June 15 is National Smile Power Day

A sincere smile is a powerful thing. When you smile at another person, you are telling them they are valued and worth the smile that you just gave them. No matter where you are on the globe or what language you speak, smiling is recognized as a universal display of happiness and good nature.

Smiling has many benefits:

• It can reduce your blood pressure, heart rate, pain, and stress as your body releases endorphins.
• It can increase endurance, strengthen your immune system, and even help keep the cells in your body healthy. 
• It can make you appear more courteous, competent, likable, and trustworthy. 
• It has the power to change our mood. As we change our face muscles into a smile, this can shift or reinforce our feelings, and our mood will begin to align with the emotion on our face.

Best of all, smiling is contagious! When you smile at someone, you pass all the wonderful benefits of smiling on to that person. There really is no downside to smiling—not in the way it looks, nor in the results it brings.

Even if you are wearing a protective face mask due to COVID-19 precautions, people can still sense when you are smiling. Our emotional expression shows up in our raised cheeks and little laugh lines that appear in the corners of our narrowed sparkling eyes.

Today is a perfect opportunity to turn someone’s day around with the power of your smile. You just never know how many people could benefit because of your smiles. Use them all day long – you might be surprised at how good it makes you feel, too!