Laughter is your birthright, a natural part of life that is innate and inborn. Infants begin smiling during the first weeks of life and laugh out loud within months of being born. Even if you did not grow up in a household where laughter was a common sound, you can learn to laugh at any stage of life.
Begin by setting aside special times to seek out humor and laughter, as you might with working out, and build from there. Eventually, you’ll want to incorporate humor and laughter into the fabric of your life, finding it naturally in everything you do.
Here are some ways to start:
Smile -
Smiling is the beginning of laughter. Like laughter, it’s contagious. Pioneers in “laugh therapy,” find it’s possible to laugh without even experiencing a funny event. The same holds for smiling. When you look at someone or see something even mildly pleasing, practice smiling.
Count your blessings -
Literally make a list. The simple act of considering the good things in your life will distance you from negative thoughts that are a barrier to humor and laughter. When in a state of sadness, we have further to travel to get to humor and laughter.
When you hear laughter, move toward it. Sometimes humor and laughter are private, a shared joke among a small group, but usually not. More often, people are very happy to share something funny because it gives them an opportunity to laugh again and feed off the humor you find in it. When you hear laughter, seek it out and ask, “What’s funny?”
Spend time with fun, playful people -
These are people who laugh easily–both at themselves and at life’s absurdities–and who routinely find the humor in everyday events. Their playful point of view and laughter are contagious.
Bring humor into conversations -
Ask people, “What’s the funniest thing that happened to you today? This week? In your life?”
Want to bring the fun? Get a pet…
Most of us have experienced the joy of playing with a furry friend, and pets are a rewarding way to bring more laughter and joy into your life. But did you know that having a pet is also good for your mental and physical health? Studies show that pets can protect you depression, stress, and even heart disease.
Developing your sense of humor:
Take yourself less seriously-
One essential characteristic that helps us laugh is not taking ourselves too seriously. We’ve all known the classic tight-jawed sourpuss who takes everything with deathly seriousness and never laughs at anything. No fun there!
Some events are clearly sad and not occasions for laughter. But most events in life don’t carry an overwhelming sense of either sadness or delight. They fall into the gray zone of ordinary life–giving you the choice to laugh or not.
Ways to help yourself see the lighter side of life:
Laugh at yourself. Share your embarrassing moments. The best way to take ourselves less seriously is talk about times when we took ourselves too seriously. Attempt to laugh at situations rather than bemoan them. Look for the humor in a bad situation, the irony and absurdity of life. This will help improve your mood and the mood of those around you.
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.
Keep things in perspective. Many things in life are beyond our control—particularly the behavior of other people. While you might think taking the weight of the world on your shoulders is admirable, in the long run it’s unrealistic, unproductive, unhealthy, and even egotistical.
Deal with your stress.
Stress is a major impediment to humor and laughter.Pay attention to children and emulate them. They are the experts on playing, taking life lightly, and laughing.
Checklist for lightening up
When you find yourself taken over by what seems to be a horrible problem, ask these questions:
· Is it really worth getting upset over?
· Is it worth upsetting others?
· Is it that important?
· Is it that bad?
· Is the situation irreparable?
· Is it really your problem?
Using humor and play to overcome challenges and enhance your life.
The ability to laugh, play, and have fun with others not only makes life more enjoyable–it also helps you solve problems, connect with others, and be more creative. 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. When you “become the problem” and take yourself too seriously, it can be hard to think outside the box and find new solutions. 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 hoped it would be. He scored better without working harder. And the brighter outlook he was getting from his companions and the game spread to other parts of his life, including his work.
Jane worked at home in her apartment complex designing greeting cards, a job she used to love but now felt routine. Two little girls who loved to draw and paint lived next door. Eventually, Jane invited the girls in to play with all the art supplies she had. At first, she just watched, but in time she joined in. Laughing, coloring, and playing pretend with the little girls transformed Jane’s life. Not only did playing with them end her loneliness and mild boredom, it sparked her imagination and helped her artwork flourish. Best of all, it rekindled the playfulness and spark in Jane’s relationship with her husband.
As laughter, humor, and play become an integrated part of your life, your creativity will flourish and new discoveries for playing with friends, coworkers, acquaintances, and loved ones will occur to you daily. Humor takes you to a higher place where you can view the world from a more relaxed, positive, creative, joyful, and balanced perspective.
A dose of daily laughter is the key to manifesting an amazing life that you love. Laughing is a key ingredient in learning how to let go. It is one of the most positive releases one can experience without having an actual orgasm! Laughter frees you up in such a unique way that there is no "mind" there analyzing, criticizing, and constantly making effort to remain in control. A good long authentic belly laugh is one of the best medicines you could ever take on a daily basis. If you can truly do this everyday, it's a good chance you're a highly liberated human being who is far along the journey on your spiritual path.
