Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
Thích Nhất Hạnh (1926–2022)
A smile is more than a curve of the lips; it’s a signal to your nervous system and everyone around you that life is lighter than it feels.
Modern neuroscience has caught up with this ancient truth. Smiling, even when you don’t fully feel like it, changes your physiology, and physiology is psychology.
Smiling is like doing a micro-rep for your brain. You’re triggering neurotransmitters, lowering stress hormones, and building resilience. The more you smile, the more your brain learns that life is safe, social, and meaningful. And just as importantly, your smile is contagious. To the people around you, it’s a spark that can flip their day from grey to bright in an instant.
Where across the course of your day today, could you consider where it might be that you choose to smile, not because everything is perfect, but because your brain and body deserve the benefits?
A genuine smile uses between 12 and 17 facial muscles. A polite or fake smile, in contrast, uses far fewer, which is why we instinctively can tell the difference.
Unlike many gestures, smiling is recognised across all human cultures as a sign of friendliness and warmth. Even babies born blind smile socially without ever having seen one.
People who smile more often, especially genuine, Duchenne smiles, have been shown in studies to live longer than those who don’t.
A Duchenne smile is what researchers call a genuine or authentic smile. It is the kind of smile that engages not just the muscles around your mouth, but also those around your eyes.
It’s named after Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne (1806–1875), a French neurologist. He studied facial expressions in the 19th century and used early electrical stimulation experiments to map out which muscles created which emotions. Duchenne concluded that the “true smile of happiness” required both the mouth and eye muscles.
Where across the course of your day today, could you consider where it might be that you look for the Duchenne smiles on the faces of those around you, and offer a moment of genuine connection to those who haven’t yet found one?
A smile can be medicine, but not every smile is made of the same ingredients. Some smiles are painted on; a polite mask, a shield, or even a silent cry for help. The Duchenne smile, the genuine one, tells the truth of joy.
But when the eyes don’t join the mouth, something else may be going on. A fake smile doesn’t mean someone is dishonest; it often means they’re protecting themselves, holding back, or carrying a weight too heavy to share.
And here’s the opportunity: instead of judging the fake smile, we can get curious. We can ask, gently, what might sit behind it. Sometimes all it takes is presence, kindness, or a small act of encouragement to help someone cross from performance to authenticity. I have found that by starting a conversation around the benefits of smiling, I have managed to gift a genuine smile to someone.
Here are 8 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Smiling:
Boosts mood – Smiling triggers dopamine and serotonin, your natural “feel-good” chemicals, improving your emotional state.
Reduces stress – Activates the parasympathetic nervous system, lowering cortisol levels and calming the body.
Strengthens the immune system – Positive emotions linked to smiling enhance immune response and antibody production.
Lowers blood pressure – Smiling and laughter improve vascular function, which reduces blood pressure and supports heart health.
Increases longevity – Studies (like the 2010 Wayne State University research) found that people who smile more genuinely live longer lives.
Improves relationships – Smiling increases trust, likeability, and social bonding; people are drawn to those who smile.
Enhances performance – Smiling during stress or exercise has been shown to improve endurance and efficiency by reducing perceived effort.
Contagious effect – Mirror neurons in the brain cause others to unconsciously mimic smiles, spreading positive mood socially.
Where across the course of your day today, could you consider where it might be that you make a conscious effort to smile at yourself in the mirror for 1 minute?
A conscious effort to smile in the mirror removes the need to have something to smile about in the first place. Being dependent upon smile-inducing people or practices in your general environment can quite often leave you without a smile if the external stimuli are absent.
The One-Minute Smile Habit requires you to stand in front of a mirror. Look yourself directly in the eyes and smile a wide, full smile and hold it for one minute.
If it feels forced at first, that’s okay. Keep going. Notice how your body and mood shift by the end.
The 8 Benefits You Trigger independently are:
Endorphins – Your brain releases feel-good chemicals, easing stress and even mild pain.
Immune support – Smiling reduces cortisol, helping your body’s defences strengthen.
Facial feedback loop – The act of smiling tells your brain you’re happy, which becomes self-fulfilling.
Blood pressure – Heart rate slows, and tension eases.
Dopamine & serotonin – Natural mood stabilisers and motivators increase, like a chemical sunrise in your brain.
Neuroplasticity – Repetition builds new circuits of positivity, making optimism easier next time.
Longevity – Training yourself to smile more often lays the groundwork for the health and social benefits tied to a longer life.
Contagion (future payoff) – Even though the mirror doesn’t catch it, you carry the smile with you. The first person you meet today may mirror it back, spreading the cycle.
If you are not convinced, try it once.
Before you smile: Rate your mood from 1–10.
After one minute: Rate your mood again.
Here’s the thing: your brain doesn’t know whether you’re smiling because you’ve just won the lottery, or because you’re grinning at yourself in the bathroom mirror with toothpaste on your chin.
I wrote the instruction “SMILE DLTMM” on my shaving mirror, 4 years ago, and it still works as a prompt to my nervous system. A smile is a smile, and it pays the same dividend every time.
So don’t wait for perfect conditions. Don’t wait for someone else to give you a reason. Be the reason.
Smile at children. Smile at the stranger who looks like they need one.
Smile at yourself, because you’re still here, still breathing, still capable of changing the day with nothing more than a curve of your face and a spark in your eyes.
If you give the world one genuine smile today, you’ve already made it lighter with the gift of joy.
While you’re thinking about that, think about this and have a Gr8 day!
Be well.
DL
“We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do”
Mother Teresa - 1910–1997.