You Get To Choose Your Mood. Why Not Be Happy? No Assembly Required.

“Smile and smile… I don’t trust men who smile too much.” – Commander Kor, Star Trek (TOS)

When Pugsley was little, he was excited that about his birthday.  “Daddy, I have a birthday coming up and I’ll be this many old!”  Then he held up four fingers.  The police still don’t know where they came from.

Smile.

Shhh.  Don’t argue.

Smile.

Do it for, say, thirty seconds.

I’ll wait.

(Really, I mean this.  Smile.  Thirty seconds, look at a clock if you have to.  Everybody do it.)

Feel better?

You do.

I’m not sure what kind of day you’re having.  But smiling makes you feel happier.  There’s a study I could link to, but I’m pretty sure all of you know how to use the Internet, so look for it if you want.

Doesn’t matter if you look it up or not.  Smiling makes you feel better.  Smiling is good for you.  Smiling changes your mood.  Change your mood?  Your output is better.  Not only more, but better.

Once upon a time, I had a job at a company that was failing.  Not because of me, but because they had spectacularly failed on some business that they were doing.  How spectacularly?  They were losing millions of dollars.  Some work that I was involved with was likewise losing money, but in this case only a few thousand dollars.

My Boss pulled me into his office.  This is a real conversation, not one I made up.

Boss:  “John, do you know what position the company is in?”

John Wilder:  “Sure.  Two of our divisions have lost enough money that we are in danger of becoming bankrupt.”

Boss:  “Well, then, why are you so happy?  The company is in trouble.  People have noted that you’re too upbeat.”

When I get sad I cut myself.  Another piece of cake.

I was being told that I was being too happy and positive in the workplace.  How do you even respond to that?  Rip and tear your clothes and cry?  Sacrifice pigeons and stray raccoons to some ancient Sumerian god?  Gather up a group of warriors and go raid a competitor and steal their business so you can hear the lamentation of their women?

Willkommen to das Hötel Kalifornia.

I sort of understand what my Boss was getting at.  You don’t whistle, hum, crack a beer, and then sing Sammy Hagar songs at a funeral, even if there are headbangers in leather picking a three lock box.  But I sort of didn’t understand it, either.  How on Earth do you turn the business around, how do you make things better if you’re gloomy and you’re certain you’re going to die?

You don’t.

This week, a post at a great blog, Tempest in a Teardrop (LINK) mentioned St. Philip Neri.  I hadn’t read about him before.  I certainly hadn’t met him, since he died in Anno Domini 1595, which was about when your mom was finishing high school.

Neri’s quote that impressed me was:  “A joyful heart is more easily made perfect than a downcast one.”  It would be a conceit of the highest measure to think a single sentence I ever wrote would be quoted 400 years from now (though in my dreams I imagine there will be thousands of young students getting their degree in Wilder Wisdom Studies in the year 2356), but Neri absolutely nailed it with this line.

I wanted to be a standup comedian, but with Coronavirus?  Now they’re all inside jokes.

You have a choice.  Be mad.  Be sullen.  Be angry.  Be filled with wrath.  Give up.   Be jealous of those who have it better.

That’s five of the seven deadly sins (The seven deadly sins and society. How do they fit together?).  Eat seven bacon cheese burgers and think about your neighbor mowing the lawn in a bikini and you’re up to the full seven.  I mean, assuming your neighbor would look good in a bikini.

You don’t have to feel that way.  At all.  Ever.

Smile when you feel down.

When I was in college I had the opposite experience.  I had one particular professor, one of the most fun professors ever.  He was Swiss, and had been a mercenary in the 1950’s, and had done everything.  I was his student, and when I was in grad school, I was his Teaching Assistant.   His advice, coming between puffs of cherry-smelling smoke from his pipe?

“Keep smiling, John.”

Smiles are contagious, so my state says I should wear a mask.

If you did what I said earlier, and smiled, you felt better.  And you should do it as much as you can.  If you have a choice to be happy, why wouldn’t you choose it?

There are other hacks as well.

Sigh.  A deep sigh.  You will feel your tension lower.  Actual clinical studies that I think I read about show that this lowers blood pressure.  I feel better when I sigh, and I also stop sweating blood, which I think means my blood pressure is lower.

Another trick:

Stand like a superhero, chest thrust forward, hands on your hips.  There’s a reason the artists draw it that way – it makes you feel confident.  Powerful.  Competent.  I can recall falling asleep at night in a pose just like Superman™ flying – one hand out, the other back, and one leg up.

If Superman® and Batman© had a baby, what would it be?  Adopted.

I woke up feeling great!  But, of course, my liver didn’t have the mileage on it that it does now.  I still sleep like that most nights.  However, if you stand like a superhero?  You’ll feel like one.

If you ever listen to Scott Adam’s videos, “Coffee With Scott Adams” he starts them with a Simultaneous Sip.  To participate, all you need is a beverage in a container, and you sip when he says go.  It’s a dopamine hit to the brain, which he says will “make everything better.”  And it works.  You feel better when you participate.  Heck, I feel so much better that I often won’t even start listening unless I can do the Simultaneous Sip.

These are just a few hacks that immediately change your mood.  Yes, I understand sometimes these might not help.  More than a dozen years ago, I had a back problem that made sitting horribly uncomfortable.  When I walked, it was fine, but when I sat?  Excruciating pain.

I tried the ancient Chinese needle treatment for back pain.  The heroin worked best.

In my case, the solution to the pain was the body, again.  I started working out (especially my torso) and the back pain has been gone for (fingers crossed) nearly 13 years.  But if you want to feel better, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t?

• Check your mood.
• Check your posture.
• Check your surroundings.
• Check your attitude.
• Check the things you are allowing into your mind.

You own your mind.  It does what you say.  You own your feelings.  They are what you allow them to be.

Me?  I try to practice relentless reality optimism.

• I’m gonna die.   That tells me I have to hurry in the things I do.  I don’t have time to waste.
• I’m gonna fail.   That will tell me things I can do better next time.
• I’m tired.   That means I’ve been working as hard as I can.

I want every component of my body to be absolutely used up on the last day of my life.  I’d like the organ people to look at me and say, “Nope, nothing for us.  Unless we can transplant the smile.”

Smile.

Hold it.

Now you don’t have excuses.  Go and do it, whatever it is as long as the stakes are high enough.

I had to cut my last duck out of my life.  He was addicted to quack.

Clock is ticking.  And failure is just a teacher to make you better.

Oh, and the company that was failing?  Because of some changes I made in dealing with their major client, they managed to get over two hundred million dollars in business when they were near bankruptcy, generating millions in profits after I left them.  They’re still around today.

I guess smiling pays off, after all.