{"id":796,"date":"2016-01-08T06:50:52","date_gmt":"2016-01-08T11:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/?p=796"},"modified":"2016-01-08T00:23:15","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T05:23:15","slug":"week-69-back-to-basics-smile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/?p=796","title":{"rendered":"Week #69 – Back to Basics: SMILE!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\""Smile!"<\/a>

“Smile!” (photo credit: Grace Church)<\/p><\/div>\n

Week #69 – Back to Basics: SMILE!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Greetings, Happyness Tribe — I hope your\u00a0new year is off to a great start!<\/p>\n

After the busyness of the holiday season — shopping, visiting, celebrating, reflecting, and planning — the quiet and cold routine of January is always a favorite time of year for getting back to basics.<\/p>\n

I know for myself\u00a0that after weeks of pressing forward to December 31st — moving from one thing to another and despite my own better judgment — I looked up and realized:<\/p>\n

I hadn’t been\u00a0smiling! (What about you?)<\/strong><\/p>\n

People often comment\u00a0on my ability to smile regardless of the circumstances. \u00a0And as I looked back through my Facebook “year in review”, indeed I saw my own face smiling back at me. \u00a0But in my eyes I saw the truth of year-one:<\/p>\n

I\u00a0was\u00a0smiling, even though my heart was breaking.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It brought me back to my thoughts on\u00a0Week #8:<\/a>\u00a0“Smiling is a habit…nearly a reflex. \u00a0It’s something you practice before it becomes automatic, kind of like a\u00a0killer karate move. \u00a0You don’t wait to learn those moves in a crucial situation…you practice them over and over again beforehand.”<\/p>\n

And still, the more I thought about it…the more I remembered\u00a0that smiling is complicated business: If we smile regardless of the circumstances, then we’re not being true to our grumpiest selves. \u00a0But if we are true to our grumpiest selves, then we’re sure never to smile!<\/p>\n

So which comes first…the smile or the happyness?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I pondered this as I ran from commitment to commitment, squeezing in errands, burning the midnight oil, and still dealing with the\u00a0grief of year-two. \u00a0Here I was, sitting on 68 weeks of blogposts about Happyness — and I was finding it harder and harder to muster a smile.<\/p>\n

As I struggled through\u00a0New Year’s Eve, I heard the song “Smile”, which brought me back again to Week #8<\/a> — and the permission to “Smile, though your heart is aching.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The scene from the movie Chaplin replayed in my\u00a0mind. \u00a0Charlie’s just been given heartbreaking news about a long lost love. \u00a0He buckles under the sadness. \u00a0Meanwhile, his fans eagerly wait to greet him. \u00a0Seeing the crowd and Charlie’s state, his friend asks him, “What are we gonna do, Charlie?” \u00a0Chaplin pulls himself together and bravely responds: “Smile.” \u00a0With that, they head out into a sea of admirers. \u00a0Charlie’s fans expect him to make them smile…and that, in return, is what makes Charlie smile.<\/p>\n

Your Happyness Challenge for the week ahead:<\/strong>\u00a0Get back to basics — and\u00a0SMILE! \u00a0In the flurry of getting your year off on the right foot\u00a0— back to work, back to fitness, back to diets, goals, vacations, resolutions, savings — whatever you are planning, remember to take a look in the mirror once and while and SMILE! \u00a0Better yet — challenge yourself to a week, a month, or a year worth of smiles! \u00a0Not for others — but for yourself!<\/p>\n

Make smiling a choice whether you are happy or not \u00a0— and you may just find that whether you are happy or not, you are smiling anyway! \u00a0\ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Spread Happyness —\u00a0SMILE! \u00a0And share your experience (or face) in the comments!<\/strong><\/p>\n

1\/8\/16\u00a0by Grace Church
\n<\/em>\u00a9 Grace Church
\ngrace@spreadhappyness.com<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Week #69 – Back to Basics: SMILE! Greetings, Happyness Tribe — I hope your\u00a0new year is off to a great start! After the busyness of the holiday season — shopping, visiting, celebrating, reflecting, and planning — the quiet and cold routine of January is always a favorite time of year for getting back to basics. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":800,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadhappyness.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}