Lewis Howes

I've seen your smirk.

What research found is that a real smile, whether it shows teeth or not, the biggest difference is it has to reach up here.

The upper cheek muscles, actually.

So those eye crinkles.

Yeah, you got a little smizing, right?

So that's actually the only cue we're looking for.

So it actually does not matter.

So if you have a profile picture, a dating profile picture, a LinkedIn profile picture, I either want you neutral or...

or with eye crinkles.

The worst is sort of that in between.

Now, I don't mind like a soft up mouth, right?

You and I both have this on our book covers, a soft up mouth.

But it has to engage those upper cheek muscles.

What Dr. Barbara Wild found is that when they showed pictures of people with the fake smile and a real smile, the real smile was contagious.

So when people looked at the real smile, they themselves felt happier.

When they looked at the fake smile, they felt no mood change.

So the reason why that's important is I think that we think about like oh, I want to show up I want to be really my most confident self, but we don't realize is that our cues are contagious Yes, but if you show authentic happiness, you are more likely to infect happiness.

Actually, there's one more face cue I want to talk about so This is the cue that sort of started me on this crazy journey and it got me I'm a recovering awkward person as you know, so there's a lot of really very introvert awkward person social anxiety all the good things and

So this story gave me so much relief.

What they found was if you were in a room and someone gives you a cue of social rejection.