We all know the value of a smile in our social interaction.  It has now been shown that laughter is important to our health.

When we laugh our metabolic rate increases, muscles are stimulated, and a variety of substances enter our blood stream.  Biochemically, laughter reduces the production of cortisol, a substance that suppresses our immune system.  By reducing cortisol a number of immune system boosters are able to express themselves.

Thoughts and facial expressions interact in ways we don't understand.  Most of us would say that a smile comes from feelings within us, rather than visa versa.  However, some studies now indicate that our facial expressions may also cause emotions in their own right.  Facial feed back, as psychologists call it, can produce distinct physiological changes in our heart and respiration rates.

Researchers have found that just getting people to place their facial muscles in the pattern of a smile can elicit a happier mood.  People who forced their facial muscles into a frown had more unpleasant feelings.

Although the physiological mechanisms of these effects are not understood, there seems little doubt that manipulating a facial expression does affect our mood.  A smile on the outside can do more than help our social interaction with others, it can make us feel better on the inside.

So next time you are feeling low, try a happy face anyway.

Some scientific studies indicate we can choose to be pleasant or grumpy, and that choice can affect our feelings.  It's a rather startling idea.  In other words, we are more responsible for the way we feel, than most of us would like to admit, especially to those closest to us.

If we wake up grumpy in the morning, we can choose to be positive and get on with our day.  And by so doing, we can display a pleasant demeanor to all with whom we have dealings.  Once more, when we persist with that attitude, we may actually begin to feel pleasant.

Is it possible that we blame a lot of our unpleasant behaviour on our feelings, when the real culprit is our failure to make the right moral choices?  Are we in fact shirking our moral responsibility?  Some of us have the idea that we are the helpless pawns of our feelings.  We'd like to be nicer, but we just don't feel it.

This idea of being captive to our feelings not only affects our mood, it also extends to how we express our love for others.

Perhaps we bump into someone and for one reason or another experience an instant dislike.  It may be because of a personality clash, or because she is stepping on our toes – literally or figuratively.  We don't feel love toward her, so we display aggression, resentment, indifference.  "I can't help it if I don't like her," we say.  "She just rubs me the wrong way."

But love is not a feeling.  It is a choice.  Jesus once said, "This is my commandment, that you love one another."  There are only two ways you can respond to a command:  obey it or disobey it.  You are not the slave of your feelings.  You do have a choice.  How many loving choices have you made today?