Maintain A Sense of Humor
By Elizabeth Scott, M.S., About.com Guide
Updated August 16, 2010
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board
Developing a sense of humor about life’s challenges is an effective coping technique that can actually lead to better overall health as well as simple stress management. That’s because, aside from the health benefits of laughter (which are numerous and significant), having a sense of humor about life’s difficulties can provide a way to bond with others, look at things in a different way, normalize your experience, and keep things from appearing too overwhelming or scary. Properly developed, a good sense of humor can keep people and relationships strong. Here’s how to develop yours:
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: Ongoing
Here's How:
1. Start With a Smile.
Studies show that having a smile on your face can release endorphins, which make you feel better, and can lead you to actually feeling more happy (rather than just looking more happy). If you are able to put a smile on your face, the laughter will come more easily, and the stress will melt more readily.
2. Take A Step Back.
When you’re in the middle of a difficult situation, it can seem overwhelming. If you try to see your situation as an observer would, it’s often easier to recognize what’s funny. For example, Lucy Ricardo (of the television classic, I Love Lucy) may have found nothing funny in getting locked in a freezer, having a fight with a fellow grape-squasher in a vineyard, or getting drunk while filming a television commercial for Vitamedaveggemin, but watching these scenarios can be hilarious. Sometimes imagining how you would look in a sitcom can be the secret key to finding the humor in a situation.
3. Value The Extremes.
If your situation seems ridiculously frustrating, recognize the potential humor in just how ridiculously frustrating and annoying it is. In your imagination, take the situation to an extreme that becomes even more ridiculous until you find yourself amused. For example, when you’re waiting in a long line at the store, you can imagine that hours pass, then days, visualizing yourself accepting visits from loved ones from your new home in this ultra-long line, holding your children’s birthday parties in aisle seven so you can be there to enjoy them…you get the picture.
4. Have A Funny Buddy.
Find a friend with whom you can laugh, and let the relationship work for you! You can each share your frustrations, and laugh about them in the process. Even when your friend isn’t there, you can lighten your mood in a dark situation by thinking about the retelling that will come later.
5. Make It A Game.
You can have a ‘most annoying boss’ contest with your friends, or try to count how many times the same potentially frustrating event happens in a day. (I was cut off in traffic 7 times today—I’m almost up to 10!) This works well for predictably or repetitive annoying situations that you can’t control; you can begin to value them in their own special way instead of letting them upset you.
6. Watch Funny Shows and Movies.
One of the factors that drive the popularity of shows like The Office or Everybody Loves Raymond, or movies like the classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, is that they take somewhat universal situations that many people find frustrating and push them a little further, pointing out the silliness of it all. Realizing that some universally annoying situations are actually funny, can help you endure them with a smile—even if it’s a wry or ironic smile.
7. Read Funny Books.
Read humorous essays like those of Dave Barry or David Sedaris, both of whom are able to take events, ranging from annoying to upsetting to even tragic, and find the humor—each in his own unique way. Also recommended are the humorous tidbits in Reader’s Digest, as well as classic humor books like Jerry Seinfeld’s SeinLanguage. Reading others’ humorous interpretations of life can help you find your own style of seeing the world in a different light.
8. Visit Funny Websites.
I love About.com’s Political Humor site, as it very effectively takes the normally frustrating and annoying (for me) world of politics and brings it to a very funny place. (The site can also serve as a reminder of how to see the humor in other situations in life.) I also recommend About.com’s general site, and David Letterman’s archives of Top 10 Lists for a good laugh.
9. Join Funny Clubs.
Oprah did a segment on Laughter Yoga that intrigued me, and I researched a club on my own, finding it to be a terrific place to enjoy a good laugh. Whether you’re taking the laughing seriously or laughing at the silliness of it all, taking part in the exercises of laughter yoga with other humor-participants can be a very effective way to get back in the practice of getting some more giggles into your day.
10. Email This Page To A Friend
MY THOUGHTS
there are days we cannot even start with a smile, right? and these are the days we need humor the most. taking a step back helps. but being with happy, funny (but sensible) people is still the best. it's hard not to have humor when you're surrounded by it. and yes, you forget about your woes once you start laughing.
Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
How To Become Relaxed
How To Become Relaxed
Get Relaxed, Stay Relaxed!
