Come Visit The Smile Bank

This is a meditation I call the Smile Bank – literally 15 minutes where your goal is to think of things you have experienced recently that make you smile. Through this, you will strengthen neurons and pathways that will make it easier in the future to recognize opportunities to smile, storing them for future meditations, and making you smile more. This helps elevate your mood via neurotransmitters, vagal tone. It alleviate stress and has other benefits like better more grey matter in the brain! Think of it like lifting a heavy weight to train your mind.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Smile Bank meditation.

Why don't you take some time to relax,

Close your eyes and make sure that you're sitting or lying down very comfortably.

If you've got any particular itches or scratches or adjustments that you need to make,

Now is the time.

And while you're just connecting with your body,

Eyes are closed and you're relaxing your breathing,

I'm going to share with you the purpose of this meditation.

The whole point of this meditation is to practice smiling at something.

Practice feeling the feelings to the full extent and bringing your attention to how does it feel to smile,

To visualize things.

As the studies show,

There's very little difference between visualizing something in detail and actually experiencing it.

And so we also want to prime our brain to spot these opportunities to smile in the future as well.

So while we're getting started,

Why don't we just focus a little bit on breathing and just try and calm down your breath,

Make it very slow and soft and rhythmical.

So nice and steady breathing,

Just like this.

Let all the tension from the day melt away.

Notice where in your body you're carrying tension and tell it to relax.

Tell your face and all the muscles in the face to relax.

The shoulders,

Tell those to relax as well.

Notice your hands and your feet.

Make sure that the muscles in your hands and your feet are nice and relaxed.

Okay.

So our eyes are closed,

Our breathing is steady and rhythmical,

Nice and slow and all the tension is melted away.

That's excellent.

And now we'll start with the easy smiles.

So this is the time where we reflect on things that are easy to smile about.

It could be something incredibly cute and it just made you go,

Aww.

Maybe it was some video on the internet or a real life encounter with a puppy or a kitten or some other baby animal of some kind.

It could have been an encounter with a family member or something like that.

It could have even been a stupid mistake that you made and you had to laugh at yourself like you couldn't believe that you had made that mistake.

So I want you to take some time and I want you to think about that.

And I want you to find one and I want you to play it back in your mind five times.

That's right,

Five times.

Do some repetitions.

You know,

Practice that feeling and notice how does it feel.

Let your face smile.

That's fine.

There's no problem there.

Practice that.

And as you're practicing that,

I want you to notice your breathing while you're smiling.

I want you to notice your posture while you're smiling.

I want you to notice just how light smiling feels as well.

And if you're having a very bad day,

It's always a good idea to practice these easy smiles.

The easy smiles are things that everyone can share.

Maybe you found a funny meme or you saw a picture that reminded you of a time in your life that is just low hanging fruit and it's something to pull you out of your day and just remind you to smile more.

So I'm going to give you another 30 seconds to go through the easy smiles.

If you've already gone through one or two,

Try a third one and just get in that nice little bit of practice.

Try and think back to a week and when have you smiled at something that just you encountered in your everyday life?

So let's move on to the next section.

This is the part where we smile about things that remind us it's great to be alive.

So think back to your week and try and draw on your experience of when you ate food and you just loved it.

You smelled that food.

It smelled great.

A moment perhaps where you saw just an absolutely breathtaking view.

Maybe it was the sun coming through some trees.

Maybe it was looking at trees and seeing the wind blowing through the trees.

Maybe you live near the ocean and it was something like that.

Or anywhere that you live and there's just an amazing view.

Another example of this is going to be a circumstance where maybe you're laughing out loud with a group of friends or family around a table and you just think to yourself,

Yes,

These are moments that I love,

I enjoy and I can't make money from them.

There's nothing I can do with them except keep them close to my heart and just smile and think,

You know what,

This is what makes life really worth living.

So I want you to take some time and I want you to practice and bring a few of these to your mind and do some repetitions with them.

Think about them hard.

Try and visualize all the elements and don't be afraid to let yourself smile.

Now that we've done our easy smiles,

Low hanging fruit and we've done these great to be alive smiles which are a little bit less common,

They're a little bit less obvious to notice.

And that's okay,

That's what they're about,

That's what makes them a little bit more valuable.

You can keep them for multiple smile bank meditations because you can really get a lot of juice out of them.

Whereas the easy smiles,

Perhaps if you try them in the next smile bank meditation,

They won't be quite as strong as they were.

So that's okay and we're going to go to the strongest now which is the great to be you smiles.

So these are smiles where personally for you,

You have smiled because you are you and no one else could have done this particular thing or no one else could have really had the same impact that you had.

So I want you to think of moments where you really added value to others in a way that no one else could have added value in a way that really shows your personality and who you are.

