Forcing a smile

A new study in the Academy of Management Journal shows that people who force themselves to smile at work actually wind up putting themselves in a bad mood which can, in turn, cut productivity. According to lead researcher Brent Scott, assistant professor of management at Michigan State University, “Smiling for the sake of smiling can lead to emotional exhaustion and withdrawal and that’s bad for the organization.” The flip side to this idea is that people who are truly happy and smile as a result of some happy memory or other event have an improved mood that actually makes them more efficient.

Why is this important to athletes? Many of you may remember seeing Chrissie Wellington in her first race in Kona. At the time she was a no name athlete who, from the looks of it, was having a blast on her way to her first (of three) Ironman World Championships. In fact, in all of Chrissie’s races since her smile is one constant thing, aside from blazingly fast speed, that is her calling card.

After watching that race and others with Chrissie, I decided that I would make myself smile during races and training. The thinking was that I would do all this smiling on the run since it wasn’t very practical while swimming and I seem to have some oddly contorted version of a smile while on my bike anyway.

Almost immediately I found that forcing myself to smile was harder than any run I was doing. I’m one of those people who version of getting “into the zone” often involves becoming very introspective, which tends to spill over into my facial expressions. I have become better about this and have learned to become more aware of the world around me and to get out of my own head a bit. In fact, on a ride last night I found myself thinking about kosher energy gels. I don’t know why, I’m not Jewish, but my friend Ari keeps kosher and since we’ve spoken a bit about it before my mind just wandered there.

In the 2009 New York City Triathlon I decided to put the smile thing to the test in a race setting. Somehow, it just never clicked. In the picture at the right it’s quite clear that while my mouth may be smiling, the rest of me is not. According to this study I was actually in the process of putting myself in a worse place and was killing my productivity.

So, where does Chrissie get it? As the study says, those that are truly happy about something, whether it’s a fond memory or looking forward to something, are going to actually smile and be naturally happier. I was helping someone in a running form clinic recently. She was very much in her own head and had a constant downcast look of pain and laboring on her face while she was running. Aside form the fact that this was destroying her form since it caused her to be hunched at the shoulders and collapse her torso, it also gave her a sense of being defeated by something that SHOULD be fun.

I stopped her and we began to find a place in time where she enjoyed running. I asked her if she remembered being a small child and running barefoot in the summer. When she was a kid, she wasn’t running to fit into some clothes or for any kind of health concern, she was running because it was fun. She was running because at our core we all love that sound of wind whipping by our ears and the breeze on our cheeks. I then had her keep that memory in her mind and pick a point on the horizon which, since were right beside the beach, was easy to do. I ran ahead to let her get into that place for a minute and then she ran. It was beautiful. Smiling from ear to ear and with gorgeous form, it was not hard at all to see the child running because it is fun.

So, how do we get to that place where we aren’t forcing it but we’re truly having fun and enjoying what we’re doing? It is my opinion that we don’t necessarily need to find a specific memory or a mental escape, we just need to find a way to not be so concerned about our activity. Now, if you can do that and smile, great. If not and you find yourself with a perpetual scowl while training or racing, that’s fine too. As cheesy as it sounds, it’s what’s inside (your mind) that counts.

So, go run (or ride or swim or walk or whatever) and take a break from the arduous tendencies we all posses.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, every day we wake up and can call ourselves athletes is a good day.