Sarah Wayne

When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you

Contagious smiling (and frowning and scowling and so on) is the basis of reading others' emotions and registering how you should, in turn, feel.

We tend to mimic the smiles or frowns of others because it helps us better understand what other people are feeling, allowing us to respond appropriately.

Evidence shows that an instinct for facial mimicry allows us to empathize with and even experience other people's feelings.

“Facial mimicry certainly plays some role, and perhaps a key role, in understanding other people’s emotional states,” Dr. Kevin Ochsner

A person's ability to recognize and "share" others' emotions can be inhibited when they can't mimic faces, even from something as simple as long-term pacifier use.

you mimic their expression unconsciously, which then tells your brain what to feel. All this happens in a few hundred milliseconds.

We are unconsciously learning things by what we see and that's why infants mimic their parents behavior. When they smile to them, they smile back.

Each time you smile, you throw a little feel-good party in your brain. The act of smiling activates neural messaging that benefits your health and happiness.

smiling activates the release of neuropeptides that work toward fighting off stress.

the serotonin release brought on by your smile serves as an anti-depressant/mood lifter.

when you view a person smiling, you actually feel rewarded.

When you smile,you are creating a symbiotic relationship that allows both of you to release feel-good chemicals in your brain, activate reward centers, make you both more attractive, and increase the chances of you both living longer, healthier lives.

First stage: You see an expressive face You need to know what the expression means so you can react effectively.

Second stage: You simulate the facial expression Simulation uses the same areas of your brain that cause your facial expressions- it may therefore cause you to mimic the expression.

Third stage: The simulation tells you how it feels to make that expression The context or your knowledge about the expresser may have an influence.

This quick, automatic, and unconscious process allows you to connect the subtle emotion signals of others to your own emotion experiences.

Smiling makes us happier Smiling triggers a reduction in stress-enhancing hormones and increases the production of mood-enhancing hormones.

Even forcing a “fake” smile when you’re not truly feeling it has been shown to reduce stress and result in more positive feelings.

Genuine smiles might help people see eye-to-eye during interactions. People who often make genuine smiles may have an easier time convincing others to adopt their goals.

The world is simply a better place when you smile.

Life is tough enough without having someone kick you from the inside.

A mother does not become pregnant in order to provide employment to medical people. Giving birth is an ecstatic jubilant adventure not available to males. It is a woman’s crowning creative experience of a lifetime.

Giving birth and being born brings us into the essence of creation, where the human spirit is courageous and bold and the body, a miracle of wisdom.

Now my belly is as noble as my heart.

A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten and the future worth living for.

A baby is something you carry inside you for nine months, in your arms for three years, and in your heart until the day you die.

You are the closest I will ever come to magic.

Pregnancy is getting company inside one’s skin.

Whether your pregnancy was meticulously planned, medically coaxed, or happened by surprise, one thing is certain – your life will never be the same.

A baby fills a place in your heart that you never knew was empty.

Everything grows rounder and wider and weirder, and I sit here in the middle of it all and wonder who in the world you will turn out to be.

He plough’d her, and she cropp’d

If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.

We have a secret in our culture, and it’s not that birth is painful. It’s that women are strong.

Giving birth should be your greatest achievement not your greatest fear.

Before you were born I carried you under my heart. From the moment you arrived in this world until the moment I leave it, I will always carry you in my heart.

Everything grows rounder and wider and weirder, and I sit here in the middle of it all and wonder who in the world you will turn out to be.

The most important thing she’d learned over the years was that there was no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.

Of course I can do this. I’m pregnant, not brain-damaged. My condition doesn’t change my personality.

People always say that pregnant women have a glow. And I say it’s because you’re sweating to death.

I’m never as happy as when I’m pregnant. I literally would have 10 babies if I could!

A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy, the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first born babe, and assures it of a mother’s love

There is such a special sweetness in being able to participate in creation.

I usually claim that pregnant women should not read books about pregnancy and birth. Their time is too precious. They should, rather, watch the moon and sing to their baby in the womb.

Truthfully, being pregnant is changing me as a person. Each day is part of this amazing journey that has completely shifted the focus of my life and made me reevaluate my personal and professional goals.

Feeling fat lasts nine months but the joy of becoming a mom lasts forever.

It’s an established fact. Some women can’t stand being pregnant, getting big and bloated, and hauling around a giant stomach, and some women, for reasons probably understood by Darwin, love it.

In giving birth to our babies, we may find that we give birth to new possibilities within ourselves.

You do a lot of growing up when you’re pregnant. It’s suddenly like, “Yikes. Here it is, folks. Playtime is over.

When you moved, I felt squeezed with a wild infatuation and protectiveness. We are one. Nothing, not even death, can change that.

Of course I can do this. I’m pregnant, not brain-damaged. My condition doesn’t change my personality.

I fell in love with a beautiful girl, got her pregnant, and then I got married. I wonder whatever happened to that beautiful girl I got pregnant.

Making a decision to have a child–it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

Birthing is the most profound initiation to spirituality a woman can have.

Pregnancy is a process that invites you to surrender to the unseen force behind all life.

You are the closest, I'll ever come to magic.

A baby fills a place in your heart that you never knew was empty.

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

We may not be able to prepare the future for our children, but we can at least prepare our children for the future.

Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.

Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.

Having children is like living in a frat house - nobody sleeps, everything's broken, and there's a lot of throwing up.

No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.

There really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

Your children are not your children, they come through you, but they are life itself, wanting to express itself.

Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.

Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories.

One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.

Leave your pride, ego, and narcissism somewhere else. Reactions from those parts of you will reinforce your children's most primitive fears.

If you can control your behavior when everything around you is out of control, you can model for your children a valuable lesson in patience and understanding...and snatch an opportunity to shape character.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.

If you are a parent, open doors to unknown directions to the child so he can explore. Don't make him afraid of the unknown,give him support.

All of us have moments in out lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

We spend the first 12 months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next 12 months teaching them to sit down and shut up.

Everything depends on upbringing.

The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.

We never know the love of the parent till we become parents ourselves.

To bring up a child in the way he should go - travel that way yourself.

Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you.

I sustain myself with the love of family.

Families are the compass that guides us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter.

A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another.

We must take care of our families wherever we find them.

The family – that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.

When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching — they are your family.

Love your family. Spend time, be kind & serve one another. Make no room for regrets. Tomorrow is not promised & today is short.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

Heirlooms we don’t have in our family. But stories we’ve got.

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.

Family is not an important thing, it’s everything.

I think the family is the place where the most ridiculous and least respectable things in the world go on.

Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we’re related for better or for worse…and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum.