Hi %%FIRST_NAME%%,
Welcome to day five of your 7 Day De-Stress Course.
Today I’d like to share with you 7 great reasons to smile – and how it can cut your stress levels.
Here’s a link to listen to the fifth part of your audio course.
To listen online, click the ‘play’ button. Depending on your internet speed, it may take a few moments to load – please be patient!
To listen on your computer or MP3 player, hover over the link and choose ‘save as’ to download the audio.
[audio:https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/destress-audio-course/part-five.mp3]Part Five Audio MP3
When you have had a chance to experiment with the techniques on today’s audio, how about popping by the special discussion area in the Soul-Sized Living forum, to share how you got on – and get answers to any questions you may have?
7 Great Reasons To Smile & How It Can Cut Your Stress Levels
And just in case you’d like a positive affirmation for this stage of the audio course, how about:
I smile and I feel the stress and tension melting away.
Enjoy!
Part six will be with you tomorrow – to give you a chance to play with today’s techniques.
Namaste,
Transcript
7 Great Reasons To Smile & How It Can Cut Your Stress Levels
Today I would like to share with you seven great reasons to smile and how it can cut your stress levels. Sometimes it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we have nothing to smile about, but smiling can be transformational and it can be an amazing way to cut the stress levels. So here are seven reasons to smile.
- The first one is ‘smiling is contagious’
When we are feeling stressed, we tend to have surrounded ourselves with other people who feel stressed, too. So how about helping others smile, as a way of de-stressing yourself? It doesn’t matter if you are in the office or at the bus stop or at a train station or in a traffic jam, smiling is contagious. I’m not talking the kind of creepy self-conscious embarrassed smiles that make you cringe. I’m talking about a natural, friendly, happy, genuine smile.
Have you noticed how often people smile back at you when you smile at them? Obviously use your common sense, but smiling is contagious and a gentle smile can shift the mood in a room if the meeting is going badly.
- Number two is ‘thinking a happier thought’
It can turn your ship around when you’re stressed. Simply thinking a thought that’s marginally happier than the last one you had can turn things around. So you might be feeling stressed, but a little smile and choosing a thought that feels better can tell your brain: “OK, we’re not going any further down that route!” and turn things round.
- Number three: you’ll get fewer wrinkles
Smiling uses fewer muscles than frowning, so it’s a more relaxed facial expression. Think about it for a moment: which would you rather grow old with: frown lines or laughter lines?
- Number four: ‘frowns are contagious’.
If you’re feeling stressed and frowning there’s a chance you will take everybody else in the room with you. If you decide to shift your mood by smiling you can influence everyone in the room and it might even rescue even a nightmare meeting.
- Number five, ‘you get what you think about’.
Have you noticed how when you stub your toe as you get out of bed, it can lead to a totally nightmare day? But opening the curtains to a blue sky and sunshine can have the opposite effect. And it’s a proven fact that our mindset acts as a filter on our experience of the day. If we’re thinking about stuff that stresses us out, we’re more likely to spot more and more things that stress us. Smiling and consciously looking for the sunshine in each activity can profoundly impact your day.
- Number six: Feeling grateful.
If you’re finding it hard to raise a smile, how about thinking of something you feel grateful for. Can you think of three things or more? If you can switch your focus from feeling stressed and thinking about what’s stressing you to thinking about what’s going well, and feeling grateful, even for just one minute, you will have shifted your mood and you’ll find it easy to smile.
- Number seven: smiling makes you feel better.
It is a biological fact that the body produces its happy chemicals, whether or not your smile is genuine. After 60 seconds there is enough of those hormones in your body that the smile will become genuine. It gives you a natural high, it’s a natural de-stressor and smiling literally makes you feel happier.
Surely its worth smiling for that reason alone?
- A bonus reason: smiling rebalances the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous system is our fight or flight response – the primal part of the brain (the hypothalamus) – which is responsible for short term survival-style decision. The parasympathetic nervous system is all about relaxation. When you smile you trigger the endorphins that rebalance those two systems dramatically cutting the stress levels in your body.
And it’s a bit of a magic wand, isn’t it?
So there are eight reasons to smile – and how they can cut your stress levels. My invitation to you today is to smile as often as you can remember to!
I will be back next time with another de-stressing technique.