If you can just have one big long deep belly laugh every day about something, anything that is remotely humorous, you will start opening yourself up like a flower to receive a major healing in your life. There are thousands of reported clinical cases where people have been healed of major life threatening diseases just through laughing. The endorphins released in your brain naturally create a "happy cocktail" which over time induces me a massive healing reaction throughout the body. So really life basically comes down to... you laugh or you die. If you cannot laugh about yourself, your life or whatever you're taking too seriously, you're doing the opposite of healing yourself. So give yourself permission to have the biggest belly laugh of your life in the next 24 hours, and don't hold back! You'll start having a much lighter experience of life that will impact your inner perception of "reality" more than you know.
It's common that people believe that some silly event needs to happen in order to really have a good laugh. The truth is that if you can start looking for the humor in life, you can laugh at just about anything. There is a perspective which is less dramatic, serious, and worried than any other. It just sees this human experience as if it was one big long comedy. Just try to take a humorous view about something you're taking very seriously in your life. Is your seriousness really helping? Laughing about it feels much better than being angry, depressed, ashamed, blamed or playing some old victim game inside. No matter what it is, you can always choose to see the divine order and comedy behind it all. You can let your life become a big orgasmic ball of laughter that fills the space with joy everywhere you are.
The more you laugh, the more you are free. You release that all mighty grip on those all too important thoughts, beliefs, expectations and desires. The freedom leads you directly into the enlightened state. When you realize that you're in charge of which thoughts you choose to entertain, you fall directly into the cosmic joke of it all. The joke is that you are whatever you decide to put your attention on, you become that! Reality is like silly putty. It bends and molds to wherever you focus your mind. You can make it be whatever you want it to be. In one second, everything can change and your entire perspective can shift a millimeter to the left, and you suddenly have a brand new expansive understanding about your entire life.
The funniest thing about laughter is that it's not something you can do, it's something that happens to you. An authentic outrageous laughing attack can only fall upon you when you have learned how to totally let go. If you want to enjoy your life to the max, you must be able to let go of it. It's ironic, yet the idea that we are "in control" of our lives forces us to eventually swing over into the sense of feeling "out of control". When you can embrace both sides of the equation and consciously allow the ego to imagine its "in control" or "out of control", then you can transcend them both. This is when the great cosmic joke sets in and you realize there is no need try to control anything. You awaken to the fact that one of the greatest goals in life is to let it become one deep long "let go". This is when enlightenment sneaks in.
It's this overly serious mind who has blinded you from knowing how to fully enjoy life. It has gotten lost in the world of trying to achieve, resist and become something. Laughter is not about achieving anything, it is a releasing and a cleansing of your past. It liberates you from the mind and delivers you to a place of deep peace inside where enlightenment can be found. The serious mind doesn't have time or reason to laugh. It sees no purpose in laughing because it's so caught up in it's own web of illusions. The serious mind has forgotten that the Universe is a giant cosmic karmic playground where you are the actor, director and producer of the play, as well as the watcher, witness and audience who's seeing it all happening on stage. This massive playground exists in all directions and is within everything around you now. Just feel the vastness of its infinite presence. Connecting with the infinite Universe provides the space to relax, let go of everything, and laugh at it all.
There really is just one simple rule for creating massive joy in your life this week. If you want to have an amazing life that you love, don't ever let seriousness into your body....ever! No matter what anyone tells you, if what you're doing is not enjoyable, fun, or at least educational, then don't do it! You can find something better! Seriousness is a disease to your soul and only cripples your life. It's never too late to change directions and have a sense of humor about it all. Just choose to let a little more lightness into your heart right now. How does that feel? If you can bring this lighter heart feeling into your mornings, your entire week will become lighter and more clear. The cloudy skies go away and you can see how beautiful and FUN life is again! Did you remember that life is supposed to be fun? It just feels good to see how ridiculous the serious mind is, and how overly contracted it can become about anything.
Happiness is always a choice. What appears to be serious now will only change with time, so why not let go of this tension earlier? You can afford to follow a lighter path now, and others will appreciate it. They will soon catch on. Even if people are devout grumpsters, your simple light heartedness may be the secret to helping them bust a smile when no one is watching. Having access to this light playful spirit is the key to creating a tremendous healing in your life. It's the great golden secret to turning everyone's life around...including yours! Simply say to yourself everyday, "I can let go and laugh about it all!" Yes! It's time you started to have more fun in this awesome game called Life. It all starts by taking a tiny step back from the mind, and not taking anything (especially your mind) too seriously.
