Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”: A Neuroscience Reading by Maria Popova of Brainpickings includes a great breakdown of the song including great nuggets like this:
“Put a smile on your face”
Pop-culture wisdom calls it “fake it ’till you make it”; psychotherapy calls it “cognitive behavioral therapy“; social psychology call it story editing. Evidence abounds that consciously changing our thoughts and behaviors to emulate the emotions we’d like to feel helps us internalize and embody those emotions in a genuine felt sense. Paul Ekman, who pioneered the study of facial expressions, found that voluntarily producing a smile may help deliberately generate the psychological change that takes place during spontaneous positive affect — something corroborated in the recently explored science of smiles.
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(Source: youtube.com)
