Smile - It's GOOD for you!

I subscribe to periodic emails from TED Ideas Worth Spreading (that's short, I believe, for Technology, Education, Design). They have sessions around the world and people get up and speak about... well, just about anything. The sessions go from just a few to fifteen or twenty "ish" minutes. What a great place to get ideas for Toastmaster speeches. Yesterday there was a wonderful presentation on smiling. It was The Hidden Power of Smiling. I always knew I liked to smile but I learned some new things here. Things like:

- Unborn babies have been photographed smiling via ultrasound

- Babies are born smiling

- Children smile as much as 400 times a day

- Research shows one smile stimulates the brain as much as two thousand chocolate bars

- Smiling reduces stress and blood pressure

- Mother Teresa once said "I will never understand all the good that a simple smile can accomplish"

- A study of pre-1960 baseball cards revealed that players who didn't smile lived an average of 73 years while those that smiled lived to an average of 80 years

So... SMILE, you might feel better and live longer!

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