A Tip to Help Break Free from the Stress of Final Exams

Wow.  At long last, final exams are over...sort of.

For most of us, we have a very difficult time with uncertainty in general, which is particularly exasperating as we wait - sometimes for weeks - for our grades to arrive (and the more so in light of the current ongoing pandemic).

So, despite the festive times that are supposed to fill this month, we often find ourselves unable to relax, to enjoy others (and ourselves), and to simply wind down and rest.  

Nevertheless, there's a simple way - in just a flash of a moment - to help break free from the many stresses and strains of the past few weeks of final exams.  Why not try out, today, the "smile loop?"  It sounds, sort of, fun, doesn't it?  So, here's the scoop (and the science too):

You see, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal by Elizabeth Bernstein:

"Smiling produces neural messaging in your brain that makes you happier. Some studies have shown that when we smile our facial muscles contract, which slightly distorts the shape of the thin facial bones.  This leads to an increase in blood flow into the frontal lobes of the brain and the release of the feel-good chemical dopamine. And, when we smile at someone, that person tends to smile back. So, we've created a feel-good loop."  http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-fall-back-in-love

For those of you that are not scientists (that's me!), the short scoop is that smiling brightens not just our days but the days of those around us.  And, it seems to me that smiling at another person helps put us on the right track to thinking about others rather than worrying about the past few weeks of final exams (with its lingering wait for grades).  Indeed, despite face masks due to the pandemic, I've noticed that I can tell whether someone is smiling.  Even masks can't stop us from appreciating smiles!

A few years back I had the chance to put smiling to the test in very difficult circumstances as a volunteer attorney.  There's a little Greek island just a few short miles off the Turkish coast.  Because of its locale so close to Turkey, thousands of people had been fleeing on small inflatable boats across the Aegean Sea to escape persecution and in some cases war in their native countries - from Syria to Iran to Iraq to Afghanistan to South Sudan - with the hope of receiving refuge in the European Union.  I talked with a man, his wife and his adorable small children that risked it all traveling by land from Afghanistan through Iran and Turkey only to be finally living for months in a small UNHCR tent in a refugee camp on the island of Chios.

Despite the lack of resources and the uncertainty of still waiting - for months on end - to receive as of yet an asylum hearing, he smiled.  And, then his children smiled. Why, his whole family smiled.  In the December cold of the wind swept coast of this little island refugee camp, we all smiled...together.  He and his family may not have had much to give but they gave something immeasurably priceless...they shared smiles with me.  

Let me say, this was not a unique experience.  As I walked through the refugee camp with a number of refugee-seekers, even though we often didn't speak the same language, we were able to communicate in ways richer than words.  Over and over, refugees would just come up to me with big generous smiles and warm handshakes of greetings.  Memorably, a small Syrian boy grabbed my hand one day by the lunch tent as a group of young people were dancing, asking me to join in the footsteps and singing.

You see, smiles are not just a trick to make your life better or happier.  Rather, smiles are the sweetness of life itself in helping us to make the world a little better for others.  

So, as you wait for final exam grades to come in, be of good courage and share smiles with those around you.  Who knows?  That brief smile might get you up and dancing!

(Scott Johns).