You can’t be angsty and hot-headed once you’ve gone corporate. Fact is, you’ve no right to. Stress is an inevitable way of life in corporate – be it physical, emotional, mental, name it you’d get it. Being stressed about being stressed will not entirely solve your problem, right?
Trust me, I’ve only been working 2 years, but I’ve had my share. I’ve been angsty, mad, complacent, indifferent, repulsive (this list can go on and on so I better stop here) and guess what all those achieved for me: premature wrinkles and tons of white hair. As for my working environment and disposition: nothing.
So I’m trying this new approach. It’s really nothing new and is actually quite a conventional way of handling stress. It’s called SMILING. Funny that the simplest facial gesture seems to be the gravest task once you’re done with your daily 9-to-6 struggle with this thing called work. It’s actually a conscious effort to force yourself to smile through the stress – as opposed to the somewhat instinctive ranting and complaining.
Given the effort that smiling entails, I tried to look up the exact benefits that I would get should I choose to stick to this new modus-operandi. Amazingly, I found a lot!
From http://longevity.about.com/od/lifelongbeauty/tp/smiling.htm:
- 1. Smiling makes us attractive. (v: tell me about it!)
- 2. Smiling changes our mood.
- 3. Smiling is contagious. (v: hmm…won’t hurt if I start a happy workplace right?)
- 4. Smiling relieves stress. (v: bullseye!)
- 5. Smiling boosts your immune system.
- 6. Smiling lowers blood pressure.
- 7. Smiling releases endorphins, natural pain killers and serotonin. (v: I’m all for the natural high!)
- 8. Smiling lifts the face and makes us look younger.
- 9. Smiling makes you seem successful.
- 10. Smiling helps you stay positive
..there’s more from http://odyb.net/discoveries/little-known-reasons-and-benefits-of-smiling/..
But just to highlight points that are good additions to the ones above:
- 1. Smiles can stimulate the brain and the heart much like how 2000 chocolate bars would!
- 2. A smile is a universal language. It’s perceived as a positive, lifting act of happiness that is recognized across cultures, across time (even cavemen use it to communicate that they’re not threats), and across all the stages of human life (fetuses even smile when happy when they’re in the womb!).
Ok, if I’m going to give you a round up of all the benefits of smiling which I managed to rummage out of the internet, this blog entry would go on forever. The bottom line does not change though, smiling might be a better alternative fight the negativity of the work place. It may be hard to do as of the moment, but who knows with a little practice, it won’t be so hard after all! 
