Chapter 5

Habit 1 – smiling

In this chapter, you will see how the simple act of choosing your expression can affect your mood. Putting on a happy face can have more implications than you think!

•Deciding on how you want to feel

•What effect does smiling have on others?

•Reflections on smiling

•What further significant implications could the principle have?

Deciding on how you want to feel

Let’s start with a simple question that I often ask myself. How do you want to feel? This might seem an odd question, but it has implications based in the neuroscience of the mind. If we allow our mind to naturally default to a certain emotion then often, for many of us, this emotion is not a positive one. If we decide that we want to settle on being positive in outlook then the mind will be more prone to use this as its default position. In other words, it is possible to choose our emotional default position and to make a habit of doing this.

Obviously, if something is concerning us or if we are facing problems of a serious nature, then it’s unrealistic to be going around in an inappropriately happy way. However, for most of us, the majority of our days are not traumatising or tough. These are the days when we have a choice as to whether we want to feel good or allow ourselves to default to a more mundane position. If you do decide that you want to feel good, happy or content, or to experience any other specific emotion, then there are ways to improve the chances using neuroscience! To demonstrate this principle of choosing mood according to neuroscience, let’s look at facial expression and smiling.

Facial expressions are a very significant way in which we communicate with each other. It is so significant that it is synchronised into the way we feel.

So, if you feel happy, you will automatically show it on your face. Children find it very hard to conceal how they feel, especially when they are lying! As we grow older, we learn to disguise our feelings but often others can see through the disguise. Therefore, the principle is that, if you feel something in your mind, whether a pleasant or an unpleasant emotion, your face will automatically reflect this. Unless you make an effort to conceal your facial expression, others can see how you feel.

So what if we deliberately put an expression on our face, like sadness or happiness – will it make us feel that emotion? In other words, if our faces are so intrinsically synchronised with our minds, can we influence how we feel by forcing a facial expression?

Putting on a smile

The research (and hopefully your own experience, if you try it) gives us the answer. Some researchers have found that, if we maintain a positive facial expression during stressful events, we feel better and also have a slower heart rate when we are recovering.^[1]

This putting on of a positive facial expression doesn’t have to be only during stressful events. There is evidence that smiling or frowning can make a difference to your mood and produce a positive or negative frame of mind.^[2] So, if you force a smile then the chances of feeling happier improve, and if you force a frown then the chances of feeling sad or angry also increase! So, you can influence your mood or how you feel by deciding on what emotion you want to experience and then forming the appropriate facial expression. If we are already in the mood state that we want, then we can enhance it by reinforcing it with a facial expression.

Therefore, if you are enjoying yourself and you deliberately form a smile, it appears to make you enjoy yourself more.^[3] The opposite has also been found to be true: if you deliberately form a sad face, you are more likely to feel sadder when you see sad things than if you don’t have a sad face.^[4] So we can enhance our feelings by deliberately putting on a facial expression.

What effect does smiling have on others?

Smiling at others or receiving smiles from others has also been shown to have positive effects. Some of the research seems obvious, but it is sometimes worth reminding ourselves of it, so that we can act on it. For example, people receive more help when they smile, and smiling at someone can make them more helpful towards you.^[5] There is research to show that when parents smile back at a child, the child will continue to smile. So positive attitudes create positive feelings in the child.^[6]

This might all seem obvious, but what is going on inside our heads? The response to seeing a smile is based in our Chimp structures, so they are not directly under our control. The amygdala, which is part of the Chimp structures, could be considered as having a powerful battery of energy contained within it, which is in charge of the automatic response that decides on a flight, fight or freeze reaction to situations. It has many other functions, one of which is facial mirroring. When we see another person’s face, imaging studies show that our amygdala’s response is to imitate the other person’s facial expression.^[7] [8] This in turn will make us feel that expression.

This helps us to understand why our Chimps like positive people with positive facial expressions – because they naturally evoke good feelings in us.^[9] They smile, we smile back and our facial expression influences our mind to feel the smile factor. However, it doesn’t stop there! Our Chimps continue by jumping to conclusions. For example, when we see a smile on someone else, it doesn’t just give us a good feeling; we also rate them as being more intelligent than a non-smiling person.^[10]

Important point

The advantage of learning the habit of putting on a smile, or at least a positive expression, can help others and ourselves to feel better and improve relationships.

A lesson for me

When I was working in hospital medicine, we had clinics for those suffering with depression. Many of the doctors I worked with would comment on how they could sometimes feel low themselves when leaving the clinic. I had a very sobering moment in one clinic, when I smiled at a patient as they entered the room. They immediately responded by telling me that seeing me smile made them feel a bit better. Sadly, they went on to tell me that it was the first time they had ever seen me smile. That was a sobering moment for me, and a lesson to learn. I personally think that, for me, a fake smile is worse than no smile! However, with a little bit of thought, there is usually a lot to smile genuinely about, so I do try for a positive expression! If you are not a natural smiler, like me, I recommend a positive expression.

