One of the things I learned throughout the years is the fact that facial expressions are not just a reaction to a certain mental or psychological status, but also an action, when created, forces a certain desired reaction.
I don’t mean to be complicated, but looking at facial expressions as reflects does not mean they can’t actually reflect an action we create. Let’s take the smile for example, a smile is a reflection of happiness, or kindness, or appreciation, or love, or peace of mind. In short, it’s a reflection of a positive feeling.
But what I learned is, we can make the reflection an action by forcing a smile on our face to create a positive feeling 🙂 Try it out yourself. When you wake up, force a smile on your face, you’ll feel calm and peaceful. When you answer the phone, draw a smile on your face, you’ll immediately feel that your voice has this happy tone in it. While you’re walking down the street, a smile on your face will make you feel more confident. But if you have a frown, your tone will be more serious, you’ll look sadder and your day wont be as happy as it’d be when you have a smiley face!
This brings us to acting. Acting is about creating reflects to certain actions and situations, actors force the facial expressions to convince the audience that these expressions are reflects to certain actions. So the audience sees the expressions as reaction although they are actually actions!
Which means facial expressions could be both actions and reactions, not at the same time though.
I really encourage people to force some positive expressions on their faces in order to be happier and to support others around them, but I’m certainly 100% against taking advantage of this and turning it into cheap acting to lie to someone, trick someone or hurt someone.
If you still have no smile on your face then what the hell are you waiting for? Force one big smile on your face, this will take care of the most complicated problems and the worst moods you might be having 🙂