Some days don’t start well. You wake up with a headache, skip breakfast and rush to work to continue a heavy debate on what your schedule should look like. Like today.

But funnily enough this reminds me of something really positive:

The power of laughing and smiling.

With my son, Oiva, I have learned that a good laugh really makes you feel good. Oiva doesn’t laugh out loud that often. He opens his mouth wide open in a huge smile, but the only sound of laughter that comes out of it is a small “ha-ha”.

That’s why my wife and I try to use all kinds of tricks to tease that tiny laughter out of the poor kid.

My favorite trick is to start a fake laugh. I laugh for a while in a completely exaggerated way while looking at him. Usually one of these two things happens:

1. I keep laughing for so long that my laughter really becomes real, and I can’t stop anymore.

It’s a feeling way too rare these days. What surprised me was that if you start laughing, it really affects how you feel. The laughter that starts as a trick, as a fake, becomes real, and makes you feel good.

2. Oiva starts to laugh.

In his own style, saying those small “ha-ha”s every now and then (He’s just so cute when he does that). That fills my heart with warmth, and a hint of pride: “I was able to make my son laugh. Way to go dad!”

But the important part here is that a smile, or a laughter is something you can pass forward. If you smile at someone, it’s likely that that person will smile too. And when she smiles she starts feeling good too.

So, there is no reason why we shouldn’t start smiling even if we don’t feel quite that happy yet. Smiling might well be the thing that makes us feel good and realize the good things around us.

If you haven’t giving this a try lately, I recommend to join me in smiling today.