Cultivating The Inner Smile

It has been a stressful month for me so I restarted a little practice that you might find interesting. There are a lot of methods to this but I prefer a simpler one that I can implement all day long. It's a one step program. Step one: SMILE. That's pretty much it.

If you want to be happy at any given moment just take the time to smile and really feel the smile. To do that some people have to think of happy memories or recite a sentence or two in their mind. When I was first taught about the inner smile I was given sentences like “Every day in every way I'm feeling better and better”. As silly as that sounds it works. I'm a natural skeptic so when I first heard about the “inner smile” I was, well, skeptical. Trying something new that doesn't cost anything is an easy choice to make. I tried it and it improved my mood dramatically.

Since I developed interest in the daily practice of the inner smile I have read a lot on the subject. I've seen articles that claimed smiling reduced stress hormones. There are also articles that say even when you're unhappy smiling can shift that mood. I'm no scientist so I can't really verify whether that's true or not but it certainly feels that way when you are legitimately smiling.

Whatever you do, don't fake smile! To quote an article from the Baseline of Health Foundation: “A 2011 study at Michigan State University in East Lansing found that people who had to be polite all day at work and produce fake smiles ended up with overall worse moods than others. Yet, when those same subjects were told to conjure their smiles based on happy thoughts, both their moods and their productivity levels increased.” (http://www.jonbarron.org/article/fake-smile-equals-lower-stress)

There are even people who think that smiling is a key to their success in life. Here's where I'm going to really indulge my inner skeptic just a bit. A smile is certainly a sales tool. Nobody is going to buy something from a rude or depressing salesperson. However, if the item being sold costs three times as much as the competition the fact that the salesperson is smiling just makes me think they're smiling at how much of a fool I am to buy from them. So, while smiling is a tool I don't for one moment think that it leads automatically to success in business or in life. Good people and bad people smile, but that's the subject of a separate article.

Another important point to me is that there is no downside to smiling. Take for example something we should all be doing, exercise. You have to be careful not to injure yourself doing specific exercises in the wrong way or with bad form. How can you smile wrong? Smiling is that universal language that every person in every culture on the planet earth understands. It can't be done badly and is always understood.

One last point before I let you go. Make sure that you don't just smile with your mouth. Smile with your eyes too. Smile so broadly from happy memories that you engage the muscles around your eyes. This is known as “Duchenne Smiling” and is the real smile that reflects the mood from inside. The inner smile.

Check This Comic Out! (By Artist Tim Leary)

check it and more out at the official page: http://zenpencils.com/comic/102-timothy-leary-you-arent-like-them/

The Top Five Non-Christmas Christmas Movies (Part 2)

Home Alone (1990) - I was a huge fan of this movie when it came out as well as its first sequel. A huge family gets ready to leave on a holiday vacation and forgets to bring the youngest member. Now, home alone, he must fight to protect his home from idiotic burglars. The Dennis-The-Menace style antics in this movie are epic in scale and flawless in execution. This movie is on the list because no holiday is complete without at least one child during the holidays running around and doing bad things worthy of getting a sackful of coal from Santa.

Lethal Weapon (1987) - A movie with one crazy cop saving the day during Christmas time made it on this list so of course THE movie with two equally rich characters saving lives and enforcing justice had to be included. The Christmas scenery takes a back seat to law breaking intrigue but the undertone of the movie is summed up in this statement: "the police do their duty ... even when others are relaxed ... because evil never rests".

(see the previous three movies on the list: http://simplemethodscolumn.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-top-five-non-christmas-christmas.html)

The Top Five Non-Christmas Christmas Movies (Part 1)

The following is my top five picks for the best Christmas movies that have nothing to do with Christmas and are in no particular order. These movies are "not your grandfather's movies" while still a good blend of action and comedy. If you're looking for some movies to keep the Christmas atmosphere while cleansing the palette from the usual Christmas movie fare then look no further:

Die Hard (1988) - Hard-boiled police detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) plus Terrorist Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) equals a well portrayed and pure good versus evil tale. If you have never seen this movie then stop reading right now and watch it. If I made a list of some of the best movies ever made this would be on the list! John is a detective from New York who flies into Los Angeles to meet with his estranged wife for the holidays. While in her office building the terrorists take over and set about their diabolical scheming. John fits well into the role of an anti-hero but at the same time has a knight-in-shining-armor vibe. Watch it.

