There is no doubt that people are more stressed than ever before. While a lot of people think of it as an inconvenience or a minor irritation, the truth is that stress has a negative impact on your overall health. The good news is that you can use humor to relieve stress. It has long been said that laughter is the best medicine, and now there appears to be scientific proof to support that idea.
People used to think that stress was purely mental, and that it only had a negative impact on the mind. Any symptoms one had from stress were "all in the head". However, new research has shown that stress may actually change the body's cells, and it's this change that leads to physical side effects. In other words, stress and its harmful effects are very real.
Using humor to relieve stress is one of the most enjoyable ways of improving your health. You can start exercising your "laughter muscle" right away. Imagine there is a string attached to each corner of your mouth. Now imagine the strings being gently lifted upward until a smile has formed. Go ahead…give it a try.
Did you do it? No? Well, what are you waiting for? Smile! Don't worry about what anything else thinks, just smile. It doesn't matter if it's big or small, as long as it's a smile. Excellent! You're off to a good start.
You can purposely try to seek out the things that make you laugh, such as television shows (yes, it's okay to watch TV), comedy routines, funny books, comics, and so on. It doesn't matter if anybody else thinks it's funny; humor is subjective. Heck, being the only one who gets a joke can be a funny thing, too. Anything that makes you laugh is fair game.
Starting your own humor file is a great way to use humor to relieve stress. Any time you find something that makes you laugh, put it in your humor file. If it's a line from a movie, then write it down and add it to your file. Again, this is all about the things that you find humorous, so don't worry about what others think (besides, who needs that kind of stress anyway).
All of the things we have mentioned so far are external sources of humor, and they do help, but you should also develop an internal sense of stress-relieving humor. Okay, that's just a fancy way of saying "try to see the humor in everyday things." Life is funny. If you can find humor in the "bad things" and are able to laugh at yourself in a healthy way, then you will start to feel the tensions of daily life start to melt away. Using humor to relieve stress won't only put you in a better mood, but it will also help to improve your overall health, and that is something worth smiling about.
