Say, "cheese!"
Smiling is infectious; it's a little bit like a yawn. If you see someone really happy, doesn't a smile slowly creep across your face? This is just my pondering, but I wonder if our culture has reduced the amount of smiling it does? We are becoming so autonomous that I wonder if we smile less.
According to happify.com, Five Ways to Boost Your Happiness Instantly is to do the following:
1. Spend 5 minutes doing something for a loved one to brighten their day.
2. Email someone to thank them for something that they did.
3. Have a meaningful conversation with a friend
4. Take even 30 seconds to help someone who needs it.
5. Savour a memory.
Four of the five ways to be instantly happier include others and focusing on doing something for others. I suspect that many of us are consumed with other things that seem essential but only provide temporary and superficial satisfaction or happiness, things that isolate us. But deep happiness is found when you put yourself aside for a second and focus on someone else...wouldn't you agree?
Happy people are also healthier, according to the site; they heal faster, have better immunity, and live longer.
One common thread in all the articles about happiness is the importance of gratitude. Finding five things to be thankful for became a study at UC Davis. According to the study, people kept records of their appreciation, felt better about themselves, were more optimistic, had fewer health problems and slept better. (lifehack.org)
One info-gram heading was suggested as being like Teflon, not Velcro - the idea being that happy people let stress slide off of them instead of allowing it to stick to them and weigh them down.
For the final fact...
Smiling reduces stress, so let's find moments where we can be thankful, let's reach out to others, and infuse a bit of happiness back into our lives.