“Smile, gentlemen”: how to learn to see the good and whether it is necessary

“A gloomy day is brighter from a smile!” … “And you smile at the one who is sitting in the pond!” … The good old Soviet cartoons, on which more than one generation of Russians grew up, are not so naive, as it turns out. And now the attitude to benevolence given to us in childhood by Little Raccoon and other “cartoons” is picked up by the adult movie character Munchausen-Yankovsky: “I understand what your trouble is – you are too serious. A smart face is not yet a sign of intelligence, gentlemen. All stupid things on earth are done with this facial expression … Smile, gentlemen! Smile!

But real life is not a Disney or Soyuzmultfilm fairy tale; it often gives us reasons for sadness, and even despondency. “My sister constantly tells me that I am a whiner, I see everything in black,” admits 36-year-old Natalya. – Yes, I notice how the prices of food and clothes are rising. It’s hard to have fun when this year I spent not 1, but 10 thousand on preparing my third-grader son for September 15. I see how our mother is aging, and it makes me sad. I understand that one day it will not be. And the sister says: so be glad that she is still alive. I would like to, but I can’t “unsee” the bad.”

If we wait for special circumstances to enjoy, there is a chance that we will never find them favorable enough. Smiling at life is a conscious choice, says Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. In the book Be Free Where You Are, he advises “to appreciate every moment of life, every minute, to use them for gaining firmness of spirit, peace in the soul and joy in the heart.” But it is important to remember that joy has many shades, and each of us experiences and manifests it in our own way.

Two big differences

“We are all born with a certain temperament, emotional tone, for some it is higher, for others it is lower. In a sense, it is laid down genetically, – explains the humanistic psychotherapist Alexei Stepanov. Joy is one of the fundamental human feelings, accessible to everyone. We are all, in the absence of pathologies, capable of experiencing the full range of emotions. But being happy and being optimistic are not the same thing. These concepts are “from different beds”.

Joy is the emotional state of the moment. Optimism is a set of attitudes, beliefs that are valid for a long time, sometimes for a lifetime. This is a cheerful attitude to what is happening in general, a sense of being in the world, including confidence in success in the future. Joy is the backdrop against which these beliefs live.”

You can laugh at a friend’s good joke or smile while reading a book, but at the same time look at life in general through a smoke-stained glass, like in the sun during an eclipse. And you can guess behind the black disk of the moon penetrating the sun’s rays.

“My colleague lost his wife in a car accident two years ago. I can’t even imagine what it’s like,” says 52-year-old Galina. – He is 33 years old, two months before the accident, a daughter was born. He loved his wife very much, they came together for all the holidays of our company. We were afraid that he would give up. But he once said that Lena would scold him for despair. And that the daughter should receive as much love as she was supposed to when she was born.

I listen as he talks with a smile about the girl’s first steps, how he plays with her, how she looks like little Lena in the photographs, and I feel so warm from his stamina and wisdom!”

The ability to see the good, even if there are trials on the path of life, may be an attitude passed on in the process of education, or maybe it is part of the cultural code. “When akathists are sung to saints, you will not hear the words “Be happy, have fun, laugh, do not lose heart!” You will hear “Rejoice!”. Thus, this state, even in culture, is designated as an important, basic, fundamental deep feeling,” Alexey Stepanov draws our attention. It is not for nothing that those suffering from depression complain first of all that they no longer feel joy, and for many this is so unbearable that they are ready to give up their lives. You can lose joy, but can you find it?

Alone and with others

There is such a popular recipe for blues – go to the mirror and start smiling to yourself. And after a while we will feel a surge of strength. Why does it work?

“Smiling is by no means a formal recommendation. Behind it are deep psychophysiological mechanisms, – says Alexei Stepanov. – Many skeptically assess the American smile as fake. I think she’s just natural. There is an attitude in culture to smile, and it entails a change in the emotional state in general. Try the exercise: take a pencil in your teeth and hold it down. Your lips will involuntarily stretch. This is a way to artificially induce a smile. And then watch your feelings.

It is known that our emotional states are projected onto bodily dynamics, how we behave, what facial expressions we have, how we move. But the connection of the body and emotions works in the opposite direction. By starting to smile, we can reinforce and reinforce our positive experiences by sharing them with others. After all, it is not in vain that they say that shared sadness becomes half as much, and shared joy – twice as much.

“The more truthful and harmonious our love, social and family relationships, the better we feel,” reminds conflictologist Dominique Picard. To support them, she advises to follow the harmony of the three components: exchange, recognition and conformity. Sharing is about giving and receiving equally, whether it’s time, compliments, favors, or gifts. Recognition is about accepting the other person as being fundamentally different from us.

Finally, conformity means choosing a communication strategy that suits our feelings at the moment, such as not giving ambiguous or conflicting signals that can cause stress or provoke conflicts. And do not neglect a smile – for the interlocutor, this is a signal in communication that we are safe for contact.

Let’s rely on empathy

And yet, a too joyful person can scare us away, or at least cause distrust. “Concentrated joy interferes with empathy. At the peak of emotions, we are alienated from those around us, deaf to them, – Aleksey Stepanov warns. “In this state, we do not quite adequately evaluate others, sometimes attributing a good mood to everyone around, although someone may be sad at that moment and our delight will be inappropriate for him.”

Maybe that’s why we don’t really trust those who always smile? We want the interlocutor to correlate not only with their emotions, but also take into account ours! The creator of the concept of non-violent communication, Marshall Rosenberg, recommends living fully with empathy, capturing what the interlocutor feels and what he lives here and now, not with the help of his intellect, but with the help of intuition, receptivity. What does he feel? What do you dare not say? What confuses him in my behavior? What can we do to make us feel psychologically comfortable?

“This brotherly behavior requires us to give up self-centeredness, our personal opinion and our goal, in order to enter without prejudice and fear into the mental and emotional space of the other,” says Rosenberg.

Is it a utopia? Perhaps, but we need to let go of the patronizing attitude and the edifying tone, at least once in a while. And smile sincerely more often.