A Simple Way to Make a Good First Impression

The fifth principle is disarmingly small and enormously powerful: smile. Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, "I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you." It costs nothing but creates much; it enriches those who receive it without impoverishing those who give it; and it happens in a flash, yet the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.

Carnegie was careful to distinguish a real smile from a mechanical one. He was not talking about the false grin pasted on for effect, which fools nobody. He meant a genuine, heartwarming smile that comes from within. The smile that warms people is the one that signals real pleasure at their presence.

He drew on psychologist William James for the deeper mechanism: "Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not." In other words, if you do not feel like smiling, smile anyway — force yourself to act cheerful, and the feeling of cheer tends to follow. Happiness depends not on outward conditions but on inner attitudes, and the attitude can be steered.

A businessman in one of Carnegie's classes resolved to begin smiling — at his wife each morning, at the doorman, at the clerk in the subway booth, at the people he traded with. Within weeks he reported more happiness and more income; antagonism in his office melted, and his home life transformed. The smile he had withheld for years had been costing him far more than he knew.

Carnegie quoted the old Chinese proverb that distills the whole principle: "A man without a smiling face must not open a shop." He noted too that a phone smile carries through the wire — your voice changes when you smile, even when the other person cannot see you. And the people who most need a smile are often the ones who have none left to give; a smile given freely to them costs you nothing and may be the only warmth in their day.

The application is to greet everyone you meet with a genuine smile, to make yourself smile even when you do not feel like it (the feeling follows the act), and to remember that your expression is a choice you broadcast to everyone around you. Your smile is a messenger of your goodwill, brightening the lives of all who see it. To people beaten down by frowns and turndowns, your smile is like the sun breaking through the clouds.