The Story

 

 

I think smiles are great. Finding people and things to smile at, being smiled at and smiling back can always brighten up a day no matter how it is going. The idea for The World Smile Games started when I was working as a junior doctor in a busy hospital in London. The days (and nights) were long and stressful. Smiles were sometimes few and far between on the wards, but after a while I started to notice the power of smiling, even just briefly at other doctors, nurses and patients.

This led to the idea to create a series of small challenges involving smiling at people as well as good memories and things to look forward to. Each challenge would only take a few moments to do and I would do a couple each day, when I could find a rare quite moment on the ward. I was finding that they were great for a quick mood lift when I was stressed or things were getting me down. I also found that doing the challenges were a lot of fun and made the day a little better for both me and the people I smiled at. I started noting down what I was smiling at and having fun looking back over this. This led to the concept of Mindful Smiling, the idea being you focus, even if it is just briefly, on positive thought however minor, and remember there are always good things in life.

I then decided to choose some of my favourite smile challenges and make them into an app so the next one would be there when I wanted to do it, and could record what I smiled at for each one. So The World Smile Games was born. After a few changes and modifications the App is now on Google Play and a version for iOS is in development. There are a long list of possible smile challenges so challenge list will be updated periodically. More news and ideas for smiles will also follow on the blog section of this website.  However you decide to use The World Smile Games, have fun and smile and if someone smiles at you, please smile back!