#118: T.G.I.TED - The Hidden Power of Smiling

It's the weekend! Time to smile! You remember how to smile don't you?

With today's episode, I kick off a new series on the show. I'm calling it, T.G.I.TED, or Thank God It's TED. In this series, I'll share my insights on an inspiring and thoughtful TED talk each Friday.

I'm doing this to celebrate the release of my own TEDx talk, which is, drumroll... NOW OUT! You can watch it here:

https://www.thorchallgren.com/tedx

In today's show, I look at the TED talk given by Ron Gutman, called, "The Hidden Power of Smiling." This talk is super interesting, and is a great reminder of the power of smiling. Here's the talk link:

Ron Gutman - The Hidden Power of Smiling

In this episode, I share some of the interesting findings that Gutman shared, including the fact that just one smile produces the some positive brain chemistry as eating over 2,000 chocolate bars!

More on smiling in today's episode.

As always, thanks for listening!

You can find me here:

WEBSITE:  https://www.thorchallgren.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/thorchallgren

You can find me here:

WEBSITE: https://www.thorchallgren.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/thorchallgren

Transcript

It's the weekend, it's time to smile. You're smiling about that, right? Today all sorts of surprising statistics about the power of smiling courtesy of a TED talk I recently watched.

Welcome  to Every Day A New Thought. I'm Thor Challgren. T.G.I.T. Thank God It's Ted. TodayI'm starting a new feature on the show, which I'm calling TGITED where I look at one TED talk a week and share my thoughts on this. 

Now, I'm doing this to celebrate the release of my own TedX Talk, which is, truthfully not out at the time of this recording, but check this show description because it will be out at some point in the future. And the minute it is, I will note that in the show description. So you can see my own TED Talk, which I gave in February of 2023 in Anchorage, so check the link. It'll be there soon, I hope. 

But today, I'm sharing my thoughts and insights from a TED talk called The Hidden Power of Smiling by Ron Gutman. And I'll put the link to that in the show description. In this talk, he gives us all sorts of interesting research findings about the power of smiling. Now, we don't necessarily need facts to remind us that smiling is good. 

For example, kids who we normally think of his happy smile over 200 times a day. Now compare that to adults, only 1/3 of whom smile even 20 times a day. So when it comes to smiling, kids know what's going on. So here are a few other interesting thoughts about smiling and that come from the talk. 

You want to live longer? Well, if you were a smile, you just might. In his talk, Gutman describes a research project that looked at the smiles on pre 1950s Major League Baseball cards. Those are the cards that kids used to trade with a picture of the baseball player on. This study found that players who did not smile in their picture on the baseball card lived 72.9 years. The ones who did smile lived to almost 80 years, so seven years longer. 

He also talked about a UC Berkeley study that examined yearbook photos, and found that you could predict based on the photo how someone's life would turn out. If you smiled in the photo, you were more likely to score higher on standardized tests, and also have better relationships. 

Gutman also shares how smiling can be even more powerful than eating chocolate. He cites a British study which proved that a single smile can generate the same positive brain reaction as up to 2000 bars of chocolate, and was also equal to the feeling elicited by having $25,000 in cash. So one smile equal to 25 grand or 2000 bars of chocolate. 

Now, you could ask the question, did the smile actually cause people to live longer, or were there other factors in play in the smile just correlated with those other factors that. Those are good questions, but we do know that smiling can help lower blood pressure, reduce stress hormones like cortisol, adrenaline and dopamine, while it also at the same time increases the mood enhancing chemicals, like endorphins. 

So as you go into the weekend, maybe set an intention to smile more. Set your phone alarm to remind you to smile once an hour. See how it feels. 

That's me smiling about the episode for today. If you liked the show, please hit like if you're watching on YouTube. If you're listening to the podcast, please subscribe or follow the show on your favorite podcast app. Until tomorrow. Thanks for listening.