Want to improve your face value? Smile more often. Here are four thoughts about smiles, just in case you need motivation to smile a little more often.  read them.  Enjoy them.  You can even smile at them, if you wish.

When they say someone was “wearing nothing but a smile”, that might be bad news for garment manufacturers, but it is wonderful news for humanity. A smile is the most important thing a person can wear. It is somewhat ironic that so many more people wear clothes than wear smiles. Perhaps we have misplaced priorities.

Be your own florist. You know how flowers brighten up a room? Just like a smile? In fact, flowers also brighten up people’s faces…causing them to smile more, too.

Want to brighten up a room? Smile more, and you will be your own florist.

If you ever doubted the power of a smile, see this testimony as how much easier it is to make a sale when you smile:
http://thesalesblog.com/2010/05/smile-power-an-open-letter-to-tom-peters/

But smiling is not just for making sales.  If a smile can make a sale, imagine how good it can be at making a friend.

OK, time to pamper yourself. I mean, if you’ve been working hard to be a better person, to be friendlier and fitter and more generous and more efficient and make whatever improvements you feel you need, take a few moments to pamper yourself. Find something that is in sync with the changes you have made in your life (If you’ve decided to eat healthy from now on, a triple fudge sundae is NOT the right means to pamper yourself).

Pick something that makes you feel special and worthwhile. Perhaps it’s a spa treatment. Perhaps a few hours in a quiet place away from the chaos of kids and the chores of home. It might just be a hot bath with soothing music.  Or it might be cranking up the volume and playing air guitar.  Whatever it is that makes you feel special, do it.

You are special. You have been working hard and making improvements every day. You do deserve it. So go ahead and pamper yourself.  Your self will thank you with all your heart.

From today’s Daily Dose of Happiness.

Want to feel more energized and less stressed? Perhaps you spend a lot of time in front of the computer screen, the TV or some other screen. Here are a few ways to feel energized.

The most obvious is to stop spending so much time in front of a screen. OK, not always practical, but worth a try every now and then.

So get up during commercials or every half hour and stretch.  It’s the least you can do, and it will make your screen time more enjoyable, as well.

In fact, get up and do some aerobic exercise, even just for 30 seconds. Jumping jacks. Dance. Fast-paced push-ups. Skip rope. Run up and down the stairs, as I often do. Anything.

Every few minutes move your eyes away from the screen. Roll your eyes up, to the left, to the right, but most importantly, focus them on something closer and also on something farther than the screen.  In fact, roll your head, as well.  Give your eyes a break and your neck a stretch.

Force a yawn. Stretching your face will boost that energy and reduce that stress.  Stretch it wide and – oops – it’s hard to fake a yawn without a real one coming on.

Energize!

I’ll let the video speak for itself…

I have to admit, I’ll never understand suburbia. I get out of my car and I see perfectly manicured lawns as far as the eye can see. I would understand if one or two people had spent a lot of time on their lawns, perhaps gardening hobbyists, people with a fairly obsessive nature, etc.

But every single lawn is perfectly manicured. All I can wonder is , “Doesn’t anybody here have anything else to do? Does lawn manicuring hold such a high priority in their lives that, with all the competing pressures of modern life, they somehow all find the time to pay this much attention to grass?”

Then one of the neighbors comes out and starts pushing her lawn mower across an already low-cut lawn, somehow managing to cut it even lower. This is a lady with children. Is it just me, or is a huge section of society misplacing their priorities? Remember, your priorities are not what you say they are, but rather how you spend your life.

I have nothing against lawns, please be assured. But I just cannot imagine having that kind of time with nothing more important than grass to attend to.  Of the dozens of things on my to-do list, the lawn is always there and it is almost always at the bottom of the list.  But it’s not just the lawn.  The lawn is one very visible example.  There are other less-important things that many people give lots of time to, as well.

How do you spend your life? What are your priorities?