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Change your body language
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.
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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.
If I told you to show me how someone would appear if they were depressed,
you’d probably know exactly how to portray them: you’d slump with your
head down, looking grim. If I asked you to show me how someone would
appear if they were angry, you could do that with ease, too.
Now think about how a person who is happy and feels high on life would
appear. What would their facial expression be like? How would they be
standing? Is there a particular way they’d be moving? Where might their
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hands be? Are they likely to be making any gestures? What tone would their
voice take? How fast or slow would they be talking?
If you can act like someone
who feels good, your internal
state will change and your
vibration will rise.
You might be concerned that this is an unhealthy way to raise your vibration.
But the idea that you can ‘fake it ’til you make it’ has been proven many
times. For example, Muhammad Ali famously said, ‘To be a great champion,
you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.’ Take Ali’s
fight with Sonny Liston: before the fight Ali was an underdog, but he chose
to act like he was going to whop Liston – boasting and bragging about it to
fans – and, in the fight, he did.
Social psychologist Amy Cuddy is renowned for her work on how body
language not only affects how others see us, but also how we see ourselves.
A report co-authored by Cuddy claims that simply by doing one of three
poses related to power for only two minutes a day, you can create a 20 per
cent increase in the confidence hormone testosterone and a 25 per cent
decrease in the stress hormone, cortisol.
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The so-called ‘power poses’ are a
quick and easy way to feel more powerful, says the report.
Some people get the wrong end of the stick and pretend to have some