Positivity: Laughter
Laughter is the best medicine.
It may be and old adage, it may be cliché, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Laughter is a fantastically powerful vehicle to positivity.
It is nearly impossible to feel bad when you are laughing. Not entirely impossible, no, but nearly impossible. Laughter is a release akin to tears, but much more frequently a positive one. Something evoked a powerful response, and it made you laugh.
Might be a joke. Maybe someone had a good pratfall. Maybe your friend told a story that was hilarious. Something you remembered or someone near you recalled something that set you to giggling.
Laughter is an outburst of emotion, and usually a reaction to something that made you feel so good it “tickled your funnybone”. Laughter releases tension in a positive way, though admittedly excess laughter can cramp your belly and chest muscles. That in no way lessens its worth.
I love when something makes me laugh. I thoroughly enjoy that sensation when the smile on my face extends itself and I start to chuckle, or end up with a full-throated guffaw. The positive energy of laughter is intoxicating, and I want to experience more.
The release of tension brought about by laughter is a wonderful feeling. That sigh when the laughter subsides and you have something of a euphoric calm settling upon you. This is something I think we do not get enough of.
The world has gotten into a very dark, very brooding place on many levels. A lot of the joy has been sucked out of life because we seem to think that as adults we have a duty to struggle, to fight against certain things, and to be serious almost all the time. But why do we hold to this? Why do we accept this as our reality?
We need to find more ways to enjoy life. We need to work to see life not as a struggle and full of complications, but as an opportunity and full of possibilities. Laughter helps to show us this side, because it is generally a pleasant and positive experience when we reach that place.
It helps to seek out more things that draw laughter from us. We need to remember that life is not this serious, all-too-deep, frequently joyless experience and that it is full of funny things. Positive things. And laughter expresses this, and can be more infectious than expressions of sorrow and sadness.
How many surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb? Fish!
Finding positivity is not hard, it just requires action. Knowing that laughter is a mood enhancer, and generally a conduit for positivity, we should work to find more things that make us laugh. When we take life less seriously and we allow ourselves to feel joy and to release tension through laughter, we ultimately empower ourselves. When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings. We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for. Gratitude leads to happiness. Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude. Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.
This is the one hundred eighteenth entry of my Positivity series. It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.
In relation to Positivity, check out my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.
