How to Get a Raise, Make Friends, and Be Better at Your Job

Your Best Year Ever continues! All throughout November, Esquire senior editor and the author of 'Works Well With Others,' Ross McCammon, applies his hard-earned experience to getting ahead, making allies, and being less awkward at your place of work.

If you have ever been called smiley, please stop reading. This is not the story for you. Also: Why are you smiling? What's going on there? You high?

I don't know what my face exudes when it's at rest, but I do know that it doesn't exude cheer. I am not a smiler. For the purposes of this essay, I will assume your mouth is doing the same thing mine is: slightly frowning.

Now, there are times in life—at work especially—when we all must smile when we're not authentically happy. When we suffer a professional humiliation, say. When we are being interviewed for a position we're not sure if we even want. When the Chex Mix gets stuck in the vending machine coil, and you're like, 'Do I beat the hell out of this machine to try and get it to budge, and then everybody looks over here, or do I just feed it another $1.25 even though I'm wildly overpaying for a snack I don't need?' (Maybe that's just me.)

Smiling makes us seem curious, which I think is the most underrated virtue in the workplace. There's evidence that smiles are indeed contagious, and that they make other people comfortable to be around you. You can perceive happiness (as represented by a smile) from much farther away than you can an expression of sadness or discomfort. This is probably an evolutionary adaptation: We can more quickly find out who our friends and enemies are—even if they're simply walking down a long work corridor.

Here's a fun activity: Smile.

No, really…smile.

Look this isn't fun for me either.

There we go!

Look, I know you're not smiling.

And even if you were it wouldn't be an authentic smile. It's easy to smile. But it's hard to SMILE!

This is about learning to SMILE!

Because SMILING! is what you want to do. The other kind of smiling—fake smiling, really—is just your zygomatic major muscles pulling the corner of your cheeks up. You look soulless when you smile this way. If you want to look like you're authentically smiling, you're gonna have to do better than that. But the only way you're gonna do better than that is by actually being happy.

Which is hard to be on command. Especially at work.

Luckily, there's a two-part trick to becoming happy enough to create a true smile, or a "Duchenne" smile, named after the pioneering French neurologist who studied the muscles of the face in the 19th century.

And the trick is: smiling.

Smiling begats SMILING. So smile.

This is the first part. You're contracting the zygomatic major, but you're not involving the orbicularis oculi—the muscles surrounding the eye—the same muscles responsible for crow's feet. These muscles are very difficult to voluntarily contract. You almost always need to be actually delighted in order for them to engage.

So, the second part is: think of something that delights you. A large bag of Chex Mix, say. A child with a balloon. Grandma. A child with a balloon sharing a large bag of Chex Mix with Grandma.

Now, that's a genuine smile. That's what makes you photogenic. That's what makes you "light up."

If this doesn't come naturally, just smile 20 percent wider than feels comfortable. You want to give it the ol' Taylor-Swift-on-VH1-Storytellers. Open mouth. Back teeth visible. Try squinting slightly, which will involve the muscles around the eyes. If you're not feeling a little stupid, then it's not working. Though you might feel awkward, you won't look awkward. You'll look satisfied and confident and happy to be there. Everyone's better off—especially you.

Also, regarding the vending machine: just walk away. And smile. But mainly: walk away.

Adapted from 'Works Well With Others' (Dutton).