How to Train a Wild Elephant_ And Other Adventures in Mindfulness - Jan Chozen Bays [67]
When we smile, it doesn’t just affect the moods of others, it also affects our own emotions. There is feedback from the facial muscles to the brain. Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
When you smile, and even when you simply stretch your mouth as if you were smiling, your emotions take an upturn. In fact, when people use Botox to erase facial wrinkles, their ability to move the facial muscles involved in smiling decreases, and so does the strength of their emotions, positive and negative. Research on smiling clearly shows that controlling the face can help control the mind and the emotions it produces. Dale Jorgensen, an expert on the effects of smiling, says,
I’ve thought about this quite a bit. What I’ve found has reinforced one of my guiding principles, that we really are in charge of our destinies. We do have influence over what happens to us by virtue of our actions. Smiling is a case in which a simple act can have profound effects on the kinds of experiences we have with other people and how they treat us.
The Buddha is always depicted with a gentle smile on his face. It is an inspiring smile, a smile born of the joy of mindful awareness, of a person who is content in all circumstances, even at his death.
Final Words: If smiling has such clear positive effects upon us and those around us, perhaps we should take up a “serious” lifelong smiling practice.
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Leave Things Better Than You Found Them
The Exercise: This exercise carries the practice of “leave no trace” (chapter 2) one step farther. Try to look for ways, even small ways, to leave spaces or things cleaner or tidier than you found them.
REMINDING YOURSELF
Post the words “Better Than I Found It” in appropriate places, such as the kitchen, bathroom, or bedroom, and on the exit doors from these spaces.
DISCOVERIES
When people first try this exercise, they may become confused when they see how much could be done. Should I pick up all the trash on the sidewalk outside my apartment? How about in the street or the park? Where do I stop?
The best arena for this exercise is local and everyday, in the many little things we can all do, such as picking up a few bits of blown-around newspaper at the bus stop, wiping up the ring of spilled coffee on the kitchen counter, straightening the couch pillows as we walk through the living room, or using a paper towel to wipe out a sink in a public bathroom. Some young people said they found themselves hesitating to do this exercise because “then it might become expected of me.” They said the expectations could come from others, such as parents, but also from themselves, as they began to feel guilty if they left things messy.
This task seemed to lend itself to what I call “mind poisoning.” A few people got derailed by contemplating the philosophical implications of this task, wondering what “better” really meant in the scope of centuries of failed attempts to improve the world, or debating whether, if they found someone else’s dirty dish in the sink, they should just wash it or whether that would “enable” the other person to continue being mindless and inconsiderate. However, as one person observed, “I discovered that if I didn’t want to clean something, I was always centered on myself—‘Why me? I don’t want to do this!’ If I thought about what would make other people happy, then the resentment disappeared and I found myself enjoying just doing the practice.” Another person, on encountering a messy pile of other people’s shoes, said that it was such a relief to drop her internal judgment and just engage the body in straightening them up.
People who relished this exercise experienced it as being linked to other exercises such as “saying yes” (to improving the state of things) and “secret virtue” (improving things without anyone noticing). One person extended the scope