Turn that Frown Upside Down
Even if you don’t feel happy!
The brain is a funny old thing, you know. Considering that it is a majorly clever capable of of great feats of intellect, ingenuity and innovation. The number of amazing things we can use our brains for is a long list, too many for me to sit and list here. But for an organ that can think in vastg concepts, it actually is really quite literal, and perhapos a little stupid, if I may be as bold as to say.
No before you get your knickers in a knot, I am not saying you, me, or huimanity as a whole are stupid. I am saying the brain ORGAN is. Now I am not a scientist, but I pretty much believe that although your mind can do a lot, it is still bound by some physical laws,. I believe it accepts what we feed it through various stimuli.
I was trawling though a mountian of self help stuff, and I can’t remember where I saw it, but I read that if you smile, your brain perceives that as being happy, so it thinks it is happy, and it starts to realign itself to feeling happier.
I wasn’t 100% convinced at first. I had a look in a mirror though at my “resting bitch face”, and I noticed that my mouth was down-turned and my face looked sad, and/or grumpy. I realise that I am (was) a fundamentally unhappy person and I could see this on my face as it sat in repose. I began to think. I wonder what will happen if I try and neutralise that look.
What do I mean, neautralise? Well, I don’t want to be sitting there smiling inanely at nothing like I am insane, but I thought, maybe I could change that downturn a little. So this is what I began to do. I just moved the corners of my mouth upwards, ever so slightly. Not into a full-on smile, but a little up-tiurn. It felt weird to me.
That is quite a saddening statement. To have a normal mouth, that wasn’t in a sad pose, felt odd to me. Think about that for a minute. Normal, not even happy, felt weird to me.
Well, whenever I became aware of it, I turned my corners of my mouth up a little to “normal” setting, and tried to hold it there and leave it like that. Again and again.
So I don’t know why, like I said, the brain is weird, but I started to feel a little less down in myself. elling myself I was putting on my happier face, and doing it began to affect how I felt inside. Another thing it began to affect was me on the outside as well. I began to think, hey, my face isn’t that terrible now. I began to put a bit of make-up on. That also made me feel a biut better.
So hell, I don;t know why, or if it will work for you, but you have nothing to lose do you? Take a look at your face when it is in respose, look at your mouth, does it turn up, it is normal or does it turn down? If it is up, go you! Keep it there! If it is normal, try turning it up to a mini smile. If it is downturning, just turn it up a tiny bit, just the corners, to a normal position, and keep doing it. It really will start to make a difference. Worst case scenario, all you gain is an awareness of when you look sad, and can work with that. best case - you start to look and then feel happier.
That horrible, annoying saying of “Turn that Frown Upside down” (which really gets on my nerves) has had some merit for me when I put it into effect in tiny little micoradjustments that have made me feel a little better than without it.