That moment you must have felt great to be you.

You didn't do it for this appreciation.

You did it because it was the right thing to do because you wanted to but it felt great afterwards to have added value to these people.

Another example of this is just thinking I'm proud to be myself for what I stand for and in a circumstance where maybe a lot of people are unsure,

You are the one who's sure and for this reason your skills,

Your abilities,

Your personality makes you proud to feel I did this.

This is who I am and very few other people could have done this and definitely no one in my circles had the opportunity to do this but I did it and I feel proud to be me and take that opportunity and smile about it,

Think about your accomplishments in your past,

Think about times where you really added value to family and friends and repeat it.

Let yourself smile.

Do a couple of reps.

We've gone through the easy smiles.

We've gone through the great to be alive smiles and we've gone through the great to be you smiles and this is the part where we now think about how this happened and we notice ourselves.

The first thing is I want you to notice yourself.

Are you smiling now?

Definitely what feeling are you feeling on a scale of one to ten?

How positive emotionally are you right now?

Did it change from the beginning of this meditation to now?

Practicing these smiles and pulling them out should have increased you at least one point,

At least half a point by minimum and if it was more than that then that's amazing.

Practicing this muscle of smiling more and reminding yourself of the reasons that you can smile more is a skill and exercising that skill is a wonderful thing.

So I want you to notice yourself smiling in your meditation and just feel how ridiculous it is.

If someone walked in and they saw you meditating with a big grin on your face you can laugh at yourself.

You can laugh at the situation and this awareness,

This noticing of yourself in a situation is you observing yourself and this is the meta and we want to do a lot more of this.

We want to practice this meta where you can laugh at things that are happening to you around you.

So the stronger that you get this the more you practice this meditation the more this is going to happen.

So the first thing is think about your past,

Reflect on your experiences and how many more things can you smile about?

And now we want to look to the future,

To your day tomorrow or your day today and we want to find more opportunities to smile whether it's the low hanging fruit,

The easy things to smile at.

You just want to be able to walk through your day and think oh I need to remember this moment.

I'm smiling at it now and I see myself smiling right now and I'm going to remember this for later on where I can visualize the situation.

I can remember it and bring back these beautiful feelings that I'm feeling.

This wonderful smile and this great energy that I'm cultivating and we want to be able to do that and recognize all of these opportunities throughout the day.

Whatever they may be so the easy smiles of you just noticing things in your environment,

The great to be alive smiles where you're actually actively participating with things in your environment and then the great to be you smiles where personally you have pride in yourself in your actions and your choices because the great to be you smiles are the most valuable that you can find and cultivate and pay attention to.

So that's a beautiful thing and even in your daily life when you're just walking around and you remember this,

Remember to smile.

Remember to smile.

Laughing,

Maybe not.

Other people might think it's a bit strange or you know but smiling a soft gentle smile can melt anything away.

And so for that I want to leave you with this task.

Look for opportunities in your future to bring smiles and to bring fuel to your next smile bank meditation and remember that if you can't make a big difference now that's okay.

It's a muscle that you need to practice,

That you need to flex regularly so you can make that muscle,

The smile muscle stronger and you pay more attention to the opportunities to smile.

Stay in here as long as you like and I will see you in the next meditation.

Have a great day.

Reviews

Nice review, I came back for a recap from a good live session and revisit of end of week journaling...

I laid here and smiled even after this ended. This is such a great mood booster & there is much to smile about. Thank you.

Lovely! All three areas are so worthy of daily practice❣️ It's interesting to note how different the mental images are as I change focus--yet they all make me smile! TY🙏🏼❤️

Love this! You telling at the start to itch if you need to makes me itchy right away - and smile ;)

This was great! Thank you, Justin! 😊

Thank you😊😀🥰.

I love the way this meditation strengthens neural pathways. Definitely one to put in a weekly rotation.

Loved it thank you very positive couldn't stop smiling 😀

Very deep thought process revealed many areas I need to work on in my spiritual development

This was a delightful experience. Thank you so much!

😊 💯 Thank you for sharing this uplifting meditation. Positive message. Nicely recorded. 🙏🏽💕

Wonderful resilience practice very different from traditional meditation!

Wonderful guidance and explanations and way to expand positively. Needed this so much. Thank you!

Great to listen to at this time of the pandemic. I was happily surprised by this practice! Many thanks and many Blessings. 🌻😊🦋

What a beautiful gift you can gift us all!! You made me smile and I’m sending you loads of love 💛

Your meditation DID make me smile!

Wonderful and uplifting!

Still smiling ... Thank you.🌹

Such a feel-good, light, and heartwarming meditation. I found myself grinning like a fool. At one point, even tearing up. Thank you so much. Love and light. 😊