The human face has around 30 muscles on each side, depending on how they are counted. It takes 47 muscles to frown and only 13 to smile. The main muscle used in smiling is the zygomaticus major, also known as the smiling muscle.

The simplest, quickest, and easiest way to enhance your well-being in life is to exercise that muscle often. Train yourself to wear a perpetual smile. 

Dale Carnegie’s terrific book, How to Win Friends and Influence People is a must-read. Though written almost 100 years ago (1926), it is so rooted in basic human psychology, it still speaks to our modern age.

He taught seminars based on his book to large audiences in New York City.

Carnegie devoted an entire chapter— A Simple Way to Make a Good First Impression— to the topic of smiling. When he taught this chapter at his seminars, he gave his students a simple assignment: Smile at someone every hour of the day for the next week and then come back to class and talk about the results. The positive results of this simple exercise were profound. His students learned that a smile is one of the most potent people skills and that it can dramatically improve human relationships.

Carnegie concluded his chapter on the power of a smile with these words:

The Value of a Smile

• • • It costs nothing, but creates much.
    • It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give.
    • It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.
    • None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits.
    • It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends.
    • It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and Nature’s best antidote for trouble.
    • Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is given away.

It’s helpful to consider the difference between our resting face and our engaged face.

Resting face – the way your face looks when you are at ease, with facial muscles relaxed. 

Engaged face – the way your face looks when you are consciously manipulating your face to appear more engaged, approachable, and friendly. I’ve also heard this called a “yes face.”

To display an engaged face, raise the eyebrows, open up the eyes, smile, and raise the forehead. To exhibit a resting face, do nothing. 

Let’s accept the same assignment Dale Carnegie challenged his students with: Put on you engaged face and smile at someone every hour of the day for the next week and then come back to class and talk about the results. Or, in our case, respond to this blog post.

Most of us are overly concerned about what people notice about us and what they think of us. For instance, we may spend an inordinate amount of time choosing what we wear, convinced that most people will notice. We’re worried that we didn’t talk enough or talked too much at a business luncheon.

To some degree, this is to be expected. Because each of us is the center of our own universe, we focus on ourselves and think other people do too. Because we are so focused on our own behavior, it’s hard for us to assess how much or how little our behavior is noticed by others. Tom Gilovich, a psychologist at Cornell University, has studied this issue for years, and his research helps us think clearly about this.

In a 2000 study, Gilovich conducted an experiment in which he asked students to enter a classroom, filled with their peers, while wearing a Barry Manilow T-shirt. At the time, this was not a cool thing to do; the students were embarrassed to be seen wearing that T-shirt. After the encounter, the students participating in the experiment estimated that 50% of their peers noticed the Manilow shirt and probably talked about it to others. But when questioned, less than 20% of their peers had noticed.

Gilovich demonstrated the same exaggerated misperceptions in other studies, such as group discussions about social issues. In one study, Gilovich reported that students also overestimated how well their own gaffes and clever arguments were noticed by others in discussion groups. 

The bottom line is: We’re not as interesting as we think and other people don’t notice us nearly as much as we think they do.

This fact will either disappoint you or give you peace.

If you delight in being the center of attention, if you have narcissistic tendencies, if your sense of value and self-worth come from the attention and admiration of others…you’ll be disappointed to learn that most people don’t even notice you or care what you are doing.

But this insight should actually give us peace. We don’t need to live our lives feeling like we’re constantly walking down a model’s catwalk. We can cease worrying about what people think of us because they seldom do.

Years ago I had a mustache for about 10 years. The day I shaved it off I anticipated a lot of comments. My wife and children didn’t even notice. I should have learned this lesson that day. 

At my work at the church, we always pursue excellence, but sometimes we make mistakes. There was a typo on one of the worship slides; I brought the choir in a measure early; we missed a deadline. When boo-boos happen we thoughtfully say, “We made a mistake, but no one died.” The phrase helps put things into proper perspective.

There are environments in which mistakes can be fatal: emergency rooms, airplane flights, military engagements. But for most of us, our mistakes are less impactful and certainly not fatal.

Don’t use this phrase as an excuse for mistakes and don’t be dismissive or nonchalant about failures. Own up to your mistakes, analyze them, and learn from them. But don’t exaggerate their impact, shame the person responsible, or carve the incident in tablets of stone. Let it pass.

Extend this grace and generosity to yourself. When you mess up, don’t reach for the proverbial hammer and pound your head. Learn all you can, then drop it and move on. 

Don’t be cavalier about mistakes but don’t overreact—unless someone died.