Beyond Baltimore - The Chesed Fund & Project Ezra’s Israel Impact A Smile is a Curve That Sets Many Things Straight…

work together in the future.

In the midst of all of this, The Chesed Fund & Project Ezra also distributed trademark reflector belts to many to help them remain visible and safe at night. Frank noted, “All of this is just a drop in the bucket. There is so much more we need to do to help all our communities and I can’t wait to share some of The Chesed Fund & Project Ezra’s goals at the upcoming unity concert. The concert will also benefit our critical community organizations, Ahavas Yisroel, CHANA, Hatzalah, Shomrim, and Tikvah House.”

To download a free copy of Stay Safe in Israel, and to view other important safety, security, and community initiatives and literature visit, chesedfund.com. For sponsorship opportunities for the Ishay Ribo May 21st concert, email ishayriboconcert@ gmail.com of his research with Tversky in 2011 in a book titled “Thinking, Fast and Slow”. In it, Kahneman describes a wide array of experiments designed to illustrate the way our minds naturally and instinctively influence our actions more powerfully than we realize.

One series of experiments involved the psychological effects of smiling. In smiling, Kahneman described a “reciprocal link”: Being amused tends to make you smile, and smiling tends to make you feel amused.

The study design was simple but brilliant. College students were asked to rate the humor of cartoons while holding a pencil in their mouth. One group was asked to hold the pencil with their lips pursed around the eraser end of the pencil in a forced frown, the other group was asked to hold the pencil between their teeth with the tip on the right and the eraser on the left and the entire length of the pencil propping up their mouth into a forced smile. In this and other similar experiments, the data was unmistakable. The students who were forced into a smile (without even realizing it!) reported that they found the comics much more amusing, whereas those who were forced into a frown found the same comics less amusing, and had exaggerated negative emotional responses to sad imagery. The clear conclusion of these experiments was that, if we “force ourselves” to smile, we will actually react in a happier way to our surroundings.

How Smiling Affects Your Brain

The act of smiling does not only make our own lives happier, but also leads to longer healthier lives for us and for those around us.

For starters, smiling has been shown to trigger the release of natural dopamine, endorphins and serotonin. The total effect is that a smile relaxes your body, reduces stress, lowers heart rate and blood pressure, and serves as a natural anti depressant with only positive side effects. The endorphins released from smiling also have a pain reducing effect, so that people who smile simply feel better overall.

Perhaps the most remarkable benefit of smiling is that it is the only health promotion strategy that is actually contagious, in a good way.

In a Swedish study, subjects were shown pictures of several emotions: joy, anger, fear and surprise. When the picture of someone smiling was presented, the researchers asked the subjects to frown. Instead, they found that the facial expressions went directly to imitation of what subjects saw. It took conscious effort to turn that smile upside down. So if you’re smiling at someone, it’s likely they can’t help but smile back. This means that, in a “smiley” environment, happier healthier people are coaxing each other to keep smiling, which benefits everyone.

This is just one more reason why a beautiful healthy smile is so beneficial to quality of life. Many orthodontic patients enter orthodontic treatment unwilling to smile because they are ashamed of the way their smile looks. By creating beautiful healthy smiles, we can truly increase the number of smiles in our environment, thus making our surroundings a happier healthier place to be.

This Adar, may we be successful in our personal and collective quest to increase happiness.