They say that your eyes are the window to your soul, and this is especially true when it comes to your smile.
Our smile can convey more information than we’re aware of. We smile to greet, to agree, to disagree, to flirt and for many other reasons, but there’s a difference in the message depending on how we smile.

The true, genuine smile raises the corners of your mouth along with your cheeks exposing your upper teeth and creating wrinkles around your eyes. A social smile mostly just pulls the corners of your mouth to the sides with no other significant changes in your facial expression.

The amazing thing is that our brains are wired to read these minor expression changes and are able to detect when someone’s smile is legit or just polite. That is because as babies we spend a great deal of time learning facial expressions from our parents and the smile is in fact one of the first forms of communication we learn that is not an instinct like crying for help. Even more amazing is that dogs have evolved a portion of their brain for human face recognition and can detect if their owner is happy so they wag their tails in response.

So we know that we smile when we feel good but the process apparently works both ways. If we force ourselves to smile, our brain interprets the signals coming from the facial muscles and assumes that you must be undergoing a pleasant experience. So remember that the next time that you’re feeling down, you can trick your brain into feeling happy.

So be happy and show your smile!