A happy face

I don't care for the cold or dark, so January has not been my favorite month. But yesterday while walking together, a friend mentioned a positive about January: that longer days hint at coming spring. As we were walking close to the time of sunset, I added that often in winter the Minnesota sunsets are colorful and that too is a plus. Her comment was a gift; being reminded to look for the good consistently moves me toward emotional well-being.
Today, upon culling out some past emails, I was reminded of another way of feeling better.

Just put on a happy face.

Really. I'm smiling serious.

Last summer I read Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking. Author Malcolm Gladwell writes about researchers who studied emotions and facial expression; they looked in detail at what specific muscles of the face moved with specific emotions, and happened upon some surprises.
"Much of our understanding of mind reading comes from two remarkable scientists, a teacher and his pupil: Silvan Tomkins and Paul Ekman….the information on our face…is what is going on inside our mind… Ekman said… “What we discovered is that expression alone is sufficient to create marked changes in the autonomic nervous system."

On the days that the researchers made expressions of anger and distress for the purpose of determining what facial muscles were employed, the researchers noticed that they felt terrible; their heartbeat went up, their hands got hot, and they felt generally unpleasant.

"Ekman, Friesen, and another colleague, Robert Levenson….decided to try to document this effect. They gathered a group of volunteers and hooked them up to monitors measuring their heart rate and body temperature – the physiological signals of such emotions as anger, sadness, and fear. Half of the volunteers were told to try to remember and relive a particularly stressful experience. The other half were simply shown how to create, on their faces, the expressions that corresponded to stressful emotions, such as anger, sadness, and fear. The second group, the people who were acting, showed the same physiological responses, the same heightened heart rate and body temperature, as the first group….Emotion can start on the face." P 206-208

When we feel happy, most often it is reflected on our faces. But now we know that merely putting on a happy face brings gladness.

"Bright eyes gladden the heart..."
Proverbs 15:30
(New American Standard translation)

Seriously, I'm smiling!