Trading Places (1983) - Eddie Murphy plays a broke criminal and blue-collar con-man while Dan Aykroyd plays a pompous rich white-chollar stock broker. The owners of the brokerage firm make a bet and put the criminal in their firm while ruining the rich man's career. Eddie Murphy's character learns that the old men plan to leave both of their toys in ruins. With the help of a butler and a prostitute the victims go to great lengths to get revenge and make a lot of money in the process. A great movie about trust and teamwork, plus it has Eddie Murphy.

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) - A housewife who can't remember her past, Samantha Caine (played by Geena Davis), has lost all but the last eight years. Finding no trace of her identity in that time she has resorted to hiring the cheapest of all private detectives, Mitch Henessey (Samuel L. Jackson). Events unfold that reveal Samantha to be a spy who was left for dead. Will she regain her memory in time to save herself? Will Mitch continue to wisecrack? You can probably guess. This action movie features prominently the theme of a mother fighting for the safety of her daughter. If "homemaker assassin" were a movie genre this would be a textbook case. I loved it.

(To Be Continued ...http://simplemethodscolumn.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-top-five-non-christmas-christmas_9.html)

Four English Idioms That Confuse Me

A Fly On The Wall - Being a fly on the wall means to be in a position to hear information that you normally would not hear. I'm confused by this because I have no idea how such a statement started. If you were a fly  you wouldn't have ears to hear the secrets you want to know. Flys have compound eyes so their ability to see things is phenomenal but they have no ears and instead only feel vibrations. So, you might see a lot more as a fly on the wall but you won't be hearing it. Okay, so maybe I'm reaching a little bit with that complaint but it is still a strange saying. Flys seem far less trustworthy than dogs or cats. House pets seem a lot cleaner too. Wanting to be a fly on the wall is the same as saying you want to be a dirty, disgusting, and annoying insect inclined vertically. Why not want to be a dog laying cozy by a fire? I think that would be better.

Break A Leg - I think you'll follow me on this one. In what culture or time period was it considered good luck to break your leg? In English it may have come to mean having good luck but when I studied Chinese I discovered that it originally meant to have something bad happen to save you from a worse fate. The story goes that the Emperor of China called for all the most prominent families to send their oldest sons to fight in a great battle. The head of one of the families was extremely sad because he only had one son. If his son were to fight and die he would have no heir. The son had an accident while riding his horse and broke his leg badly therefore he was exempt from military service. The father considered this a blessing because his lineage would survive. So there you go.

Bark Up The Wrong Tree – Barking up the wrong tree refers to hunting with dogs. If the dogs catch the scent of a nearby animal that is up a tree they have the tendency to get confused sometimes and bark around a tree that has no game in it. If you look all in that tree and find nothing you're not looking where you should be. You're barking up the wrong tree. This idiom confuses me because of its ambiguous language. With the word “tree” in the same sentence as the word “bark” I tend to conjure in my mind the mental image of the bark of a tree. Specifically something like the bark of a maple tree surrounding an oak tree. Why? Because that's bark up the wrong tree.

Beat Around The Bush – Yet another hunting term. This time it involves hunting game that hides in bushes. You send a helper to run the animal out of the bush and then hunt it when you can see it. Beat around the bush has come to mean not getting to the point in conversation. This confuses me because you beat around a bush to help a hunter catch his prey faster. So, beating around the bush should mean getting to the point quickly, right? Taking a long time to get to the point of a conversation should be called waiting outside the bush without help.