The Practiced Smile
MAYBE IT'S TIME TO UNLEARN YOURS
by admin
Posted on May 10th, 2016 2:27 pm
Have you spent hours practicing a golf putt, a tennis swing or making the perfect breakfast omelet? They say practice makes perfect. But have you ever stood in the mirror and practiced smiling? I’ll bet you have, though it may be so long ago you don’t remember.
A smile is a universal way to communicate and most of us want our smile to be warm, inviting and welcoming, but there are three types of smiles: the fake smile, the social smile and the open smile.
The fake smile is the one you put on when you aren’t really in the moment. The one you use when passing a stranger or put on when you have to do something that isn’t comfortable; like meeting new people or posing for a photo. The face has little or no change except the corners of the mouth are very slightly turned up and, usually, no teeth are showing.
The social smile is a little more open, a little more turned up at the corners of your mouth, a slight break between the upper and lower lip and maybe a few little wrinkles show around your eyes. This smile can be genuine, but it’s still practiced and a bit guarded.
The open smile is where your lips turn up, your teeth show, the corners of your eye’s crinkle and your face lights up. This is the smile that lights up a room and doesn’t require any practice at all. I don’t mean a crazy smile but the one that shares how wonderful you are on the inside as well as the outside.
At Smilezone Orthodontics, we spend all our days helping people love their open smile. Many of our patients say they actually have to unlearn their fake smile so they can smile with abandon and light up the room every time. Pretty cool job, don’t you think?!