"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
-Maya Angelou
What comes first: being happy or smiling?
Socially, I dominated middle school. There are a number of reasons why. I had a clique. I had a girlfriend. I still believed I was destined to play professional soccer (Brazil 2014!). Adults, teachers, fellow students older and younger; there were few people I felt uncomfortable talking to.
My high school social life didn't exactly live up. Some new realities had set in. There's a list, but most of it revolved around puberty. I was surrounded by the same people as middle school, but something had changed. I wasn't having the same social success. Sports became more difficult and I found myself struggling to keep girls' attention.
For a long time I externalized the blame. Fate, my parents, my school, my community: everything was fair game. Even into my twenties I blamed everyone and everything except myself.
Not long ago I came across an old photo album from that time in my life. Flipping through, I was unaffected seeing myself Boy Scouting, wrestling, playing soccer, or standing on stage. Towards the end of the album there was a pouch with all my old school pictures.
I never loved school photos, but I never feared them either. For some reason I'd always liked my photo from 6th grade. I wore a white, long-sleeve shirt with Michael Jordan silhouetted over wacky 1990's colors. I looked young but not infantile. For once, my unruly hair was tame. But what struck me more than anything was my smile.
I looked...happy. My smile was genuine, honest, welcoming. I recalled seeing the photo sometime during high school and trying to remember what it felt like to be in that moment and feel what that smile felt like. I remember failing. Pictures of that smile don't exist from high school.
I've never forgotten that photo. Thinking back, it's the way I wanted people to remember me, and I'd never understood why. Much later I realized it was my smile.
Please don't think that my smile is anything special. Everyone's smile has this power. A smile does a number of things well. First of all, it projects confidence. Two, it makes other people feel good. This combination creates a powerful attraction. In "Blink", Malcolm Gladwell talks about a famous study that found the act of smiling has a reverse effect. In other words, we smile when we are happy, but we also become happy when we smile.
On Tuesday I arrived in Toulouse, France. It's a big sprawling city with a gorgeous downtown and a extremely pleasant night-time atmosphere.
When meeting French people here, I have limited resources at my disposal. I don't speak French. I don't know anything about the city. And my host and I are still relative strangers.
And yet, I'm having a great time.
It could be French culture. Or maybe I'm blessed to stumble upon a group of people that make me feel so welcome. It could be I'm a curiosity because I'm foreign. But if I had to guess, I'd say smiling shares some of the responsible. Feels like middle school again.
Rule #4: Smile
Devendra Banhart - Can't Help But Smiling
-Maya Angelou
What comes first: being happy or smiling?
Socially, I dominated middle school. There are a number of reasons why. I had a clique. I had a girlfriend. I still believed I was destined to play professional soccer (Brazil 2014!). Adults, teachers, fellow students older and younger; there were few people I felt uncomfortable talking to.
My high school social life didn't exactly live up. Some new realities had set in. There's a list, but most of it revolved around puberty. I was surrounded by the same people as middle school, but something had changed. I wasn't having the same social success. Sports became more difficult and I found myself struggling to keep girls' attention.
For a long time I externalized the blame. Fate, my parents, my school, my community: everything was fair game. Even into my twenties I blamed everyone and everything except myself.
Not long ago I came across an old photo album from that time in my life. Flipping through, I was unaffected seeing myself Boy Scouting, wrestling, playing soccer, or standing on stage. Towards the end of the album there was a pouch with all my old school pictures.
I never loved school photos, but I never feared them either. For some reason I'd always liked my photo from 6th grade. I wore a white, long-sleeve shirt with Michael Jordan silhouetted over wacky 1990's colors. I looked young but not infantile. For once, my unruly hair was tame. But what struck me more than anything was my smile.
I looked...happy. My smile was genuine, honest, welcoming. I recalled seeing the photo sometime during high school and trying to remember what it felt like to be in that moment and feel what that smile felt like. I remember failing. Pictures of that smile don't exist from high school.
I've never forgotten that photo. Thinking back, it's the way I wanted people to remember me, and I'd never understood why. Much later I realized it was my smile.
Please don't think that my smile is anything special. Everyone's smile has this power. A smile does a number of things well. First of all, it projects confidence. Two, it makes other people feel good. This combination creates a powerful attraction. In "Blink", Malcolm Gladwell talks about a famous study that found the act of smiling has a reverse effect. In other words, we smile when we are happy, but we also become happy when we smile.
On Tuesday I arrived in Toulouse, France. It's a big sprawling city with a gorgeous downtown and a extremely pleasant night-time atmosphere.
When meeting French people here, I have limited resources at my disposal. I don't speak French. I don't know anything about the city. And my host and I are still relative strangers.
And yet, I'm having a great time.
It could be French culture. Or maybe I'm blessed to stumble upon a group of people that make me feel so welcome. It could be I'm a curiosity because I'm foreign. But if I had to guess, I'd say smiling shares some of the responsible. Feels like middle school again.
Rule #4: Smile
Devendra Banhart - Can't Help But Smiling
