You don’t have to travel across the world in search of the Chinese elixir of life, or to Florida to visit Ponce de León’s fountain of youth in order to reap the benefits of the anti aging effects of this antidote. You don’t have to sit in a doctor’s office awaiting your Botox injection, then wait for the redness to go away, and puffiness to die down; it isn’t stored in a vial and kept in a doctor’s office; it doesn’t cost anything and there is no going back for more once the previous dose has worn off, nor can it be purchased where cosmetics are sold; no, you won’t find it at Sephora, or at the Lancôme counter of your favorite department store, or even at the drugstore. What is this mystery remedy you ask? What could it be that costs no time and no money yet have such an impact on one’s appearance?
Drum Roll, Please
The answer: happiness. While we are busy getting Botox and collagen injections, breasts implants, face lifts, liposuction, and the like, there is one small remedy we tend to overlook when looking to improve our appearances via a younger outer exterior. In fact, being happy will add years to your life, yet take years away from your appearance. Happy individuals possess something that all of the cosmetic surgery in the world won’t give them; a youthful feeling that resonates from deep within them, and a vibrant and infectious glow which they exude from inside out.
An article from RealAge.com entitled Happiness and Your Health not only says that happy people have longer life expectancy than those of their unhappy counterparts, but that ”happy people have younger hearts, younger arteries, and a younger RealAge. Happy people recover more quickly from surgery, cope better with pain, have lower blood pressure, and have longer life expectancy than unhappy people”. In addition, the research shows that “happy people are better at looking after their health, too. When people's happiness levels improve, so do their health behaviors. They exercise more, wear sunscreen, and go for regular checkups”. With that said, happiness is the key to beauty, both inside and out. Better yet, it is something that all of us can have. And who wouldn’t want it? Happy people are people whom everyone likes to be around.
Make a Lasting Change
If you are truly happy in life, no amount of cosmetic surgery can replace that. In fact, happiness is priceless. On the other hand, no one is saying that cosmetic surgery is a bad thing, nor is anyone trying to give self improvement by way of cosmetic surgery a bad name; far from it! After all it has smoothed and restored many a sagging post-partum tummy (which might otherwise be confused with a bag of marshmallows) put the life back into breasts that worked so hard to provide food for infants via breast feeding, removed pounds upon pounds of excess skin from numerous gastric bypass patients, as well as repaired millions of cleft pallet faced babies and children the world over.
Cosmetic surgery does have its place, and is by no means a villain of any sort. Yet we can’t make it our hero either. We must come to understand that although the benefits cosmetic surgery brings are superficial and lie on the exterior, a happy person is the only person who can achieve true beauty on the inside, weather they have undergone surgery or not. So if you can achieve true happiness, you can achieve beauty as well; the two go hand in hand. You will not find beauty in the absence of happiness, so if you can achieve happiness, not only will you achieve beauty, but true and lasting beauty.
