We all know how it works: when you feel an emotion, you reflect it on your face. First emotion, then facial expression. Right? But what if there is more to it than that? Malcolm Gladwell, the innovative thinker who brought us The Tipping Point, has collected stories and research that suggest something truly surprising about the relationship between emotions and the facial expressions that always reveal our deepest truth.

Find out what this research has discovered, and how that translates into a simple key that can make you feel better instantly, here:

Two prominent researchers found that facial expressions alone are sufficient to create marked changes in the autonomic nervous system. Translation: if you mimic facial expressions of anger, for example, your body will begin to exhibit increased heart rate, increased perspiration, and other signals of actual anger. More, you will begin to feel angry.

And this can work in a positive way, as well. In one experiment, two groups of people were shown the same cartoons. One group watched the cartoons while a device held their mouths in a stretched position similar to a smile. The “smiling” group invariably found the cartoons funnier. Translation: if you need a lift, just try smiling.

Yes, our facial expressions reveal the truth (slowed-down films of the fleeting expressions on the faces of key witnesses in a trial, for instance, invariably reveal what the subject is actually feeling, no matter how well he may be lying). But we can also cause ourselves to feel emotions when we imitate the facial expressions associated with them.