Image courtesy of Rumpers.

Everyone smiles.  From industrialized nations to remote tribes, studies have shown that smiling is universal.  Even more stunning is that people from all over the world smile the same way.  Even blind children begin to smile without seeing others smile.  It’s ingrained in the very code that makes us human.

Although smiling comes in many forms, most are actually fake.  In fact, there is only one smile that is genuine. When the corners of the mouth go up, the eyes narrow slightly creating crow’s feet, and the upper half of the cheeks rise, you are experiencing the Duchenne Smile, named by Paul Ekman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California at San Francisco after Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne, the French physiologist who first studied the muscle that surrounds the eye in 1862.

The Duchenne smile is the one true smile that is a direct result of feeling happy.  But, how do we FEEL happy?  When we receive or give a gift, or see our children smile and laugh, physiological changes take place.  Our hearts beat faster and the flow of blood increases. Skin temperature rises, which makes the skin slightly damper and our fingers tremble.  The experience of a compliment or gift is a trigger.  The trigger sets off changes in the body, which signal the brain to feel happy.

Although this may sound odd at first, try forcing yourself to feeling happy when your muscles are tense, your face is frowned and your brow furrowed.  The involuntary emotions cause our body reaction to signal our brain, which means that happiness arises as much from our body as it does from our thoughts.

The emotions associated with feeling happy are involuntarily controlled by our automatic nervous system.  This is why we cannot simply decide to be happy by influencing involuntary body function.  It is impossible for us to command our blood to flow faster.  We do, however, have the ability to bypass the automatic nervous system.  We have the ability to smile, even without a trigger.

Ekman’s work corroborated that if feelings can come from the body, then happiness can come from a genuine Duchenne smile.  Ekman trained his subjects to control the movement of the muscles that surround the eye to achieve the Duchenne smile.  The result was a signal of happiness without a trigger sent to the brain thereby proving that happiness doesn’t flow in just one direction, and smiling alone can make us happy.

I suggest that we take the work of Ekman to the next level.  If the bodily movement of smiling can make our brains experience feelings of happiness, then why not use the smile as a trigger for others.  What you put out into the world comes back to you.  The next time you are introduced to someone, just give your first name and watch what happens.  More likely than not, they will return the introduction with their first name.  Offer your first and last name, and you will receive the same.  Try it with a smile.  I’m sure you will find a smile in return.  This effect can influence your happiness and the feelings of everyone you come into contact with throughout your day.  By smiling more and passing it along, you truly put the Duchenne smile effect into action.

Tommy Galan is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain. He is the author of HappyUniverse.com, a blog dedicated to designing happy lives through exciting goals and healthy lifestyle.  A few of his many adventures include performing on Broadway, earning a Juris Doctorate, finishing marathons, and traveling the world.  He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

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“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” – Steve Jobs, in Commencement Address to Stanford students

What would you do if you were told you had five years left to live? I prefer to use this rather than Steve Job’s single day, because most of us, with a day or week left, would spend them seeing family and saying goodbyes.

But five years is different. Five years is long enough to accomplish almost any goal you might have, however ambitious. And you wouldn’t want to spend five years partying hedonistically, or eating your favourite meal every night.

Would you finally get around to writing that novel that you’ve been planning for more years than you want to admit? Would you quit your job and set up your own business – secure in the knowledge that your retirement fund is no longer a problem? Would you find the means and the money to travel to places you’ve always wanted to visit?

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Image courtesy of Arwen Abendstern

Do you find yourself consistently miserable and stressed? I used to but now even my infamous ‘grumpy-old-man’ moods are underpinned by a strong undercurrent of contentment and joy. Why? Because along the way I have learned some awesome ideas that helped me to discover deep and lasting happiness. Here’s 7 of them…

1. Stop Looking for Happiness

When I was growing up my mother was often depressed. At the time I had never experienced this (it came later) and I didn’t understand it. By the time I was about twenty I figured out one reason why she was so regularly unhappy: because she was focusing on wanting to be happy too much.

I gave her a cheesy embroidery piece in a frame (warning: cheesy, but actually works) which said:

“Happiness is like a butterfly: If you chase it, it flies away, but when you turn your attention to other things, it comes and quietly lands on your shoulder.”

I have no idea if she ever really got anything out of that, but soon after she started to study accounting, and went on to become a practicing accountant. She had always enjoyed numbers and so she was quite happy with this career path, which was her first ever full-time job outside of the home.