Be Happy – Let Laughter Restore Your Mental Peace.
Begin by setting aside special times to seek out humor and laughter, as you might with working out, and build from there. Eventually, you’ll want to incorporate humor and laughter into the fabric of your life, finding it naturally in everything you do.
Here are some ways to start:
Smile -
Smiling is the beginning of laughter. Like laughter, it’s contagious. Pioneers in “laugh therapy,” find it’s possible to laugh without even experiencing a funny event. The same holds for smiling. When you look at someone or see something even mildly pleasing, practice smiling.
Count your blessings -
Literally make a list. The simple act of considering the good things in your life will distance you from negative thoughts that are a barrier to humor and laughter. When in a state of sadness, we have further to travel to get to humor and laughter.
When you hear laughter, move toward it. Sometimes humor and laughter are private, a shared joke among a small group, but usually not. More often, people are very happy to share something funny because it gives them an opportunity to laugh again and feed off the humor you find in it. When you hear laughter, seek it out and ask, “What’s funny?”
Spend time with fun, playful people -
These are people who laugh easily–both at themselves and at life’s absurdities–and who routinely find the humor in everyday events. Their playful point of view and laughter are contagious.
Bring humor into conversations -
Ask people, “What’s the funniest thing that happened to you today? This week? In your life?”
Want to bring the fun? Get a pet…
Most of us have experienced the joy of playing with a furry friend, and pets are a rewarding way to bring more laughter and joy into your life. But did you know that having a pet is also good for your mental and physical health? Studies show that pets can protect you depression, stress, and even heart disease.
Developing your sense of humor:
Take yourself less seriously-
One essential characteristic that helps us laugh is not taking ourselves too seriously. We’ve all known the classic tight-jawed sourpuss who takes everything with deathly seriousness and never laughs at anything. No fun there!
Some events are clearly sad and not occasions for laughter. But most events in life don’t carry an overwhelming sense of either sadness or delight. They fall into the gray zone of ordinary life–giving you the choice to laugh or not.
Ways to help yourself see the lighter side of life:
Laugh at yourself. Share your embarrassing moments. The best way to take ourselves less seriously is talk about times when we took ourselves too seriously. Attempt to laugh at situations rather than bemoan them. Look for the humor in a bad situation, the irony and absurdity of life. This will help improve your mood and the mood of those around you.
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.
Keep things in perspective. Many things in life are beyond our control—particularly the behavior of other people. While you might think taking the weight of the world on your shoulders is admirable, in the long run it’s unrealistic, unproductive, unhealthy, and even egotistical.
Deal with your stress.
Stress is a major impediment to humor and laughter.Pay attention to children and emulate them. They are the experts on playing, taking life lightly, and laughing.
Checklist for lightening up
When you find yourself taken over by what seems to be a horrible problem, ask these questions:
· Is it really worth getting upset over?
· Is it worth upsetting others?
· Is it that important?
· Is it that bad?
· Is the situation irreparable?
· Is it really your problem?
Using humor and play to overcome challenges and enhance your life.
The ability to laugh, play, and have fun with others not only makes life more enjoyable–it also helps you solve problems, connect with others, and be more creative. 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. When you “become the problem” and take yourself too seriously, it can be hard to think outside the box and find new solutions. 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 hoped it would be. He scored better without working harder. And the brighter outlook he was getting from his companions and the game spread to other parts of his life, including his work.
Jane worked at home in her apartment complex designing greeting cards, a job she used to love but now felt routine. Two little girls who loved to draw and paint lived next door. Eventually, Jane invited the girls in to play with all the art supplies she had. At first, she just watched, but in time she joined in. Laughing, coloring, and playing pretend with the little girls transformed Jane’s life. Not only did playing with them end her loneliness and mild boredom, it sparked her imagination and helped her artwork flourish. Best of all, it rekindled the playfulness and spark in Jane’s relationship with her husband.
As laughter, humor, and play become an integrated part of your life, your creativity will flourish and new discoveries for playing with friends, coworkers, acquaintances, and loved ones will occur to you daily. Humor takes you to a higher place where you can view the world from a more relaxed, positive, creative, joyful, and balanced perspective.
A dose of daily laughter is the key to manifesting an amazing life that you love. Laughing is a key ingredient in learning how to let go. It is one of the most positive releases one can experience without having an actual orgasm! Laughter frees you up in such a unique way that there is no "mind" there analyzing, criticizing, and constantly making effort to remain in control. A good long authentic belly laugh is one of the best medicines you could ever take on a daily basis. If you can truly do this everyday, it's a good chance you're a highly liberated human being who is far along the journey on your spiritual path.
