Believe it or not, there is a brand of recognized and effective therapy called laughter therapy which, as it sounds like, is a method of helping to treat a wide range of mental health disorders and generally improve the enjoyment of life.
Laughter and smiling are not only a way of living in the moment more comprehensively but also of improving both your physical health and your emotional well-being. So, with that being said, here are six ways to smile more each and every day.
1. Improve Your Oral Health
Firstly, one way to help you smile more is to pay much more attention to taking care of your oral health. You should always, even if you have been out drinking, have just completed a long shift at work, or are absolutely shattered for every other reason, brush your teeth before going to bed. If you fail to do this, or even only brush your teeth every other day, your teeth are not only going to be weaker, but they will always be yellower. Contact a professional, established, and renowned orthodontics in north London clinic that will be more than happy to book you in for an initial consultation to discuss not only how to improve your oral health but to look into teeth whitening too.
2. Work to Reduce Your Stress Levels
Secondly, if you are not someone who is particularly susceptible to stress, or indeed are fortunate enough not to have ever been in a particularly stressful or traumatic situation, you are probably unaware of the direct impact stress can have on the body.
It is, therefore, crucial to reduce your stress levels not only for the sake of your physical well-being and mental health but also to provide you with more reasons to be happy, relax and smile.
Some tried, tested, and proven effective stress busters include the following:
- Meditation, including yoga and Pilates techniques
- Ensuring that you get enough sleep
- Connecting with positive loved ones in your life
- Conversely phasing out negative influences
- Massaging your temple and hands
- A long bubble bath with candles
- Taking a walk outdoors in nature
3. Spend More Time Alone
Extroverts are able to spend an infinite amount of time around lots of different people, both in a professional workplace setting and as soon as they get home in their social life too.
Introverts, however, need time and space alone in which to recharge and rejuvenate after attending a party, a family meal, or any other kind of social event. Too much time spent with other introverts can result in a complete draining of their ‘social battery’, which can lead to fatigue, low mood, and even the onset of MDD (major depressive disorder).
Additionally, there are numerous key benefits in spending more time to focus on your emotional well-being and to partake in the solo adventures and hobbies you enjoy, including:
- A way of discovering who you are and reconnecting with yourself
- Improved relationships between you and your loved ones
- An improvement to your overall mental well-being
- An increase in creativity
- Improved concentration, focus, and memory power
- Makes you more comfortable
- Makes you SMILE!
4. Adopt a Deserving Animal
For animal lovers, there is nothing more relaxing and rejuvenating than spending time with their pet, whether that be a parakeet, pair of bunnies, a beautiful kitten, or an energetic dog, and even if you have not previously ever known what it is like to share your home with an animal, it is really worth looking into. Better for animal kind in general, as well as the individual animals too, you should always look to adopt and rehome an innocent animal that has been mistreated and/or abandoned rather than buying a puppy or kitten.
If your heart is set on a young animal, however, under no circumstances should you ever buy a baby animal from a breeder who cannot provide paperwork, proof of ownership, and, crucially, who refuses to show you the mother of the puppy, kitten or rabbit you are interested in buying. In short, animals are not a commodity.
5. Keep a Journal
Another effective way of providing more happiness in your life and, indeed, infectious laughter and happiness in the people around you is to keep a journal. Within your new journal, at the end of every evening, you should pick one thing, just one, that happened to you or that you did that made you happy. Alternatively, if writing is simply not your style, you could choose to draw a colored pencil image of the event that made you happy.
Crucially, the catalyst for happiness on an average day can be as small as seeing a peacock on the way to work or as large as booking your dream once-in-a-lifetime holiday for a good price online. Every week or so, look back into your journal and see, appreciate, and truly remember that there are moments to be found to smile in everyday life all of the time.
6. Consider Seeing a Therapist
Far from therapy being a wholly American concept that is much more closely related to statute and prestige than it is to health and medicine if you have never seen a therapist in the past, you are truly in for a treat.
Another common misnomer relating to therapy is that there has to be something specifically ‘wrong’ for the therapist to see you, and although it is absolutely true for many people suffering from depression or else living with another trauma-based illness, therapy is helpful for all.
Maybe you have been wholly dissatisfied in your marriage for a while, and rather than wanting a divorce, you want to reignite the passion and adventure you and your partner once had. Alternatively, maybe you are beginning to resent entering the door of the office every day and are longing for a less mundane and boring 9-5. Regardless of how you feel, after even the first therapy session, you will certainly feel as if you will want to smile more.