Our daughter called us this past week from school in a state of near-panic. In the midst of her exams, she was feeling overwhelmed, out of her depth, and very concerned about finding the time she felt she needed to study. Although my husband and I tried to reassure her, she was having none of it. She was simply too far gone—so emotionally committed to fear that she couldn’t allow herself to be soothed.

When it became clear that nothing we could say would bring her calm, my husband suggested an alternate approach. “Just do one thing for me,” he cajoled. “Stand up right now, look up the ceiling, and put a big stupid grin on your face.” She resisted, of course. Who the hell wants to smile at the ceiling when they’re invested in misery? But after a few minutes, she agreed to try to exercise. And found herself laughing against her will.

Because here’s a thing not everyone knows: changing your physiology can change your emotional energy.

Sit straight and smile

Over the years, numerous studies have put this to the test. Lots of them have focused on the effect of our facial expressions on our mood. Apparently, smiling actually can make us happier—even if we didn’t start out that way. Shifting our body posture can also affect how we feel. According to a report published by the American Psychological Association in 2015, when we sit in an upright position, we’re more likely to have higher self-esteem, less fear, and be in a better mood overall.

Researchers at the University of Auckland took this concept one step further recently when they decided to study if an upright posture can help improve self-esteem in people who are depressed. Although their experiment wasn’t comprehensive, preliminary results showed that adopting an upright posture can help people with mild-to-moderate depression feel happier, more upbeat, and less fatigued.

People who use neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)—which studies how our mind (neuro) and language (linguistic) affect our behaviour (programming)—have found similar results in less clinical settings. While I’m no expert, NLP encourages you to understand how your posture, your breathing, and your physical gestures affect how you feel. The idea is to deconstruct the physiology associated with different emotional states so you can recreate them at will. In essence, it’s the ultimate system for faking it ‘til you make it.

For instance, if you want to feel more self-confident, you start by understanding the emotion’s associated body language—how someone with supreme self-confidence would move, stand, gesture, speak, and breathe. The same goes with any other emotion you’d like to attract—happiness, gratitude, courage, affluence. Once you pinpoint those physiological markers, you literally try them on by standing in front of a mirror and physically moving as if you feel that way. And you do that for several minutes every day.

According to practitioners, after two or three weeks, you will have created a physical anchor that allows you to call up any emotional state you’ve “trained” yourself to feel, simply by adopting the proper physiological movements.

Take the dare

Not sure you want to spend three weeks making strange facial expressions into the mirror? Then how about you try just a two-minute experiment to see if the effort would be worth your while? Next time you’re feeling down, notice your physical state. Are you slumped over and staring down? Is your breathing shallow? Have you begun to mumble or slur your words?

If so, change it up. Stand up straight. Puff out your chest, plant your legs wide, and put your hands on your hips. Now, go ahead—stare up at the ceiling and smile. If you’re feeling really daring, march around the room. And if none of that breaks your mood, jump around and wave your hands in the air. If you aren’t laughing at yourself by the time you’re done, you’re probably not doing it right. 🙂

I don’t mean to minimize sorrow or depression. Sometimes we’re just down and not interested in breaking the pattern. Sometimes our emotions are too debilitating to easily address. But if you feel stuck in a slump and are looking for an out, it can sometimes be as simple as just putting on a happy face.