If you can just have one big long deep belly laugh every day about something, anything that is remotely humorous, you will start opening yourself up like a flower to receive a major healing in your life. There are thousands of reported clinical cases where people have been healed of major life threatening diseases just through laughing. The endorphins released in your brain naturally create a "happy cocktail" which over time induces me a massive healing reaction throughout the body. So really life basically comes down to... you laugh or you die. If you cannot laugh about yourself, your life or whatever you're taking too seriously, you're doing the opposite of healing yourself. So give yourself permission to have the biggest belly laugh of your life in the next 24 hours, and don't hold back! You'll start having a much lighter experience of life that will impact your inner perception of "reality" more than you know.
It's common that people believe that some silly event needs to happen in order to really have a good laugh. The truth is that if you can start looking for the humor in life, you can laugh at just about anything. There is a perspective which is less dramatic, serious, and worried than any other. It just sees this human experience as if it was one big long comedy. Just try to take a humorous view about something you're taking very seriously in your life. Is your seriousness really helping? Laughing about it feels much better than being angry, depressed, ashamed, blamed or playing some old victim game inside. No matter what it is, you can always choose to see the divine order and comedy behind it all. You can let your life become a big orgasmic ball of laughter that fills the space with joy everywhere you are.
The more you laugh, the more you are free. You release that all mighty grip on those all too important thoughts, beliefs, expectations and desires. The freedom leads you directly into the enlightened state. When you realize that you're in charge of which thoughts you choose to entertain, you fall directly into the cosmic joke of it all. The joke is that you are whatever you decide to put your attention on, you become that! Reality is like silly putty. It bends and molds to wherever you focus your mind. You can make it be whatever you want it to be. In one second, everything can change and your entire perspective can shift a millimeter to the left, and you suddenly have a brand new expansive understanding about your entire life.
The funniest thing about laughter is that it's not something you can do, it's something that happens to you. An authentic outrageous laughing attack can only fall upon you when you have learned how to totally let go. If you want to enjoy your life to the max, you must be able to let go of it. It's ironic, yet the idea that we are "in control" of our lives forces us to eventually swing over into the sense of feeling "out of control". When you can embrace both sides of the equation and consciously allow the ego to imagine its "in control" or "out of control", then you can transcend them both. This is when the great cosmic joke sets in and you realize there is no need try to control anything. You awaken to the fact that one of the greatest goals in life is to let it become one deep long "let go". This is when enlightenment sneaks in.
It's this overly serious mind who has blinded you from knowing how to fully enjoy life. It has gotten lost in the world of trying to achieve, resist and become something. Laughter is not about achieving anything, it is a releasing and a cleansing of your past. It liberates you from the mind and delivers you to a place of deep peace inside where enlightenment can be found. The serious mind doesn't have time or reason to laugh. It sees no purpose in laughing because it's so caught up in it's own web of illusions. The serious mind has forgotten that the Universe is a giant cosmic karmic playground where you are the actor, director and producer of the play, as well as the watcher, witness and audience who's seeing it all happening on stage. This massive playground exists in all directions and is within everything around you now. Just feel the vastness of its infinite presence. Connecting with the infinite Universe provides the space to relax, let go of everything, and laugh at it all.
There really is just one simple rule for creating massive joy in your life this week. If you want to have an amazing life that you love, don't ever let seriousness into your body....ever! No matter what anyone tells you, if what you're doing is not enjoyable, fun, or at least educational, then don't do it! You can find something better! Seriousness is a disease to your soul and only cripples your life. It's never too late to change directions and have a sense of humor about it all. Just choose to let a little more lightness into your heart right now. How does that feel? If you can bring this lighter heart feeling into your mornings, your entire week will become lighter and more clear. The cloudy skies go away and you can see how beautiful and FUN life is again! Did you remember that life is supposed to be fun? It just feels good to see how ridiculous the serious mind is, and how overly contracted it can become about anything.
Happiness is always a choice. What appears to be serious now will only change with time, so why not let go of this tension earlier? You can afford to follow a lighter path now, and others will appreciate it. They will soon catch on. Even if people are devout grumpsters, your simple light heartedness may be the secret to helping them bust a smile when no one is watching. Having access to this light playful spirit is the key to creating a tremendous healing in your life. It's the great golden secret to turning everyone's life around...including yours! Simply say to yourself everyday, "I can let go and laugh about it all!" Yes! It's time you started to have more fun in this awesome game called Life. It all starts by taking a tiny step back from the mind, and not taking anything (especially your mind) too seriously.
Be Happy – Let Laughter Restore Your Mental Peace.
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