Dental Articles

What Is a Real Smile?

A real smile is one of the most effective means to capture the trust, attention, and rapport of an audience. It is an essential part selling when meeting people. It has added benefits as a stress reducer. This is true if speaking to an audience of one or one thousand.

In basic training, a salesman is taught to master smiling and have it end just as eye contact is made with the clientele. The reason is that it makes you look like a decent person. Additionally it puts the person being greeted at ease.

Actually there are a total of 47 different individual facial expressions. The most commonly seen are smiling and winking. There is such a thing as a real smile.

Here is the good news. Not only can it put others at ease, it can also do the same for you. By smiling our brains produce endorphins which are like drugs inside our body that help with physical and emotional pain and stress. They can even help produce a feeling of well-being and composure.

But, this only works if you have a real smile. So what is a real smile?

It requires the use of the muscles starting at the ends of the mouth and that extend to the eyes. The so called real smile actually has a name. It is called the "Duchenne Smile." It is named after the French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne. It is a production of the autonomic nervous system. In other words, it is something that just happens involuntarily. So it is said the smile is real if it reaches the eyes.

A fake or voluntary smile used to show politeness or to feign smiling involves just the muscles of the mouth and not those extending to the eyes. It is also known in literature as the "Pan American Smile" and the "Professional Smile".

Start your presentation with a pleasurable thought. You will end up with a smile that will put your audience at ease. You will release endorphins that help emotional stress which will help with performance. So keep smiling, it is not only good for your health, it is good for your wealth.