“Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. So, to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear. Again, in order to feel kindly toward a person to whom we have been inimical, the only way is more or less deliberately to smile, to make sympathetic inquiries, and to force ourselves to say genial things. One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling. To wrestle with a bad feeling only pins our attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind: whereas, if we act as if from some better feeling, the old bad feeling soon folds its tent like an Arab, and silently steals away.”
An equally good quotation (from Luther Gulick’s “Mind and Work”) will be found on pages 26-27 of “Economy of Energy.”
He says:
“Assume the bodily positions and movements and manners and tones of voice that belong to the emotional state you desire.”
Now the Expression—as the smile that is the expression of Happiness—may not be the cause of Happiness, but at least it is the usual accompaniment, if not the essential accompaniment, of ordinary Happiness.
The eyes are among the most obvious means of Expression, as is illustrated in the well-known lines:—
“Smile, once in a while,
’Twill make your heart seem lighter;
Smile, once in a while,
’Twill make your pathway brighter.