Today I’m sharing 7 ways you can learn to smile naturally and improve your own individual smile.
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So let’s go through each of these strategies and I encourage you to do these exercises with me. Feel free to pause after each strategy to practice a little longer or play the lesson again.
Prepare your face
Think of this as the warm up. We warm up our muscles before a workout, this is no different. Do a facial massage to relax cheekbones, jawline, and bowline. We have nearly four dozen facial muscles and many people carry tension in the face. This is why it’s important to prepare the face by warming up and focusing on relaxing and eliminating tension as best you can. Just using your hands to administer your own facial works perfectly. If you have a jade roller handy you can use that too.
Find your Forced smile
Finding your forced smile helps us practice that sensation. This is obviously not going to be the most natural smile but the point is that you’re priming and prepping the facial muscles. Really exaggerate the movement. To make it more challenging you can apply some pressure on the corners of your mouth, making a lifted upward motion. Do a few rounds of this, holding for 12 seconds. You can do this exercise 3 to 5 times a day. You’ll start to feel a difference by the end of just a few sessions. Exercising your smiling muscles so that you can increase muscular endurance. We have 42 muscles in our face, so it should come as no surprise that we should spend time training our facial muscles, just as we train the rest of our muscles in our body every time we workout. Same concept here.
Find your natural smile
Saying cheese is not going to help us that much here. Instead I want you to try these two word combinations. Practice along with me. You might feel goofy and that’s the point. The goofier the better. Say these two word combinations: Yoga Yogi and Honey Money.
Think UP
Essentially you want to be thinking about lifting as you smile. Some people call this smize, when you smile with your eyes. Lift your eyes and eyebrows. And you also want to smile with your cheekbones. The way you can tell if you’re doing it correctly is by covering your mouth making your eyes and eyebrows still visible. When done correctly, you’ll be able to see smiling eyes and lifted eyebrows and cheekbones.
Happy thoughts
What helps generate a natural smile is by thinking about happy things. Think of someone who makes you happy and think about something that makes you happy. Have your go-to happy memories that you have somewhere accessible in your brain so that you can recall when you need it.
Feel kindness
Feeling kindness and compassion can help fuel your smile. When you are feeling overwhelmingly positive emotions let that radiate from out of you. It genuinely comes from feeling good. Feeling good feelings towards yourself and others can help bring this sensation out. When you’re sitting across from someone who helps you feel this way, take those feelings, box some of them up in your heart and reach for that warm emotion when you need it.
Embrace your authenticity
Everyone has a smile that is unique to them. The way I smile might not be the way you smile. And the way you smile might not be the way that your best friend smiles. Be proud of how you smile and be happy that that’s part of what makes you you.
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Practice each of these seven smiling strategies. Focus on one or two a week and the more you practice, the more second nature it’ll become. Just like any other muscle in our body can be strengthened, so too can our smiling muscles so long as you train for it.
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Alright Explearners that’s it from me today. If you liked this video be sure to give it a big thumbs up. If you prefer to listen to this lesson, check out our podcast. And head on over to our blog for the full transcript of this lesson.
Can you think of any other ways to smile naturally? Share that with the Explearning community in the comments down below.
And if you want to help our channel continue to grow, share this lesson and our channel with anyone who wants to improve their communication skills and social skills. I’ll see you in the next one! Happy Explearning :)
About the Author and the Explearning Academy:
Mary Daphne is an expert in communication, executive interpersonal skills, and personal development. She is the founder of the Explearning Academy, a platform dedicated to helping individuals enhance their social fluency, boost their careers, and elevate their social game. Through immersive group coaching programs like the Executive Communication Lab and self-guided journeys, participants gain the social superpowers and career catapults they've been searching for. If you're ready to take your negotiation skills to the next level and connect with like-minded individuals, visit academy.explearning.co and explore the various plans available. Join the Explearning Academy community and unlock your full potential.
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