We all know how much fun can be had when we gather our group of girls and paint the town red. Or even, when we’re all a bit too knackered for that and get tucked up in onesies with vast amounts of chocolate. When we imagine these scenes, there is a consistent expression on each face, the wide smiles and uncontrollable laughter that happens when a close group gets together. The ecstasy that erupts when the oaf performs a comic book fall on her way through to the rest of the party is infectious and hilarious. The feeling when we walk away from such an occasion, a gathering of old friends, where you continue to smile as you relive each moment is one of the most life-affirming I can think of.
Obviously, a great part of this is due to the love and affection shared between friends. However, the physical acts of laughter and smiling themselves act as natural drugs. Once we begin smiling to express happiness, there is a positive feedback loop that goes back to the brain and reinforces the joy. Apparently, smiling stimulates our brain’s reward mechanisms in a way that even chocolate cannot match. Even if we are not as ecstatic as we may be watching our poor friend tumble over an obstacle, smiling can produce happiness with a trick of the mind and can help us to de-stress.
This gives us great potential and control over the tone that each day of our life will take. If we picture ourselves walking down the average street in a city or perhaps sitting beside others in public transport, we have all been trained to mind our own business and at all costs not to look at the person sitting across from us. We have developed a fear of strangers and an incredibly closed mind, focusing exclusively on the next task in our day. This closes the door to thousands of potentially mood-lifting and life-affirming smiles each day. Not only that, but the connection with a person if they are brave enough to (shock horror) smile back is magical and helps us to remember on the busy tube that these people are not props in the drama of our lives, but are in fact also heading on to a different and perhaps more exciting ‘next task for the day’.
The doom and gloom of modern press combined with a good, old-fashioned British pessimism have combined to create a bunch of strangers, equally embarrassed and suspicious of each other’s company. Not everyone will mug you as they pass, in fact they may not even dislike you, and the likelihood is that they will pass you with the same paranoid dialogue running through their mind. If you crack a smile at this point, occasionally you can see a break in tension. I like to think that they are laughing at their previous stony faced exterior and are relieved to have made a passing friend.
It starts with a domino effect. Once people locked on to the uniform straight face when in public places, this became the norm and everybody followed suit. Smiles are infectious and if you start cracking cheesers at every meeting with a stranger, they’d be hard pushed not to send one back in your direction and bang, both of your days are a little bit happier!
Just to make it even easier for us lovely ladies, research has shown that girls and women on average smile more and find it easier to do so. Clearly, we are destined to have a happier life! Women are more encouraged to smile as expressivity is taken by some as a sign of emotionality and of femininity, something many men wouldn’t be caught dead being associated with. Women also are more accurate in reading facial expressions and in detecting what is really going on with someone. We have been given our own female secret language, and it is the language of happiness! We can all get happier today by heading out with beaming smiles. Make sure you don’t get too enthusiastic though as extreme smiles can begin to look like the group below and I don’t think that would make anyone happy…