Happiness: Fake it until you make it

It’s hard to crack a smile when things are going wrong. But a 2003 study by Simone Schnall and David Laird showed that if you fake a smile, you can actually trick your brain into thinking you’re happy by releasing feel-good hormones called endorphins.

This might seem a little wacky at first. If smiling for no reason feels too strange, then find a reason to smile. You could smile at the prospect of your smile itself making someone else feel happier. They might smile back at you, giving you a genuine reason to keep your smile alive.

In fact, our entire body and physiology can affect our thoughts and feelings. By changing our outer state, we can change our inner state. It may also surprise you to learn that the vast majority of messages that we give other people are non-verbal, such as facial expressions, gestures or even the way we hold ourselves while we’re talking.

For this reason, it’s important that we try to think about the messages we’re conveying with our body language.