By Elizabeth Scott, M.S., About.com Guide
Updated September 14, 2009
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board
,The skills of becoming relaxed when necessary and remaining relaxed whenever possible can be transformative, and can make a measurable difference in health. This is because living in a state of chronic stress--remaining physiologically stressed over long periods of time, without triggering your body's relaxation response--can impact your health in a variety of negative ways. Learning to become relaxed readily and easily can bring a healthier and more enjoyable life.
Fortunately, there are several simple ways to become relaxed quickly and easily. They each bring their own unique benefits, so it's good to know a variety of techniques that you can use to become relaxed in a pinch. Here are some of my top recommendations:
Breathing Exercises
Breathing exercises are a terrific way to become relaxed quickly and easily--they can be done by just about anyone, anywhere and at any time. Slowing your breathing, breathing from your diaphragm, and even using breathing visualization are ways to use breathing exercises to relax your body and your mind. Here's a simple breathing exercise to get you started.
Meditation
Meditation is a very old, proven strategy for becoming and remaining more relaxed. Popular in the east for centuries, it's enjoyed a huge rise in popularity in the West in recent years as researchers have found proven benefits in scientific studies. (Read about the benefits of meditation here.) Meditation isn't difficult, but it does take practice. Fortunately, regular practice can help you to feel relaxed during and after each session and, over time, can actually help you to be less reactive to new stress you face. Here's a basic meditation to try.
PMR
Progressive Muscle Relaxation, or PMR, is one of my oft-used methods of getting relaxed quickly. The technique involves tensing and relaxing muscles systematically from head to toe (or from toe to head), thereby releasing tension and ushering in the relaxation response. With practice, this technique allows for total-body relaxation in a matter of seconds. And it's easy! Here's more information on Progressive Muscle Relaxation to better acquaint you with this lesser-known but very effective method of becoming quickly relaxed.
Visualizations
Because the body reacts physically to imagery created by the mind, visualizations are an effective form of getting relaxed, and are as simple and fun as daydreaming. There are many, many different visualizations you can try to get more relaxed and reverse your body's stress response. You can visualize yourself in a relaxing location, visualize a positive result from a stressing scenario, or, more simply, just visualize tension and stress leaving your body with each breath! Here's a nice breathing visualization to get you started.
Have A Good Laugh
Laughter is a wonderful, natural way to release tension in your body and get your mind in a better place so your stressors don't seem so...stressful. If you have the time, I heartily recommend seeing a nice, funny movie, or reading a funny book to get a little laughter into your day. But if you don't have the time in the schedule for that, simply maintaining a sense of humor throughout your regular day can help quite a bit in the way of keeping you relaxed. Read more about the benefits of laughter, and see these strategies for maintaining a sense of humor, and you'll have a great new tool for stress relief, if you don't use it already.
Change Your Perspective
Much of what stresses you comes not from your stressors themselves, but from your response to them. More specifically, your interpretation of your stressors, as well as your approach to dealing with them, can make the events themselves feel much more (or less) stressful. Happily, you can choose different thoughts, even if you can't choose different life circumstances. And there are a few 'tricks' for gaining a better perspective for remaining relaxed under trying conditions: first, you can adopt the thinking style of optimists by interpreting certain facets of a situation in a way that brings hope and eliminates self-doubt. You can also adopt the view that you may have more power in a situation than you realize (called having an internal locus of control, which is also known to eliminate feelings of stress), and then looking for new solutions. Finally, be sure that you're not already sabotaging yourself with overly negative thinking, and read over these common distorted thinking patterns, or cognitive distortions--do any sound familiar? If so, you can become aware of them and eliminate this type of thinking.
Whatever strategies you use, practice them and use them often, and you can maintain a much more relaxed lifestyle.
MY THOUGHTS
i've heard lots of people claim that you get more relaxed as you get older. i was beginning to think the same thing is happening to me. i seem to have less stress as the inevitable "old phase" gets closer and closer. but then i realized we don't get more relaxed because of our chronological age. some people die stressed!!! i am (now) more apt to believe that we become more relaxed as we learn to manage our stress. i've tried all the suggestions in this article. they all work. they've all been proven to be true. that's for sure. but i'm more inclined to believe that all of these relaxing strategies work for me because i have also learned to mature spiritually. when i became a Christian (hopefully getting better at it), i seemed to have gotten more in touch with my inner self, more understanding and more appreciate of the universe. as a Christian, i know, that although i have God-given talents to take control of my life, there's a higher, more supreme being that is in total and absolute control of my life. how can that fail to relax me?
Get Relaxed, Stay Relaxed!