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Can a mop and a dust cloth bring happiness and luck?

Back in August, I picked up a book written by Mr. Mitsuhiro Masuda (in Japanese) who advocates the power of cleaning and decluttering.  He maintains that we can be happier and luckier by cleaning up our place of living.  I was a brand-new entrepreneur at that time, meaning my business was starting to attract some clients but not enough to be in full operation, so I had time and was willing to try anything to improve the situation.

Now, I know grabbing a dust cloth and reorganizing the bookshelf is as boring as it gets in personal development. But we intuitively know our environment affects our mood. When we are in a poorly-lit, cluttered room where we can’t find what we need and what we see doesn’t resonate with who we are, we feel messy, sad, frustrated, and out of place.  How can we feel bright, efficient, well-organized and be in the natural flow of energy?  Clean up!

Many people are big on decorating their place.  That is fine.  But cleaning needs to happen before decorating.  Before creating your new YOU, you need to let go of your old YOU. Physically taking care of your environment by cleaning and decluttering can stimulate letting go of your mental clutter that has been holding you in the old pattern.

The 21 Day Outside In Personal Development Program

The book came with the 21 day action plan.  It’s a good plan, but very women-oriented, so I have modified it to be helpful for everyone.  You work in one area for three days, totaling seven areas of your place of living.

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Who’s in control of your life? Who’s pulling your strings?

For the majority of us, it’s other people – society, colleagues, friends, family or our religious community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. We didn’t want to be singled out by the crowd for being different because this wasn’t such a nice feeling. We learned this way of being so well that, as adults, we continue – mostly through mutual peer pressure – to keep each other in check. Like sheep without any need for a sheepdog, we keep each other in line.

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Some people consider worldly success, such as success in entrepreneurship, to be incompatible with spirituality.  “It’s a dog eats dog world.” they’d say, “If you want to succeed, you do whatever (dirty things) you must do. Then you dress up and go to church on Sundays.  If you want to embrace spirituality full time, stay in the convent, or at least stay in the clean low-paying job.”

I disagree.  In this article, I want to show you how spirituality can help new entrepreneurs in two major challenges they face in starting their own business.

For the purpose of this article, I am defining spirituality as our awareness of higher purpose and power.  That invisible something that transcends us as individuals.  I am not affiliated with any organized religions.

Spirituality offers sustainable motivation

I find it quite dangerous that so many people want to become their own boss because they hate their current jobs.  They want to escape from what they hate, be it the boring job itself or the demanding boss or the work environment.  I don’t say this is no good for moral reasons.  If you don’t like something or someone, then it is so, it’s not good or bad.  I find it dangerous because the escape mentality doesn’t offer any sustainable motivations.

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There’s a lot of talk about what you should do to become successful, but I would argue that it’s more about who you are that makes the biggest impact.  It’s the decisions we make on a daily basis, the habits we naturally form in our lives that determine the level of success we can achieve.  Who we are determines how we react to life, even when we’re not consciously in the act of ‘being successful’.

So here are 10 traits that I’ve seen as essential for obtaining lasting success in any endeavor.

1. An Independent Nature

If we rely too much on those around us for assistance and/or support we will be setting ourselves up for disappointment in the future.  This is not to say that we shouldn’t look to others for help when the time is right, but crafting our pursuits in such a way that requires the intervention of another is like handing over the keys and getting in the back seat.  Our friends and colleagues may help open the doors of opportunity, but it is our own responsibility to take the wheel.

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• Life is a drag.
• What’s the point of anything?
• I’ll never be happy.

Do any of these gloomy thoughts sound familiar? It’s likely they do. The occasional case of the blues is perfectly normal, but that doesn’t make dealing with it any easier. If you allow them to, negative thoughts can fester and lead to serious depression. That’s why it’s important to take action early to bust yourself out of a slump.

While these suggestions won’t eliminate your problems, they can help you break a negative thought pattern and stop feeling depressed.

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How many times have you started a new activity (such as a personal project or exercise routine) with a burst of enthusiasm, only to see that initial momentum evaporate? This often leads to depression and causes us to give up prematurely. I’ve experienced this letdown dozens of times myself. But fortunately, with a bit of thought and reflection you can turn this negative emotion around.

