A spiritual exercise

For many years, David Berg and his wife, Maria, took vigorous walks for their daily exercise. At one point, they kept crossing paths with a certain older man. They eventually learned that he was a bachelor and that his name was Feliciano, meaning “happy.” He seemed anything but happy, though.

“He had the grumpiest look you ever saw,” Berg later recalled. “He was always well dressed in a nice suit, and he seemed to be an important man in town, but he would walk along with his hands folded behind his back, staring at the ground. Whenever Maria or I tried to catch his eye and smile at him, he quickly looked the other way. We wanted so much to turn his frown into a smile that we made that our secret project. It took two years, but finally he smiled back at us. From that day on, Feliciano’s countenance and whole manner changed.”

Thankfully, most people aren’t such tough cases. Your smile can chase away the clouds hanging over someone else, and you’ll brighten your own day in the process. It is almost impossible to smile on the outside without feeling better on the inside. Smiling relaxes you and those around you. Smiling starts a positive cycle: It chases away the blues and helps create a positive atmosphere, which causes everything to go smoother, which gives you more to smile and be happy about, which causes you to thank God for His blessings, which pleases Him and makes Him want to bless you more, which gives you more to smile about. … You get the idea.

Over the next hour, make an effort to smile more. See if you can keep that smile all day. Try keeping it up for a week, and see what a difference that makes.