Reflections on smiling

What conclusions, if any, can we draw from this information? What I would recommend is that you try it for yourself. There appears to be a scientific basis for the effect that expression has on mood, so test the theory out and see if it works for you. Getting yourself into a good place by working on positive facial expressions can only have a beneficial effect on those around you. If the theories and research are correct, and the results seem almost self-evident, children will benefit from carers who are smiling, or at least have positive facial expressions.

A game or exercise to teach children about these ideas is to get them to give facial expressions that will evoke feelings in them. So you can ask them to make a happy face, a smiling face, an angry face, a disappointed face and so on. If you ask the child how they feel when they make these faces, they will often say they feel like the face that they are making. When I have tried this with young children (provided they are in a sensible frame of mind!) they have reported back that they experience the emotion of the facial expression.

The main point is to get the child to practise a happy face and to help them to learn to form this as a habit, particularly if they don’t naturally feel happy. Children can also appreciate that changing their facial expression can help to make them feel better.

A learnt, positive facial expression, such as greeting people with a smile, can also clearly help children to be perceived by others around them in a more favourable light, which could therefore increase their chances of being more successful in relationships, and life in general.

What significant further implications could the principle have?

Smiling to alter your mood could be seen as just a novel practice that can work for some, but it has a basis within research on the neuroscience of the brain. Could we extend the principle to alter our default mood or state of mind?

So, putting aside facial expressions for the moment, we could consider the general mood or stance that we take every day as our natural default position. All of us tend to form a habit of being in a certain frame of mind, and this can go unchecked. What is your natural default position?

First, try and recognise exactly what your usual default position is and then you can make changes, if it isn’t what you want. If your natural default position is not a helpful one, such as one of restlessness, anxiety, a critical stance or worry, it would be good to alter it to one that would be beneficial, such as enthusiasm, calm, peaceful, grateful or whatever other position that you might want to choose.

This is not as hard as it might at first seem. In essence, it will involve shifting your focus onto things that you know will make you feel the emotions that you want. Of course, it also involves some proactive practical work to remove unhelpful thinking and any unresolved issues.

For children and adults alike, what can be helpful is to have an emotional default position that is beneficial to well-being.

Having a positive outlook as a default position

Having a negative outlook can be just a learnt habit. There are many reasons why this might occur. For example, a negative outlook can occur if a child perceives that they have not quite reached a position where they have obtained unconditional approval or praise from an adult. This can then put them into a frame of mind of, ‘No matter how much I try, I can’t please an adult.’ Sometimes this can occur when an adult says something like, ‘with a bit more effort you could do really well’ or, ‘this is good, but it could be better’. So, rather than encouraging the child, it can have the opposite effect. It’s all about getting the balance!

Some parents praise everything that their children do and what they achieve, but this can have its pitfalls! Very subtly, if a parent praises what a child can do rather than praising the child themselves, then the child can develop the idea that ‘I am only as good as what I can achieve’ and may then try to constantly gain approval by proving themselves worthy. Unconditionally letting the child know that they don’t have to achieve anything to be loved and respected is the best basis for the child to work from. Being loved and respected just as we are, rather than for what we can do or achieve, raises self-esteem and builds self-confidence.

Other examples where a negative outlook can develop include:

•when a child is left with feelings of guilt

•when an adult repeatedly breaks promises to a child or lets them down

•when a child is upset and the experience is dismissed or not addressed

Once a negative outlook is recognised, it can be challenged. Changing to a positive outlook as a natural default position is probably easier than you might imagine. If we can learn what specifically helps us to move our emotions by focusing on what we want to focus on, then we can usually alter our mood state. This will be unique to the individual. Therefore, one way to help a child to be in a good place is to discuss with them how they could make themselves feel better. For example, thinking about things that have made them laugh or future events that they are looking forward to. The child could develop a habit of being happy, grateful or any other stance, provided they have a process to follow that works for them. As with adults, this process will involve addressing any concerns and then shifting their focus onto things that will promote the frame of mind that they want.

Bringing perspective into life can help us to realise that all worries we have are fleeting. They come and they go. Thinking about what today’s worries will mean in a year’s time can often help us to realise how unimportant they will become. Problems usually resolve or we move on from them with time. Later in the book, habits such as ‘talking about your feelings’ will help to establish the process of perspective.

Important point

Defaulting to a positive frame of mind can be a learnt habit.

Karl’s change of habit

Karl was a man I worked with some time ago. One of his complaints was that he felt unwelcomed by his partner when returning home after work. I asked him to describe what happened. He admitted that when he returned home he would moan and get a lot of frustrations from the day off his chest before settling down. When we considered what effect this had on his partner, he could see why he might be given a less-than-friendly welcome. He put in place a simple behaviour of getting things off his chest before he got home – then, when he arrived home, he gave a big smile and let his partner know how good it was to see them. This changed everything and he reported how easy it was to start the evening feeling welcomed and appreciated. His partner also reported feeling better!

Sometimes very simple habits can make a big difference to you and others around you. How do you come across when meeting others? And more importantly, how do you want to come across?

Summary

•Facial expression and mood state are intricately linked

•Smiling can improve mood state

•Smiling can help improve relationships

•We can work on having an emotionally positive mood state as a default position