Driven by Exploration!

When I travel, I like to observe, reflect, compare and get to know ‘the other side’. Have coffee with strangers, talk to strangers that sit beside you in a Cafe or Bar-Restaurant just because you never know where the conversation will lead to. I had plenty of these situations in my recent trip around South America, with people that I didn’t exchange contacts with and may not see them again but also some people whom I’m in touch with now…I like to call it ‘open travel’, immersing yourself in your environment a bit more, going out of your comfort zone a bit more and exploring ‘the other side’. Instead of engaging in ‘closed travel’ where you are constantly in the same places and stay only within the hotel/resort boundaries and don’t learn anything about the environment and people that surround you…one thing that was confirmed to me is that ‘a smile’ changes the whole trajectory of your interaction, whether it’s on the street somebody looking at you or in a Cafe, a small ‘positive sign’ will lead to a much better experience instead of a stern and serious look that will only confuse ‘the other side’ and block any sort of experience you could have had. In this short reflection of mine I would like to break down “the art of the smile” and share my view on this little miracle and at the same time encourage you to smile a bit more on a daily basis.

First of all, there are so many speculations and theories out there that I’m always skeptical off because you can really find anything that confirms your hypothesis or theory if you really look for it….so I will do just that 🙂 Here are two theories that you can use to justify your next smiles on the streets. First, it takes less muscles to smile than to frown so that way it makes it much easier to smile, even if you are lazy and haven’t been to the gym in weeks…a smile is easy and at the same time burns some calories, less than a kiss would but that’s for another time…;-) Second, now a bit more “woo-woo” and harder to prove, a smile can program you to be more happy, even to yourself in the morning gives you baseline of happiness early on by sending signals to your brain and you can work from there….until the lady at the register frowns back at you or somebody cuts you off in traffic, that’s where your daily “grind” come in to test your limits.

I’m in the camp of the psychological analysis (surprise, surprise) and the difference between a smile and ‘a nothing face’ at a person in the street is sheerly your past and ability to trust or be ‘open’ in a fairly neutral situation. There’s a deeper level that causes a person not to smile or not even to smile back, which is much easier when you don’t have to do the first step. 

There’s a cynical way of looking at the world where you don’t trust anyone out there and constantly think in a more reluctant way about people. You have trouble opening up, even if it’s just a smile on the street because you think you are sending a bigger signal than you actually are. If you want to get even deeper into the weeds of it…here you go: The cynics of this world grew up with an insecure attachment style compared to people who have a more trusting and outgoing personality who grew up with a very secure attachment style during their childhood, A LOT derives from that, A LOT…this is a much deeper topic to discuss and the podcast I recently listened to about it explains it a lot better instead of me rambling on about it, you can find it here: …..https://youtu.be/9dyEf4vj89s?si=fdhp__Z3kGB4zR1P 

On my travels around South America, I had plenty of situations where I was being ‘scanned’ by people just because I often times stood out like a sore thumb, being relatively tall with blue eyes and totally looking like a tourist is supposed to look. I had reluctant faces look at me with a skeptical expression, sometimes borderline scary just because I don’t know the culture and don’t know how to interpret their looks but at the same time, I chose to smile instead of looking serious and therefore ‘defuse’ any type of situation. Even if I only imagined it being dangerous, if I chose to look serious or stern or even upset that somebody is looking at me, I could cause the polar opposite reaction but instead I smile at a stranger and look at that….he/she smiles back, even nods their head and makes me feel welcome. A situation that initially appeared to be tense and cold became warm and loose and sometimes a conversation even derived from that. It feels really good when your local guide meets you for the first time and 20mins into your tour says ‘you have a very good aura about you’….a very unusual thing to say and I believe he meant it. A cynic would definitely say that he said it with a purpose but I was there, I felt it and it made the day/tour endless times better, it even lead to a much personal conversation that made the day memorable. He made the tour last 2hours longer than he usually does for people and we even met up in the evening for a game of ‘Tejo’, something that I would have otherwise not experienced…it was definitely real, trust me, and it wouldn’t have been that way if I would have been a ‘closed traveler’ instead of an ‘open’ one.

I realize that by smiling at strangers and even saying hello to strangers in a culture like Lithuania, where people usually mind their own business and stay in there lane and therefore are not used to interact with strangers, I risk looking like a fool….and I love it. May I be the fool who says hello to everyone, I do so proudly even if I get a ‘nothing face’ in response….I will carry the torch of the fool that smiles instead of avoiding eye contact, the fool who believes in people until he doesn’t instead of the other way around. I’d rather give trust and get disappointed instead of making the other person work that hard to meet a fictitious expectation level that eventually can turn against you and become a self-fulfilling prophecy (listen to the pod above). When you smile, make sure your eyes smile with you, make sure your teeth are showing, make sure you think of the glass being 70-30 full and that there is a lot more to discover in this situation than just a “hello”…even if it’s just a “hello” it’s already more than it would have been. 

Magic happens when you smile because you radiate trust and positivity which leads to openness and at the same time gives room for opportunities to explore more instead of shutting the magic down right away. So, I would like to encourage you in the future:

Be open, smile brightly, it’s worth it!