By Elizabeth Scott, M.S., About.com Guide
Updated September 14, 2009
About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board
,The skills of becoming relaxed when necessary and remaining relaxed whenever possible can be transformative, and can make a measurable difference in health. This is because living in a state of chronic stress--remaining physiologically stressed over long periods of time, without triggering your body's relaxation response--can impact your health in a variety of negative ways. Learning to become relaxed readily and easily can bring a healthier and more enjoyable life.
Fortunately, there are several simple ways to become relaxed quickly and easily. They each bring their own unique benefits, so it's good to know a variety of techniques that you can use to become relaxed in a pinch. Here are some of my top recommendations:
Breathing Exercises
Breathing exercises are a terrific way to become relaxed quickly and easily--they can be done by just about anyone, anywhere and at any time. Slowing your breathing, breathing from your diaphragm, and even using breathing visualization are ways to use breathing exercises to relax your body and your mind. Here's a simple breathing exercise to get you started.
Meditation
Meditation is a very old, proven strategy for becoming and remaining more relaxed. Popular in the east for centuries, it's enjoyed a huge rise in popularity in the West in recent years as researchers have found proven benefits in scientific studies. (Read about the benefits of meditation here.) Meditation isn't difficult, but it does take practice. Fortunately, regular practice can help you to feel relaxed during and after each session and, over time, can actually help you to be less reactive to new stress you face. Here's a basic meditation to try.
PMR
Progressive Muscle Relaxation, or PMR, is one of my oft-used methods of getting relaxed quickly. The technique involves tensing and relaxing muscles systematically from head to toe (or from toe to head), thereby releasing tension and ushering in the relaxation response. With practice, this technique allows for total-body relaxation in a matter of seconds. And it's easy! Here's more information on Progressive Muscle Relaxation to better acquaint you with this lesser-known but very effective method of becoming quickly relaxed.
Visualizations
Because the body reacts physically to imagery created by the mind, visualizations are an effective form of getting relaxed, and are as simple and fun as daydreaming. There are many, many different visualizations you can try to get more relaxed and reverse your body's stress response. You can visualize yourself in a relaxing location, visualize a positive result from a stressing scenario, or, more simply, just visualize tension and stress leaving your body with each breath! Here's a nice breathing visualization to get you started.
Have A Good Laugh
Laughter is a wonderful, natural way to release tension in your body and get your mind in a better place so your stressors don't seem so...stressful. If you have the time, I heartily recommend seeing a nice, funny movie, or reading a funny book to get a little laughter into your day. But if you don't have the time in the schedule for that, simply maintaining a sense of humor throughout your regular day can help quite a bit in the way of keeping you relaxed. Read more about the benefits of laughter, and see these strategies for maintaining a sense of humor, and you'll have a great new tool for stress relief, if you don't use it already.
Change Your Perspective
Much of what stresses you comes not from your stressors themselves, but from your response to them. More specifically, your interpretation of your stressors, as well as your approach to dealing with them, can make the events themselves feel much more (or less) stressful. Happily, you can choose different thoughts, even if you can't choose different life circumstances. And there are a few 'tricks' for gaining a better perspective for remaining relaxed under trying conditions: first, you can adopt the thinking style of optimists by interpreting certain facets of a situation in a way that brings hope and eliminates self-doubt. You can also adopt the view that you may have more power in a situation than you realize (called having an internal locus of control, which is also known to eliminate feelings of stress), and then looking for new solutions. Finally, be sure that you're not already sabotaging yourself with overly negative thinking, and read over these common distorted thinking patterns, or cognitive distortions--do any sound familiar? If so, you can become aware of them and eliminate this type of thinking.
Whatever strategies you use, practice them and use them often, and you can maintain a much more relaxed lifestyle.
MY THOUGHTS
i've heard lots of people claim that you get more relaxed as you get older. i was beginning to think the same thing is happening to me. i seem to have less stress as the inevitable "old phase" gets closer and closer. but then i realized we don't get more relaxed because of our chronological age. some people die stressed!!! i am (now) more apt to believe that we become more relaxed as we learn to manage our stress. i've tried all the suggestions in this article. they all work. they've all been proven to be true. that's for sure. but i'm more inclined to believe that all of these relaxing strategies work for me because i have also learned to mature spiritually. when i became a Christian (hopefully getting better at it), i seemed to have gotten more in touch with my inner self, more understanding and more appreciate of the universe. as a Christian, i know, that although i have God-given talents to take control of my life, there's a higher, more supreme being that is in total and absolute control of my life. how can that fail to relax me?
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