Do you remember a musical called Bye Bye Birdie? If not, don’t sweat it. It was way before my time too ????. I only know about it because, when I was a kid, I was in a drama troupe that would stage different classic plays every year, and one year that was the one. (As a total aside, I frankly wasn’t a terribly good actor, but my aunt was involved in casting, so there you go).

Anyhoo… there’s a song in the musical called Put on a Happy Face, and the lyrics always stuck with me because words are my jam. Also, the lyrics were pretty damn simple. Something like: “Why look so awfully tragic? Put on a happy face! Smiling can work like magic; put on a happy face. And spread sunshine all over the place. Just put on a happy face!”

I was a bit of a gloomy kid, so the lyrics always struck me as kinda, well, dippy. I mean, “smiling can work like magic”? Seriously?

So, um, turns out that ya, seriously: smiling can work like magic.

Don’t take my word for it

Back in 2011, Ron Gutman, founder and CEO of HealthTap—online apps for health info—did a TED Talk on the hidden power of smiling. Citing a whole load of research, he explained that people with wider smiles tend to have longer marriages, are more inspiring to others, and even live longer. Apparently, one smile can generate the same level of brain stimulation of up to 2,000 bars of chocolate (wish you were part of that research study, don’t you?).

Smiling is also evolutionarily contagious. In plain language, that means that when someone smiles at us, we’re genetically wired to smile back. I’ve had the opportunity to test this theory in practice. It was thanks to Vic Johnson, a motivational speaker and author who used to run a goal-setting program that I participated in. As part of the program, we were asked to listen to a series of affirmations on a daily basis. This was a while ago, so I may not be getting the language right, but one of the affirmations went something like this: “I smile at everybody, and they smile back.”

It was one of those little messages that I totally integrated. Since that time, I’ve made it a habit to smile all the time—when walking down the street, passing strangers, waiting in lines, ordering coffee, whatever. And Vic was totally right—when I smile at people, they smile back. See? Magic.

Putting it into practice

What’s totally cool about this particular superpower is that it has application way beyond the simple smile. What I’ve come to realize is that smiling is actually just a proxy for the energy we project into the world. It’s one of the little ways we can exert control over our own emotions when external circumstances threaten to unseat us.

I guess what I mean to say is that it comes down to attitude. When we face obstacles, it’s down to us to decide how to respond to them. If my knee-jerk reaction is to blow things out of proportion, default into fear, and give up, I’ve effectively abdicated control. I’ve allowed the external world—which is ultimately totally indifferent to me personally—to dictate my reality. On the flip side, however, I can train myself to approach obstacles calmly, objectively, or even with wonder.

It’s amazing what an attitude adjustment can do. Earlier this year, I found myself in a potentially scary situation business-wise. My workflow had slowed down to a trickle—to the point that I couldn’t keep my staff busy and was starting to worry about making payroll. My initial reaction was to ignore it and hope it would go away. Kinda funny, really. In The Obstacle is the Way, author Ryan Holiday describes this phenomenon like this: It’s “as though we expect someone else to handle [our problem], as though we honestly believe that there is a chance of obstacles unobtacle-ing themselves.”

After my tiny pity party, however, it became clear that my fairy godmother was on extended leave and not answering emails. So I hitched up my britches (at least, proverbially), took a deep breath, and changed my fucking story. Instead of telling myself my business was in danger of imminent collapse, I put together a marketing plan and executed on it. Took a few months, but it’s paid off. Business is back on track. And I’m a hell of lot less complacent than I once was.

The moral, for me? Perception is everything. If I see a negative outcome, I’m gonna manifest a negative outcome. But if I see opportunity, possibility, or wonder, that’s where I’m going to aim. Smiling in the face of fear doesn’t just diminish the fear. It turns it on its head and allows us to see it from a different perspective. And baby, believe me—there’s nothing more magic than that.