The Power of a Smile

How much power is there to a smile? I would have to say quite a bit. After all, consider how awkward we all felt way back in the day when we lost our front baby teeth. Yet, as most of us get older, we learn about how important a good smile is. Shallow though it may be, those first impressions make all the underlying difference when it comes to job interviews, relationships, and overall interactions. For me personally, my smile has held tremendous power over me – particularly because for most of my life, I had a smiling handicap. Allow me to explain.

 

As many of you know, I was a painfully shy and awkward kid. I was scared of being singled out, and was never comfortable feeling like people were looking at me. Sadly, these feelings of insecurity were made worse because of my smile. For whatever reason, as far back as I can remember, I have had a crooked smile. No, nothing is wrong with my teeth (thank the gods!). Rather, it had to do with my muscle control. Smiling is a very basic thing, right? It all comes down to moving the muscles in your face on both your right and left sides. Easy, right? Well, for whatever reason, my “natural” smile involves only moving the muscles on the left side of my face – ONLY the left. For most of my life, I didn’t realize that this was unusual – for me it was natural. But in looking back at pretty much every single childhood photo, I have a very crooked smile. I would go so far as to say that I look like I had suffered a stroke. To complicate things, people made comments – not rude or cruel comments – but comments nonetheless. I knew that there was something odd or weird or unusual. And I wasn’t aware of exactly what it was – I just knew that I felt uncomfortable smiling, uncomfortable posing for pictures, and uncomfortable getting attention. To me, “Attention” meant “evaluation”, or “criticism”, or “chastisement”. And subconsciously, I realized that when I smiled, it invited this unwanted feeling.

 

It wasn’t until fairly late, like around my late 20’s or so, when I looked in the mirror one day and realized that my crooked smile didn’t need to be that way. If I made a conscious effort to just work the muscles on the right side of my face, my smile looked “normal”. In fact, I was stunned to discover that I didn’t just have a normal smile – I actually have a rather nice smile. I remember that day very distinctly. I almost began to cry. I wasn’t really a funny-looking, awkward guy. I COULD look normal. I COULD actually pass for looking good if I made a little extra effort.

 

Moving the muscles on the right side of my face felt weird. After almost 30 years of just not doing it, it felt really, really odd. To me, when I smile, it actually feels as if my right side is pulled FAR more than the left. But when I look in the mirror, they are actually moving the same distance. To this day, it still feels a little bit odd. And yes, when I laugh or find something funny, the left side of my face reacts involuntarily while I have to consciously make a point to move the right side of my face – but I have gotten fairly used to it. Yet, I bare a “scar” to remind me of this somewhat unique feature. When I look in the mirror, I can see that the dimple on the left side of my face is deeper and more pronounced than the right. The difference is slight, but I can see it – a reminder of the years of different levels of work that the muscles in my face have felt.

 

This past ten or fifteen years has been an amazing time in my life. I have learned so much about myself – particularly how much I have held myself captive by the self-images formed in childhood. I learned that the only one keeping myself back from reaching my potential was me. I learned that many of my fears and paranoias were not imposed by other people – they were imposed by me. I learned that the names that other kids called me way back in the day did not really define who I am unless I chose them to.

 

But I think most importantly – I learned how to smile.