Last update: 13 March, 2016
When you smile, you show your deepest thoughts, you show yourself, you reveal all your secrets and you bring people closer. Sometimes your cheerfulness is contagious, just a simple curve on your lips, because your eyes smile even before your mouth does.
With all your smiles you show me the world as you see it, you show me that there is a way to see life with an open soul and willing to learn. If you don't smile, I will fight every day with all the means I have to make your lips fly up to the sky.
Take away my bread, if you want, the air,
the light, the spring,
but your smile never
because I would die of it.
Pablo Neruda
Why do we lose our sense of humor?
A child laughs about 400 times a day and an adult 15. This is perhaps because we lose our innocence or sense of humor, but the reality is that we often need to regain the ease of laughing like children, having fun and learning to see life in a much simpler and more fun way.
One of the reasons for the lack of humor, sometimes, is the rigidity of our behavior, our lack of naturalness, the fear of breaking the rules, of not respecting them. But who wrote these rules? What happens if we don't respect them? Nothing happens, we would simply be ourselves.
Just get up in the morning, take the bus and look at people's faces to notice that no one is smiling, that everyone has lost their sense of humor. Have you ever paused to reflect? What would happen if you smiled a little more? You have nothing to lose, your problems will continue to exist, but if you smile, for sure you will be able to see them in another way..
Learning to laugh at yourself again
As children we are not ashamed and we do not think about our defects or strengths, we are simply happy and smile at life. A smile, therefore, is also a question of self-esteem. If we love ourselves, we are able to accept our faults and our strengths and to put aside the importance we place on the opinions of others.
But not only are we able to laugh at ourselves if we have strong self-esteem, laughing at ourselves will, in fact, strengthen our self-esteem.. So it's something that works both ways.
Another way to learn to laugh at yourself again is to overcome your shyness, the shame of facing the opinion of others, because it is precisely the sensitivity to negative criticism that paralyzes us and prevents us from enjoying our smiles. Dear readers, learn to be spontaneous, say everything that comes into your head, joke, smile, do not be afraid, nothing will happen and you will have fun.
Smile therapy is no longer just a way to fight stress or have a good time. It has become a method, a medical and psychological treatment. At the base is the concept that even when a smile is forced, we feel good and in the end smiling will become a spontaneous gesture.
