Job Seeking Tip for the Day: Smile More

It's easy to feel down and depressed at the moment. What with all the hardships and bad news over the last couple of years, the fact that unemployment seems to be on an inexorable quest to top 10 percent, and the realization that winter weather is right around the corner (or already here, in some parts of the country), smiles may be a little harder to come by than usual.

No matter how bad things get, however, smiling is exactly what we should all be striving to do more of, at least according to The New York Times' Olivia Judson. In this blog post, she makes the case that "the mere act of smiling is often enough to lift your mood." Not only that, but "conversely, the act of frowning can lower it."

The answer to making ourselves feel better, it seems, is to fake it—attempting to smile even when we don't feel like it. The result, according to Judson, is that our moods will improve—possibly because of "classical conditioning" (we're hard-wired to associate feeling happy with smiling, and vice versa).

Whether or not that sounds like bunkum, there's no denying that moping around with a long face isn't going to do you any favors—and especially in an employment or interview setting. So why not give it a try?

Just in case you need some help getting there, here's four seconds of comedy gold to get you started:

--Posted by Phil Stott, Associate Producer, Web Content