately as Else Poulsen has. This remarkable book reveals the many insights about bears and their emotional lives that she has gained through her years of work with them. Always approaching each bear with the same two questions in mind — "Who are you?" and "What can I do for you?" — Poulsen has shared in the joy of a polar bear discovering soil under her paws for the first time in 20 years and felt the pride of a cub learning to crack nuts with her molars. She has also felt the hateful stare of one bear that she could not befriend, and she has grieved in the abject horror of captivity for a sun bear in Indonesia. Featuring photographs from Poulsen's personal collection, Smiling Bears provides an enlightening and moving portrait of bears in all their richness and complexity.

Smiling in Slow Motion $18.95 Written between May 1991 and February 1994, and ending just two weeks before his death from an AIDS-related illness, Derek Jarman's entries in "Smiling in Slow Motion" pick up where "Modern Nature" left off. Friends and enemies are reviewed as he races through his last years painting, filmmaking, gardening, and annoying his targets through his involvement in radical politics. Infused throughout with familiar honesty and wry humor, "Smiling in Slow Motion" is a document of endeavor, remembrance, and love.

Smiling Troubles $16.23 True Life "Notables" happen to everyone, every day, all over the place. When the "Troubles" of life are embarrassing, awkward, or uncomfortable, Jennifer usually brags about them with a "Smile." Through humorous autobiographical anecdote adventures, she shares the mucky, sometimes messy mundane bits and pieces of her troubled yesterdays. A small number of fine folks wrote words about the "Troubles" they read-ahead of publishing time."It's like you're talking to me." "I'd buy the book ""I laughed at times until my sides hurt.""What a hoot I especially liked the wet pants one.""I enjoyed story number one-the red thunderbird, the boots, and the tongue that never got a chance to lick ...You have away of lighting up a room and making sour pickles like mesmile. That's special.""I laughed so hard reading your true life adventures. Maybebecause I know you a little, but I can just picture you doingthis stuff Keep writing. My only complaint is that they aretoo short."

Opera Star Jarmila Novotna, Brightly Smiling as She Looks Through a Book with a Man $79.99 Walter Sanders Opera Star Jarmila Novotna, Brightly Smiling as She Looks Through a Book with a Man - Premium Photographic Print

Why Aren't You Smiling? $12.93 Growing up in the 1970s has never before been portrayed with such delightful ludicrousness and heartrending tenderness as in "Why Aren't You Smiling?" When teenage Leonard decides to quit being a Dweeb and instead join the Burnouts, his "good kid" persona is abandoned as he embarks on a comically painful journey of self-discovery through his unconventional friendship with Rick, an older Jesus freak barefoot hippie. The farcical parallel story of how Irving Mandelbaum from Los Angeles transmogrifies into rag-tag cult leader Rick of The Forever Family paints an indelible portrait of California during one of its most preposterous eras.

Kevin and the Smiling Dog $31.19 Kevin and the Smiling Dog is based upon a true childhood story. It tells the tale of a young boy and and his chance misadventure with a dog he met on his way to the grocer. Nothing he had learned before would prepare him for this amazing day Authors Note: Kevin and the Smiling Dog is based upon a true story from my childhood and most of the details and characters are real. The book depicts a young boy named Kevin and is, in a sense, also autobiographical, in that the Kevin in the book is me. An important part of the book is also about being a young person and understanding how the world works. Without divulging the entire contents of the book, it is also a way to teach children about the animal world, and why and how pets do what they do. A parent can read this book with their child and talk about it, as well as having fun colouring and discovering life through Kevins amazing journey that day. Author: Hilditch, Kevin M. Binding Type: Paperback Number of Pages: 38 Publication Date: 2011/03/09 Language: English Dimensions: 11.02 x 8.50 x 0.10 inches

Smiling Through the Tears : Memories of a Traumatic Childhood $23.35 No Synopsis Available

Chewbacca - Smiling $10 Chewbacca - Smiling

Smiling Devil $10 Smiling Devil

Eddy smiling $10 Eddy smiling

Smiling star $10 Smiling star