***Smile Lines

Imagine the face you want to have thirty years from now.

Planning experts advise visualizing the result you want. Focusing on the end result helps with motivation and holds up a picture to your brain saying, "This is what I want."

Remember times when you’ve studied faces? There are some great, wonderful old faces that sparkle. No matter how many wrinkles they have, they glow with warmth, energy, enthusiasm, and kindness. Then there are the faces that look sour or wrinkled up like prunes.

Certainly some people's heredity and facial structure put them at a disadvantage in having an engaging, loveable face. That's all the more reason they need to make sure they have smile linesnrather than frown lines.

Research finds that in presidential and other political races, the more optimistic candidate is more likely to win. I think research would also find the best face and best smile wins. Hence, regardless of the soundness of their thinking and plans, Ronald Reagan is more appealing than dour Bob Dole, and Bill Clinton is more appealing than fretful Joe Lieberman. Perhaps the tipping point on George Bush vs. Al Gore or John Kerry was Bush's more relaxed, engaging smile.

When I watch videos of myself speaking, I am struck with the opportunities to smile more often. Who would you rather hear: someone who smiles a lot or someone who is very serious?
I'm not advocating that you permanently have a just saved smile glued on your face. The goal is to be expressive and smile much of the time. The ideal is to have the expressiveness Norma

Rockwell described in President Eisenhower's face (see quote below). By the way, Ike's campaign slogan was "I like Ike."

This is a long way of saying, the more you smile now, the more likely you are to have a face with great smile lines thirty years from now. Start with the end in mind and you are likely to end up with one of those sparkling, warm faces thirty years from now.

“Eisenhower had about the most expressive face I ever painted, I guess. Just like an actor’s. Very mobile. When he talked, he used all the facial muscles. And he had a great, wide mouth that I liked. When he smiled, it was just like the sun came out.” ~Norman Rockwell