Don't take your smile for granted

I am one of those people. I'm sure you've met someone like me before. You might even be someone like me. I love to smile. I smile all the time. My smile walks into the room before I do. I have been told many times that their favorite 'thing' about me is my smile. I have been told that my smile brightens up the room. I even smile when I'm talking to someone on the phone as I'm sure they can feel it through our conversation. What do you think happened to me when I couldn't smile anymore?

I'm a Sales Training Director and I teach a course on body language and how important it is and how to be aware of it when meeting with people. When I talk about smiling during a sales presentation with a possible customer, I even speak about knowing how much to smile and how big your smile should be. As a sales professional, you might have learned about the technique "mirroring" your prospect's body language during the sales presentation. This is an art of the sale that needs to be practiced and perfected.

Let me get back to your smile. I am currently recovering from Bell's Palsy. It has now been ten months since I was first diagnosed. For six months, I lost my smile due to the temporary facial paralysis. It was disheartening and affected me in a way that surprised me because I tend to be on the glass is half full side. As mentioned, I love to smile. I love my smile. I was known for my smile and when it was gone, things changed for me. I started to notice how others would react to me just simply because I wasn't smiling. For those that knew me that I interacted with, it just took a little bit of getting used to but because they knew who and how I was, they weren't bothered too much about it because they knew it was due to my temporary health condition. It was the interaction with strangers that changed.

Because I was aware that my smile was crooked, in conversation with others, I made a point to make sure that my tone of voice was cheerful, perhaps a slightly elevated cheerful to make up for the missing smile. I love my local Trader Joe's and believe they have the best customer service employees around. At the checkout, the cashier always engages with you in conversation that is relevant to your current grocery purchase. Have you ever noticed that? I was out shopping with my young teens and I wanted to see if I can still carry on a cheerful conversation with the cashier even without smiling. As expected, our cashier began talking to us about our purchase and asked what we had planned to make for dinner. I began to speak in a higher, more cheerful tone of voice to let him know that I am happy to be speaking with him. He began to have this different look on his face. The kind of look one may have when listening to someone that may not come off as genuine. My voice was cheerful but my smile was not. This quick social experiment that I wanted to demonstrate to my kids about the power of your smile truly showed that even with elevating your tone to be more cheerful, without your smile, it's not perceived to be genuine. I bowed my head down after this interaction and my son gave me a quick hug to say "It's okay, mom". It wasn't our cashier's fault or intention. This response came naturally. The reaction from our cashier was repeated in various other interactions that I had whether it's the flight attendant on my flight or the server at a restaurant and it doesn't mean they are bad people. Not at all. It just proves that your smile says a lot about you and when you're not smiling, it affects how people react to you.

Don't take your smiles for granted. It should be one of the most favorite things that you do. A simple smile can bring joy to others that you meet. It can make a huge impact on someone that is having a bad day. A smile can change someone's mood in a heartbeat. It took a medical condition for me to realize exactly how much my smiles mean to me. It took losing my smile to know that it shouldn't be taken for granted. Make it a habit to smile more. Smiles are free.