Just Seeing You, My Day Is Happy

There are people who captivate and enchant our soul. Their faces have that emotional magnetism that, like the surface of a transparent lake, are capable of reflecting the nobility of a good heart and the empathy inscribed in their eyes. People who make you think: ” Just by seeing you, my day brightens up .”

As the professor of psychiatry Enrique Rojas points out, the personality always appears on our faces, because “the essence of the person resides in the face. ” In addition, our brain, nurtured on the foundations of sociability and emotions, intuits and is influenced by those severe features or that friendly smile that envelops and reassures.

The purest, most sincere and meaningful communication is not transmitted with words, but with gestures. Each facial movement is gestated from the depths of our being, from that emotional world capable of connecting with those around us while we, at times, are not even aware of it. We invite you to reflect on this topic.

Emotion is transmitted by gestures, not faces

Although it is true that we are used to hearing that “the face is the mirror of the soul”, it is necessary to clarify some more aspects that will be not only interesting, but also useful. Paul Ekman, a pioneer psychologist in the study of facial expressions of emotions, explains in one of his studies that faces can lie, because true emotion is transmitted in gestures.

• According to Ekman, people are capable of expressing up to 18 different types of smiles. The most genuine is the so-called “Duchenne smile” (the muscles of the mouth contract, the corner of the mouth rises a lot, there is a contraction in the cheeks and causes wrinkles around the eyes).

• Smiles act as social “greasers”. However, not all of them seem sincere to us and not all faces, no matter how attractive, offer us confidence. Surely you have experienced it yourself at some time: there are small micro gestures that, almost instinctively, cause us discomfort and distrust.

• Another curious aspect to take into account is that people also have our own stored “gestural experience”. Expressions of our parents, friends or ex-partners are stored in our brain along with an emotional component of like or dislike.

All this will determine, almost instinctively, the way in which some people and their faces produce one type of sensation or another. Our face is a whole book of complex gestures, which others will also interpret according to their own experience.

What makes my heart happy: the secret of positive relationships

Your son, with his sonorous toothless smile, cheers your heart almost instantly. Your friends offer you well-being, complicity and loyalty: just by passing casually with them your face lights up. There are faces that produce positive emotions in us because the bond with them is enriching and positive for us.

Despite the fact that faces are evolutionarily designed to convey positive emotions, in order to socialize and connect,.

Pillars That Build Authentic Positive Relationships

Now take note of the way in which these links are built with those relationships that are most significant to us:

• Emotional openness is the first step with which to establish an adequate “connection” with the person we love. Within this dimension would be the ability to establish solid trust, offer recognition and a correct expression of emotions in order to strengthen ties and build.

• Empathy is the art of understanding and closeness, it facilitates communication, comfort and problem solving. It is an essential dimension that is not transmitted only through words. The look that knows how to understand and intuit is a wonderful way of hugging the other person to convey an  “I understand you, I’m here, with you.”

• An attachment based on mutual trust and respect is the best way to build positive relationships. They are links where there is no need to control, to steal their own spaces or to demand continuous and obsessive attention.

To conclude, and as a curiosity, we will tell you that the writer Joe Navarro, psychological advisor to the FBI, explains that when you love or appreciate a person you always look for their gaze. It is that mirror in which you reflect because you feel equally valued and loved, it makes you happy. The eyes are the part of our body over which we have no control: they are the reflection of sincerity.

Images courtesy of Claudia Tremblay and Pascal Campion