There is great wisdom in the saying how a small positive thought in the morning has the power to influence and change your entire day. Have you ever heard someone mention how he or she woke up on the wrong side of the bed? Did I write that correctly? In my country, we say that a person stood up from the bed landing on the wrong foot. Language idioms are always funny but they do make a solid point when they need to, don't they? So... Whether you woke up on the wrong side or got off the bed on the wrong foot, go back to bed and start again. Just, go back and start again.

Never forget that the body-brain relationship is a two way street. Yes, our brains influence our bodies but our bodies influence our brains too. This is because our brains are always watching what our bodies are doing and since we can not control our emotions, let's control our muscles instead! Get that zygomatic major muscle working! SMILE!

Darwin obviously knew more than we realize. We are, just now, beginning to grasp how our muscles are interconnected with our emotional response. When our brain picks up a smile, even a fake one, it is tricked into believing there is something funny or happy going on. It does not recognize a fake as often as we think it does. Try it. Smile and see how your mood changes.

In the late '80s, researches got their subjects to hold a pencil in their mouth to flex certain muscles of their face. There were 3 groups, in one, people were holding it with their teeth in a way to simulate a smile, the other group was holding it to stimulate the frown and the third group had a pencil in their hand. Subjects were, without explanation what was the study group about, instructed to watch cartoons and asked how funny they were. Guess which group gave the higher “funny” ratings? The one that was holding a pencil in a way to stimulate muscles responsible for smiling.

There were many similar researches since then. The recent one was with people instructed to make a smile or a frown when presented with images of faces and then asked about emotional responses. When smiling, images were perceived as more pleasant than when frowning.

Forget the old question about what came first; the chicken or the egg, this one is far more important. Do we smile because we are happy or are we happy when we smile? Both? Yeah, I think it works both ways.

From the Argyle and Lu research in 1990, we found that extrovert personalities enjoy higher levels of happiness than introvert. Not much surprise there, at least not for me. People are social beings and it is in our genes to interact with others. We needed others to survive while we were living in caves and I think that need stuck with us. We need other people.

There was a 20-year study of interpersonal relationships, conducted by James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis, that observed relationships between close relatives. It found that the happiness of a friend or close family member who lives up to a mile away from a person can boost their prospects of happiness by around 25%. It suggests that the contagiousness of happiness is not limited to direct relationships. Your happiness can influence other people up to 3 degrees of separation.

I have found that smiling is contagious. Happiness is contagious. I see it all the time in my personal life and surroundings. People tend to mimic others and have a certain amount of empathy involved in their interactions. Have you seen those youtube videos where someone starts laughing on the bus and after a minute or two, the entire bus in laughing? Look it up, by the end of the video, you will be laughing too.

Happiness having a stimulating effect on our health is not a huge breakthrough. We have known it for a while now. Here and there, a new study pops out and reminds us to be happy in order to be healthy because we do tend to forget it. We live in a busy world and lead busy lives. We need to be reminded of those simple truths from time to time.

According to researches from Kansas, smiling helps reduce the body’s response to stress and lower heart rate in tense situations. It can lower blood pressure and even prolong your life. Having an optimistic mindset does help with many things. We are more productive and satisfied when we are not under stress and there are many studies that have linked stress to illness. Too many to even mention. Be happy to be healthy and be happy because being happy feels good.

The effects of happiness on the immune system are not completely understood but we can not deny those effects are there. It is not magical, it is pure biology. Your body reacts with hormones that help your entire body. Happiness has a strong effect on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which regulates your immune system, hormones, digestion and stress levels. Remember cortisol? The hormone that can cause weight gain, disturbed sleep, and high blood pressure? Well, happy people produce less of it than sad, angry or stressed ones.

Happy people usually do live longer and it is because happy means healthy. Happy people eat healthy often then unhappy people and happy people sleep better and exercise more. We know that eat, sleep and exercise are the 3 main factors that influence our health and life in general. When we are happy, we tend to have fewer problems with those and enjoy them more.

The study of the health benefits of happiness is still young, we have a long way to go and much more research to conduct before we can be certain of anything but we can say something for sure. Happiness feels good. It feels better than sadness or anger. On that scale of emotions, happiness and gratitude are pretty high and you should always aim high.

Everything we do is because we are chasing that happy feeling. We want more money because we think it will make us happier, we want a bigger house, a new car, world peace, end of hunger, more friends, a lover, ten dogs because we want a happiness boost. Everything we do, we do because it will bring us more happiness. That is what we are chasing for or living for. We even help others because it feels good to us. Do not try to deny it. You want to be happy and you need to be happy. It is an internal force that is pushing you forward.

For all of you depressed people out there, do not hang in there. That is the stupidest advice anyone can give you. Get off your ass and change something. By something I mean your thinking. No one can help you better than you can help yourself. Trust me. I was there. With 4 diagnoses, I was there. From severe clinical depression to severe agoraphobia, I was there. Do you know when my life changed? When my thinking changed. I am not my brain. You are not your brain. Brain is an organ and like any other organ, it can be controlled, even tricked. Smile and see for yourself. Read about synapses and learn how they can be your enemies or your friends, the choice is yours.