The key to harnessing your emotions is understanding them. The natural pattern of human emotion is peaks and valleys. When we start a new project we’re filled with tremendous optimism. All we can think about is the expected benefits, and since we haven’t started yet, we aren’t aware of the difficulties involved. This natural high causes a surge of mental and physical activity. The peak is a great thing because the energy boost gets projects off the ground. If you’re a creative type like me, you know that this period is euphoric. You feel like nothing can stop you.

The downside of this surge of energy is that it inevitably ends. Exerting large amounts of energy wears you down, and after the initial optimism wears off we feel extremely tired. However high you started off, you fall down just as low. This causes a loss of confidence. The combination of fatigue, scant results, and an awareness of impending adversity makes us want to give up. From personal experience I’ve learned a few ways to hold strong against negativity.

Be Prepared for a Letdown

Emotions, by nature, lose their power when we understand them. Prove this to yourself. Next time you get angry, take a moment to reflect on the reason behind the emotion. When I step back and reflect, it’s easy to see that my anger is caused by insecurity/selfishness/jealousy etc. After I understand the cause my anger fades away.

The same technique applies to a loss of motivation. Instead of giving into negativity, step back and analyze. Look at the causes. Are you tired, burned out, disappointed by the results? Are these feelings justified, or are they a by product of a low point in the emotional spectrum?

To illustrate these ideas, I’ll use my most recent project as an example, the creation of this site. When I launched Pick the Brain it took an enormous amount of effort. I was completely new to blogging, web design, and traffic building so there was a steep learning curve. Writing new posts, setting up the site, and trying to build traffic took up nearly all my free time. After about three weeks I was completely burned out. I got depressed and started to question if the site was worth the effort. I wasn’t seeing any returns and I started to find enormous faults in my writing and the purpose of the site. There were moments when I was resigned to failure.

One reason I was able to overcome this loss of motivation is that I prepared myself for a letdown. Beforehand, I researched blogging and learned that it generally takes 9-12 months before a site begins to see significant traffic. Knowing that my lack of success was perfectly normal helped me get over it. The same is true for other endeavors. If you know losing 20 pounds in a month is unrealistic, you’ll be able to accept losing only 5 more easily.

I also knew my own emotions and was prepared for the initial emotional peak to pass. When I was first inspired to launch a website, my expectations were through the roof. Dreams of AdSense revenue danced in my head and I pictured throngs of loyal readers as if they already existed. But because I understand my emotional pattern, I realized this optimism would give way to depression. In the back of my mind, I foresaw the impending motivational battle, and when it came I was ready.

Reevaluate Your Strategy and Motivation

The passing of the emotional peak is a blessing in disguise because it allows us to reevaluate our plans from a fresh perspective. At first we are blinded by our own optimism. When we lose our motivation we can see gaping holes our in plan. We can either get down on ourselves and give up, or we can use this negative emotion to discover our faults and correct them. After I pulled myself out of the motivational cellar, I went back to all the negatives thoughts I’d had and applied them to improving the site. Having a pessimistic attitude opened my eyes. It made me realistic about my abilities and expectations. Emotional valleys bring us back to reality. Without them we’d be raving lunatics with unlimited self-confidence.

Use a loss of motivation as an opportunity to reconsider what your motivation really is. One reason I lost motivation is that I became too concerned with the financial aspect of blogging and lost sight of the real reason I started: sharing my passion for self improvement and the pursuit of happiness. When I realigned my motivation with my passion, the lack of results didn’t matter. My motivation returned because I realized connecting with people through my writing is an end in itself. Even if this site never makes I dime, sharing my ideas and experiences to help other people is worth the effort.

In truth, sometimes giving up is the right decision. If you started doing something for the wrong reasons you’ll likely lose your motivation. This is a good thing. It allows us to see what really motivates us. In these cases, the best choice is to move on to a new endeavor. Don’t fight self doubt, use it for your benefit.

Conclusion

Dealing with emotional highs and lows is an experience common to all people. We generally accept our emotions as beyond our control. They are powerful and mysterious and appear quite irrational. But if we contemplate our emotions, if we explore the inner workings of our minds, we find that like all things, emotions obey the law of cause and effect. Armed with this knowledge, we can continue to allow our emotions to dominate our lives, or we can use them to our benefit.

Don’t be surprised by a loss of motivation and don’t be disappointed by it. Understand it as natural effect of the human mind, and utilize this knowledge of self to make your emotions work for you.

Eliminate your stress

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