Smiling is a universal sign of happiness and can be easily recognized around the world. We smile on a daily basis (at least I hope you do!), but do you know there are a handful of health benefits to smiling?

While everyone knows that it feels good to smile and have a good laugh, smiling can also help brighten your mood, reduce anxiety, relieve stress, lower blood pressure, and even boost your immune system. Most importantly, multiple studies have shown that smiling is contagious (ever wondered why you subconsciously smile back when someone smiles at you?), so you can share the same benefits with anyone!

If these benefits are not enough to get you to smile more often, British researchers have found that a single smile can provide the same level of brain stimulation equivalent to that of having 2,000 bars of chocolate or getting £16,000 ($20,700) in cash.

So now, whenever you want to reduce stress, spread happiness to the people around you, or simply get the same benefits of eating a couple thousand chocolate bars without having to worry about the calorie that comes with it...just remember to smile :)

If you haven’t already picked it up out of SBU, Sophia Amoruso’s book Girl Boss is a quick read that’s definitely worth your time. It’s punchy career advice from the CEO of Nasty Gal, a clothing company started by a 22 year old in the time of eBay and MySpace.

It’s super relevant to us now, because Sophia faced a lot of the same growing pains and principles that we face here at SlideBelts. She talks about her first encounter with investors, company culture maintenance, and quality with scaling, to name a few. She navigated all these and more within the business world all without even a college degree! So there’s my plug for the day for her book - Go read it.

There's a quote that I heard a few years ago from writer Mary Lou Kownacki that quickly became my favorite life mantra as soon as I heard it: "There isn't anyone you couldn't love once you've heard their story."

It's really hard to love people who aren't lovable. Whether that's a friend, a family member, someone who cuts you off in traffic, a tough guest service call or email, a Twitter troll, or a complete stranger you read about in a news article. 

In the foreword to Mister Rogers' (yes, THE Mister Rogers) 2003 book, Important Things to Remember, his wife talked about how this quote was one of his favorites. She said, "A quote he loved especially - and carried around with him - was from Mary Lou Kownacki: 'There isn't anyone you couldn't love once you've heard their story.' There were many times I wanted to be angry at someone and Fred would say, 'But I wonder what was going on in that person's day.' His capacity for understanding always amazed me."

I believe that our character is most tested - and thus, most developed and molded - when we choose to love our fellow human beings when it is the hardest to do so. Everyone has a story, a past with baggage and scars, raw spots that can be made fresh again with a small inadvertent poke. 

Everyone has a past and deeply rooted reasons why they are the way they are, whey they react certain ways, and how they perceive certain situations. Unless they are personally close to you, odds are you won't ever get to know that person's story - but imagine if you could. There would surely be stories of hurt, betrayal, or mistrust that would allow you to make sense of the person you're seeing in front of you.

It's easy to be put off by someone's actions on the surface, but remembering that there are reasons behind the "why" (whether we know them or not) will make the whole world a better place and make your day far better than it would've been if you just assumed the worst of someone.