The Smile Epidemic – A Dad’s daily reminder of what brings him happiness…
Happiness does not always come easily. Some days we spring out of bed smiling from ear to ear and other days it might require a one-on-one with Zach Galifinakis to get us to begrudgingly grin. There has been debate that smiling is supposed to come easily to us, and although Meredith Bower from Curiosity.com says the debate is still to be settled; Ron Gutman asks a more important question in his TED Talk and in his short book on the subject, “How can something as simple as a smile be so deceptively complex”
I am sure we have all heard the saying about how much easier it is to smile than to frown, or the claims that smiling is contagious, or that it has the ability to single-handedly reverse the spiraling of our emotions, but how much time have we really spent considering who, what, where, when and why we smile?
I like to think that I smile as much or more than most and I know I am fortunate to have plenty of wonderful things in my life to be grateful for; but maybe I need to get a little more granular and take a closer look at what those things that make me smile actually are? I pondered on the subject, did some research, and then decided to undertake a project.
Out of that discovery process, The Smile Epidemic was born. It began as a purely selfish undertaking, aimed at answering the following question; “What simple things am I taking for granted that make me smile?” The process proved to be rich with benefits and for the most part, remained centered on my children and family. What I discovered is far more than what I was originally looking for. The exercise served to highlight the aspects of my life that deserve greater respect. Better yet, if I aim to remain happy, should be positioned on the top of my priority list. As an added benefit, the smiles seem to be contagious and as the title infers; an epidemic of smiles might be in the not-so-distant future.
I currently study Psychology at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario where I have the good fortune of working with Professor, Anne Wilson, PhD. My goal is to concentrate on the psychology of happiness, post-traumatic growth and specifically the traits that are most common amongst those with the highest levels of psychological fitness (so I can almost justify the project as pseudo-science).
I also work with Greg Evans, PhD, at the Center for Social Innovation in Toronto, Ontario where he operates The Happiness Enhancement Group. We educate people on those aspects of life that typically pay the largest dividends when it comes to happiness. With all of my focus on happiness and healthiness, I should have realized that searching out my smile catalysts would become a training exercise for my unconscious mind to seek out the things that bring me the most joy. That is exactly what happened; I began to unconsciously scan my world for positive events that would take bring on a smile.
Recently I discovered an article in the Journal of Positive Psychology, authored by Jordi Quoidbach, Alex M. Wood, and Michael Hansenne; Back to the Future: the effect of daily practice of mental time travel into the future on happiness and anxiety. In their research they were able to find significant evidence that a few moments a day, for two weeks, spent thinking about potentially positive future events would correlate to an increase in experienced happiness. And according to Shawn Achor, Author of The Happiness Advantage, Guru of all things happiness, and contributor to the Huffington Post, his #2 tool for turning happiness into an advantage is to “focus on the positive”. It would seem that my ‘Smile Epidemic’ project was operating on those very same principles and had more scientific grounding than I had originally intended.
On the blog, I share little snippets of what makes me smile and I encourage others to post what they notice in their day-to-day life that causes them to smile. It is simple and the primary intention is to draw our attention to the present moment, and to encourage our brains to scan our environments for little, seemingly insignificant, potentially fleeting, moments that are actually quite worth noticing. When I do this, not only do I program myself to pay attention to happiness, I also presuppose that there are things in my life worth smiling about and that all I have to do is pay attention to them.
I challenge you to do this simple task over the next 24 hours;
1) Identify a few simple things that make you smile.
2) Take note of why they made you smile.
3) Spend a moment or two in gratitude for whatever it was that made you happy..
Whether you believe the science behind happiness or you’d rather go with your gut instinct, I’m sure you can imagine the benefits of having a few more smiles in your day and a little more awareness of what brings them on. If so, and you’d like to help us spread the epidemic, snap a quick photo in The Smile Epidemic style and send it along. Thanks for reading. Jim Moss.
