Flip the Switch by Jez Rose

Author:Jez Rose
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2016-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

This exercise is not just about the acute feeling of happiness, it helps you to bank more positive experiences, which reduces stress and enhances your level of well-being. In turn this helps you to feel more relaxed, enabling you to concentrate more and become more conscious of finding and widening the gap between stimulus and response. The result is a greater skill in being able to readily flip the switch.

Flip the Switch through Gritted Teeth

In 1989 Robert Zajonc, a social psychologist who would later become known for his work on social and cognitive processes, published one of the most significant studies ever conducted on the emotional effects of smiling. He had his participants repeat certain vowel sounds that stretched the facial muscles into a shape that mimicked that of a smile, for example they were asked to make long “e” sounds. The participants reported feeling happier after making the long “e” sound and not feeling as happy when making a long “u” sound, which forced the facial muscles into more of a pout. Zajonc took this a step further and showed some groups of participants images of facial expressions; another group were shown the images and asked to make them and yet another group were asked to make the facial expressions while looking in a mirror.

The resulting evidence suggested that smiling is a cause of happy feelings, as the participant's pre-study scores of their emotional state were overwhelmingly lower than they were following the experiment for those who used the mirror. This is because the facial muscles involved in smiling have a direct effect on certain brain activities associated with happiness. Since Zajonc's work, there have been a number of different studies and fluctuating renewed interest in the area of testing smiles and happiness. The take-home message is always the same: if you are having a bad day or you need to feel happier, begin by smiling because there appears to be a relationship between smiling and happiness – smiling causes happiness but happiness causes smiling. Admittedly, if you have lost your wallet and your mobile phone, it's unlikely that smiling alone is going to make you feel any better about it, let alone happy. However, it may well help you to actively choose more positive responses, because swearing and allowing yourself to become stressed won't get your possessions back but smiling might well help you to not feel quite so bad about it.

When I'm presenting on customer service and the strategies and considerations for using behaviour to elevate the level of service to something extraordinary, I often refer to how customers have an imaginary sign around their neck, which, if it wasn't imaginary and one could see it, would say ‘Make Me Feel Special’, because that is ultimately what every customer is looking for. Who wouldn't choose to shop somewhere that made them feel special, over another business that offered the same product or service? However, it is not just customers who wear this imaginary sign. We all do. Children have it and teachers need to know that.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.