Maintaining a positive outlook toward life not only makes life more enjoyable, but has been proven to extend our life. A man by the name of Norman Cousins was told he had a terminal illness and had only a few months to live. He decided to try a new method to treat his physical body called “LAUGHTER THERAPY”, he no longer read the newspaper, watched television, or listened to radio, at least, the way most of us do these things. He surrounded himself with only humorous thoughts and ideas. He watched reruns of “I Love Lucy”, “Candid Camera”, and “The 3 Stooges”, he read comic strips and humorous articles, and he listened to old radio shows like “The George Burns & Gracie Allen Show and Fibber McGee & Mollie”.
He found laughter to be a personal pain-killer. 10 minutes of laughter gave him 2 hours of pain relief. In other words, he exposed himself to things that made him laugh a lot, sounds great doesn’t it? The result of this experiment was that his life was extended by several years instead of a few months and physicians began to realize something about our bodies. You see, when we laugh, physical changes take place in our bodies. I’m read that laughter massages vital organs, stimulates circulation, facilitates digestion, relaxes the system, stabilizes blood pressure and leads to a feeling of well being. Laughter causes our “T” cells to increase the production of endorphins & helps to strengthen our immune system and allows our bodies to better heal itself.
We can all benefit from this experiment because; we are all interested in feeling better. Each day, we all choose whether we will have a happy, enjoyable day or we can choose to have a miserable day by spending our time reinforcing the negative thoughts that so often occupy our minds or better yet, allow someone or something to affect our entire day. Things as simple as the weather or the way someone treats us when we are going to eat breakfast can make us have a good day or a bad day if we allow it to control us. Remember, we can control things or they will control us. The unfortunate thing is most of us spend unreasonable amounts of time worrying about things that will never happen, but just in case, we want to prepare ourselves by expecting the worst. You know what I’m talking about, haven’t we all met people that say, “Good God, it’s morning” instead of “Good morning, God” and all day, they dwell on why things won’t work instead of thinking of ways that will make their jobs and life easier and more productive. Our thoughts are such powerful tools, we can change the way we feel by looking and being thankful for the many blessings we have in this great adventure called “life”. Many times, we expect others to make us happy or better yet, we have been brainwashed into thinking we are responsible for making everyone around us happy. We must face the fact that all of us are responsible for making our own happiness. That does not mean we do not contribute to others happiness by loving and believing in them. They say it takes 30 days to build a habit so I challenge each of you to choose for the next thirty days to add laughter to your daily routine and to look at things only expecting the best to happen. Let me know how you do.