What is the first thing you do after waking up and the last before going to bed?
Most probably you are not even conscious about it. It could be anything: going to piss, turning the TV set on/off or drinking a glass of water. But why that should be important to us?
In the same way an attractive book cover draws us to peek through the first pages of a book or the cliffhanger at the end of the episode of your favorite TV series makes us to tune for the next episode, the days in our ordinary lives are shaped by our expectations and the attitudes we have of them.
Expectations are that preconception about how our day will be (good, bad, amazing, frustrating) and the attitude is about how we face reality when we confront it. Will you demoralize when you find that the day you thought was going to be great turned to be the worst day of the year? Or will you be able to seize the whole happiness out of a bad day that turned to be an amazing one?
There are hundreds of recipes out there about how to create you day, ranging from praying, meditating, exercising, etc. same that you are too busy or too lazy to do anyway so I will recommend you the most simple—but effective—of all of them. And it’s so incredible that even if you practice one of the previously mentioned, this activity will not interpose with them.
The recipe is simple, all you have to do after waking up and before going to bed is to stand in front of the mirror and smile at yourself. That is it. Smile at yourself with no purpose at mind. Smile at yourself with no strings attached. The only rule is that you have to give yourself the best smile your lips can produce.
What if I’m sad or I am not in the mood? You might ask. In that case you have to feign to be the happiest, goofiest person in the world and give yourself the widest, craziest smile you can.
Why? With what purpose? You might also ask.
We spend our days trying to please the people at our work, family, friends and even random people we meet anywhere, but we forget to please and give recognition to the most important person in the whole universe to us. To please ourselves. To please ourselves by the hard work we are doing every day in between waking up and going to sleep.
With time we will practice and memorize our smile like actors and actresses, and when a bad day crashes in our life, we will smile naturally and we will confront it the best we can. Not because this is a magic recipe towards happiness, but because smiling at us every day, we acknowledge that life it’s not easy and never will be, but if someone can take over it, that is the person in the mirror.
How many times have smiled at yourself today?
M. Ch. Landa