“Be the reason someone smiles today.”

As we go through our day, it is easy to avoid thinking about how powerful our smile can be to someone. We come across people every day of our lives who has just found out they have cancer, lost a parent, sibling, or a dear friend. They may be struggling through a divorce, or struggling through depression. If only we knew how powerful our smile is to others, we would smile at every one we meet from now on.

When we smile towards someone else, we can actually help them turn their mood around. It is a known fact that our smile is contagious through the part of the brain that is responsible for our facial expressions. This means if we, as empaths, can remember to use our smile as a cure to alleviate someone else’s pain, it will go its course by making the receiver mimic or mock our facial expression causing them to smile. So since a smile can help ourselves through a hard time, bad mood, or current struggle, we have just used our own positive ability given to us to help others around us.

Your Own Experiment

If we think back to some of our struggling times, we can actually go out into the world with our smile ready to intentionally help others. Try it, take a day with the thought that you will smile at everyone you see, meet, and make contact with and see just how many people you can help during their unknown struggle. By using our smile, we can show support in such a quiet yet loving way. Make it a point to count how many times you can get another to use their mimic response. Feel proud in the fact that you just encouraged another soul to come back out of their darkness to meet the light.

It is a widely known fact that if we smile to someone else, they will feel the sentiment and most likely smile back. Researchers found that not only will we help others smile, but we can trigger our brain to respond in a positive way. “Smiling stimulates our brain’s reward mechanisms in a way that even chocolate, a well-regarded pleasure-inducer, cannot match.” Not only are you showing support to stranger, you’re helping them trigger their reward mechanism.

A Smile is Universal

As we can see, not only can we help those around us, but we can generate the same brain reward inside our own brain throughout the day, saving our tasty treat for after dinner. At the end of the day when we take out our gratitude journals, we can record our day adding our results of our intentional test with our smile. Thinking back to the times when I could use a sweet smile, the universe already had someone refresh my mood by sharing theirs. Let’s be the ones who use our light and share our smile. Remember, we’ve all been there where we’ve needed that extra boost. Reach out to another suffering with your love represented as simple as your smile, and watch the world brighten up.

Stevenson, Sarah. “There’s Magic in Your Smile How Smiling Affects Your Brain.” 2012, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201206/there-s-magic-in-your-smile.

Widrich, Leo. “The Science of Smiling: A Guide to The World’s Most Powerful Gesture.” 2016,
www.buffer.com/resources/the-science-of-smiling-a-guide-to-humans-most-powerful-gesture. ority7