“Remember to smile.”

— Nelson Mandela

I’m starting to feel like everything in life is a skill. Every mannerism, behaviour and action is usually learned until people do it so often that they develop their own style on how to do it. Smiling is the same and while it is simple, I personally it’s extremely hard for me to keep doing at times and that’s because I was born and raised in a culture where you needed a reason to be happy.

Now that I think about it, it’s kind of silly since I believe that we were all born happy. We were born happy and smiled a lot until we were taught that we shouldn’t be happy unless you had a reason to be. Smiling showed people that you were happy and had the reason. If you were happy without a reason, you were seen as crazy, weird or abnormal but I’m starting to think that the people that were crazy, weird and/or abnormal were the ones that didn’t smile at all. See, we all live in our own world and we don’t really know what works and what does in terms of how to have better experiences in life. Smiling, for the most part, makes your life better in each and every way possible.

Smiling opens doors and opportunities to things that normally wouldn’t open if you didn’t seem happy and open. It is a mannerism that is universally understood and an invitation for the positive. Not only does it invite good experiences but it also protects you from negative ones because smiling is contagious and inspires positivity. People that are in a negative state of mind are invited to join you in the positivity or stay away from you because there is friction if one doesn’t succumb to the other. As the saying goes, “Misery loves company” but so does happiness.

Now, I’m not talking about a fake smile, I’m talking about a genuine smile. Since my culture needed a reason to smile, I’ve come to learn that practicing gratitude gave me plenty of reasons. The reasons don’t have to be big, for example, I’m smiling because I’m alive, I’m breathing, I’m loved by my family, etc. While I have goals that I want to achieve, I don’t have to be dissatisfied that I haven’t achieved them yet. I can work towards them while also enjoying the journey. A lot of the times, this also relieves pressure and also reduces mistakes since I’ve made a lot of decisions in that past that weren’t necessarily the best that I’ve regretted. After I learned that I no longer want to make regretful irreversible decisions, I’ve made sure not to take unnecessary risks as well. Side note, the most dangerous risk are impulsive decisions that we make out of discontentment that we choose to stick to simply for whatever reason.

Lastly, remember to smile because smiling has been proven through research studies to bring up your own mood so that is reason enough to smile. Your emotions dictate your actions some of the time but it’s also important to remember that your actions, behaviour and/or mannerisms also dictate your emotions. So, do your best to make it so that your life keeps you in an elevated state of enjoyment and contentment. The alternatives may be comfortable if you aren’t used to being happy at first but you will gradually see that your life can be better because you made the conscious decision to do something as small as smiling.

Until the next post, thank you for reading! 🙂