Find the Happy in My Face

So I found my little clicker and used it to count how many times I smiled.  I found that, with the clicker in my hand, I was going out of my way to smile more often.  At first, I thought that might be cheating.  But it's not.  That's the whole point.  Sometimes we have to do things that feel slightly fake before we practice enough to make it second nature.  Not that smiling is a fake thing to do.  We just don't do it as often as we ought to.

source

(The only part that might have been a little cheating was stopping a smile so I could smile again and count it as two smiles instead of one long one.  But I only did that when my smiler started wearing out.)  :-)  I got 51 smiles clicked in an hour or two before the clicker got set down somewhere.  It's hard to click and cook at the same time.  Roast clicker for dinner.  Yum.

I still like looking at my smile in my new, shiny mirror.  should have cleaned that a while ago, hmm?  And while I was looking at my happy me, I realized something.

source

I am not usually happy when I look in the mirror.  My kids have not become as jaded as I am.  They love to look in the mirror, make faces, laugh, and play.

When I look in the mirror, I am usually looking at that stray lock of hair that is sticking straight up, alfalfa-style.  Or the new zit popping up on my cheek.  Or how tired my eyes look.  Or the new wrinkles that seem to multiply every night.  Oh, I'm getting old.  And one negative glance leads to another, because I can always find bad things to pick out.

Pretty soon, there is no smile.

But there are always good things to pick out, too.  I have fabulously hair.  How often do I think about that?  I have a nice smile.  I really do.  And my lashes are naturally dark.  My ears line up with each other!  And one positive glance can lead to another.  Before I know it, that smile may reappear.

I think we are often looking too hard at what we are not that we don't see how lovely we truly are.

Just for today, every time I look in the mirror, I am going to pick out one thing that is lovely, and smile about it.