Your Imagined Enemies Will Be No More
In my 30 Day Smiling Experiment, I found that on the very first few days of this experiment that people that I thought did not like me started greeting me back in a friendly manner after I smiled at them in passing in a hallway. Also, I found that people I thought excluded me from conversations in the past were in reality excluding me because they thought I wanted to be excluded. I refer to this as the vicious cycle since the exclusion then leads to even more resentful feelings to cause even more of a sad sack face. In short, if you are feeling excluded, try smiling. You will be shocked at how quickly things can turn around!
One of Dale Carnegie’s 6 Ways To Make People Like You
A timeless classic, , by Dale Carnegie, devotes an entire chapter to smiling as one of Six Ways to Make People Like You! In their chapter A Simple Way to Make a Good First Impression, author Dale Carnegie states:
Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says “I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.”
That is why dogs make such a hit.
Carnegie, in fact, has instructed those he taught at his seminars to conduct their own smiling experiment by smiling at someone each hour, for one week straight. In his book he shares some of the feedback he got from those that tried it, all of it quite positive.
