Surround yourself with reminders to lighten up. Keep a toy on your desk or in your car. Put up a funny poster in your office. Choose a computer screensaver that makes you laugh. Frame photos of you and your family or friends having fun. Remember funny things that happen. If something amusing happens or you hear a joke or funny story you really like, write it down or tell it to someone to help you remember it.
Many things in life are beyond your control—particularly the behavior of other people. Find your inner child. Pay attention to children and try to emulate them—after all, they are the experts on playing, taking life lightly, and laughing at ordinary things. Deal with stress.
One great technique to relieve stress in the moment is to draw upon a favorite memory that always makes you smile—something your kids did, for example, or something funny a friend told you.
Think of it like exercise or breakfast and make a conscious effort to find something each day that makes you laugh. Set aside 10 to 15 minutes and do something that amuses you.
The ability to laugh, play, and have fun not only makes life more enjoyable but also helps you solve problems, connect with others, and think more creatively. People who incorporate humor and play into their daily lives find that it renews them and all of their relationships. Life brings challenges that can either get the best of you or become playthings for your imagination. But when you play with the problem, you can often transform it into an opportunity for creative learning.
Playing with problems seems to come naturally to children. When they are confused or afraid, they make their problems into a game, giving them a sense of control and an opportunity to experiment with new solutions.
Interacting with others in playful ways helps you retain this creative ability. Here are two examples of people who took everyday problems and turned them around through laughter and play:. Roy , a semi-retired businessman, was excited to finally have time to devote to golf, his favorite sport.
But the more he played, the less he enjoyed himself. Although his game had improved dramatically, he got angry with himself over every mistake. Roy wisely realized that his golfing buddies affected his attitude, so he stopped playing with people who took the game too seriously.
When he played with friends who focused more on having fun than on their scores, he was less critical of himself. Now golfing was as enjoyable as Roy had envisioned. He scored better without working harder. And the brighter outlook he was gaining from his companions and the game spread to other parts of his life.
Jane worked at home designing greeting cards, a job she used to love but now felt had become routine. Two little girls who loved to draw and paint lived next door.
Eventually, Jane invited the girls over to play with all of her art supplies. At first, she just watched, but in time she joined in. Not only did it end her loneliness and boredom, but it sparked her imagination and helped her artwork flourish. As laughter, humor, and play become integrated into your life, your creativity will flourish and new opportunities for laughing with friends, coworkers, acquaintances, and loved ones will occur to you daily.
Laughter takes you to a higher place where you can view the world from a more relaxed, positive, and joyful perspective. Laughing can help you stay safe from viruses by improving your immune system. Laughing releases more anti-infection antibodies to help protect your body from infection. Laughing helps lighten your mood. It can lessen chronic depression and anxiety as well as make it easier to cope with challenging situations.
Related: Practicing Gratitude for Health and Happiness. It helps manage blood sugar levels, reduces inflammation, manages metabolism, and triggers the fight or flight response in your body at critical times. But too much cortisol and your body feels that stress. Laughter is one of the ways your body can help regulate cortisol.
Laughing increases your oxygen intake, which stimulates body circulation and decreases your cortisol levels. Some studies show that just the act of laughing—without having humor in it—can have positive stress-relieving effects.
Saturdays - a. Sundays - Closed. Laughter is a great cardio workout, especially for those who are incapable of doing other physical activity due to injury or illness. It gets your heart pumping and burns a similar amount of calories per hour as walking at a slow to moderate pace. So, laugh your heart into health. T-cells are specialized immune system cells just waiting in your body for activation.
When you laugh, you activate T-cells that immediately begin to help you fight off sickness. Next time you feel a cold coming on, add chuckling to your illness prevention plan. By laughing, you can release endorphins, which can help ease chronic pain and make you feel good all over.
Laughter can increase your overall sense of well-being. Doctors have found that people who have a positive outlook on life tend to fight diseases better than people who tend to be more negative.
Positive psychology researchers study how people can live meaningful lives and thrive. Laughter produces positive emotions that lead to this kind of flourishing.
These feelings — like amusement, happiness, mirth and joy — build resiliency and increase creative thinking. They increase subjective well-being and life satisfaction. Laughter in response to amusement is a healthy coping mechanism. When you laugh, you take yourself or the situation less seriously and may feel empowered to problem-solve.
They found that the more laughter experienced , the lower the reported stress. Maybe you want to grab some of these benefits for yourself — can you force laughter to work for you? A growing number of therapists advocate using humor and laughter to help clients build trust and improve work environments ; a review of five different studies found that measures of well-being did increase after laughter interventions. Sometimes called homeplay instead of homework, these interventions take the form of daily humor activities — surrounding yourself with funny people, watching a comedy that makes you laugh or writing down three funny things that happened today.
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