Why Aren’t You Laughing?

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They say laughter is the best medicine, and I’m no doctor so I’m probably not the best judge, but I think they might just be right about that. I mean, it has so much going for it, and it’s definitely effective … and it’s free, and as you know you can’t beat free.

Some of the benefits of laughter

So, just what is it about laughter that makes it so special? Well, here’s a few things to be going on with …

  • Laughter is known to kill pain (or at least reduce it).
  • It also has the effect of strengthening your immune system.
  • It can protect your body from the damage stress causes.
  • It effectively exercises your chuckle muscles.
  • And all you have to do is switch on your giggle-a-tron (easily achieved by means of the smile switch).
  • Oh, and it makes you feel good too!

Another great thing about laughter is that it can work almost instantly, far faster than almost any other drug, and it has no known side effects (and you can’t say that about most drugs). And you can use it even if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding (specially if you’re female:).

laughter best medicineHumour has long been known to make even the heaviest burden seem lighter, and it can help you see the way out of the most difficult situation (apart from incarceration … although it can even make that more bearable, er … I imagine :/). And it can inspire hope, even in dangerous or perilous situations. Probably because when you’re laughing about a situation (even if it might seem really there’s not much to laugh about) you’re not focusing on just how dangerous it really is. So I guess it’s a great distraction technique.

It can turn things around too. For example, if you’re depressed and you manage to raise a smile, you’re less likely to stay depressed for too long. In fact there are very few reported cases of smiling and laughing people committing suicide, so it’s a pretty fair bet that if you’ve been feeling suicidal and you can manage to crack a smile you’re more likely to make it to bedtime.

Grief … it can trap us and make life a misery

Grief, now there’s a terrible thing. And definitely not a subject for laughter. But it comes to us all sooner or later, often through the death of a loved one. But the thing is, grief, terrible though it may seem at the time, has a way of passing, like most things in life. If you can raise a smile as you dredge up memories of that loved one, then you’ll probably get over your grief a bit quicker. And no, that doesn’t mean you don’t care, or you’re too quick to forget. Those are just mind tricks to make you feel bad, and no-one in their right mind chooses to feel bad, so don’t go down that route.

Focus instead on the feeling that getting over your grief, or whatever it is that’s lying heavy on your mind, is far better than allowing it to stay there, immovable, festering and making your life harder to bear than a re-run of your least favourite TV series.

Kids have the key to laughter

kids laughingWhen we were kids we laughed dozens of times a day, more likely hundreds. As we grow up we seem to lose the knack. As adults most of us can probably count on the fingers of one hand how many times we laughed in the last 24 hours. In fact, for many of us, laughing is something of a rarity, specially in these perilous times. So it’s even more important that we take time to safeguard against having nothing to laugh about.

One of the best ways to make sure you don’t fall into the trap of taking life too seriously is to keep a few humour files – one for jokes you heard (or came across online), one for funny memes (or funny images generally), one for images of cats and dogs in funny/daft situations (assuming that’s something you find funny), and one for TV or film clips you found particularly funny (even if they’re only very short scenes). You could even store a few of your favourite [funny] films online, so you can lose yourself in one of them at any given moment.

And the beauty of this method is that these things will always be available to you, at the touch of a mouse. And yes, for free. And that’s something to smile about!

The lost art of smiling

awkward smiling faceLet’s face it, smiling can be a tricky business, specially if you haven’t indulged in it for quite a while. For a start, it requires the use of several facial muscles that you might have forgotten you had. And it means you’ll probably have to find something funny, which again might not be your usual modus operandi. If you’ve been trudging through life like one of the undead, then finding something funny could be a challenge.

The only way round this dilemma is to approach the problem head on. Get in the habit of smiling more often, even at strangers or people who serve you in shops and cafes (yes, it will feel strange at first, but you’ll get used to it). Once you’ve got over the embarrassment of contorting your face into these ‘unnatural’ expressions, you’ll feel better for it (no, seriously … I mean honestly), and you’ll know you are spreading the love, even if (as is sometimes the case) you’re only met with a blank stare. Remember, those poor people need your smile more than most, so don’t give up when that happens to you. Just get ready to grit your teeth into a rictus grin and go at it again!

false smileAlso, make a point of mixing with fun people. Miserable people might need your attention at times, understandably, but misery, like humour, can be contagious, so you have to be careful. You don’t want to spend too much time in the company of sour-faced people or those with toxic attitudes and ideas.

Surely I don’t even need to say this … stay away from people who are overly-concerned with other people’s business, with their ethnicity, or with their politics. Little of value comes from mixing too freely with people like that. And very little fun.

Try to find humour in everything

If you get in the habit of looking hard enough, you can find humour in the most unlikely of places. You can even introduce it into conversation (e.g. hey, anything funny happened to you recently? Y’know, anything odd or weird that you’ve heard/seen lately/today/this week?). It may be not the most subtle gambit, but it can be a good conversation opener, plus it can actually lead to a really good belly laugh, at least sometimes. If it does, you’ve hit pay dirt!