Patch Adams, “The most radical act anyone can commit is to be happy,”

Not that happiness 24/7 is supposed to be our goal (or even healthy for that matter) as happiness is a state that waxes and wanes just like sadness.  Making happiness our round-the-clock objective can be another way we make ourselves fall short or feel less than when we inevitably don’t achieve it.  But finding things to laugh at, well that’s a different story.  It’s so much easier to do this today than decades ago with the hilarious creativity on social media being both so accessible and unparalleled.

Did you know we can actually laugh our way to better health?   Norman Cousins, the author of the book Anatomy of Illness, cured himself of severe crippling arthritic disease with laughter as his main ingredient.  He discovered that laughter had an anesthetic effect that alleviated his pain for 2 hours which went on to facilitate his eventual recovery.  

The Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH) has made it its mission to help people understand how humor can be an effective therapeutic tool.  They stimulate playful discovery, expression, or appreciation of the absurdity or incongruity of life’s situations.

They found that people who wrote down 3 funny things daily that happened for only one week showed an increase in their overall happiness and a decrease in their depressive symptoms for up to 6 months!

According to the AMA Journal of Ethics. “Laughter is an excellent addition to treating almost any condition—with the exception, perhaps, of urinary incontinence”.  That’s funny for the AMA, right?

Here are the staggering benefits of laughter to our physical health:

• Decreases stress, depression, and anxiety by soothing tension, relaxing our muscles, stimulating circulation, improving immunity, decreasing heart rate and blood pressure
• Produces our body’s natural painkillers
• Improves our mood and self-esteem by increasing our levels of dopamine and serotonin (the happy brain chemicals) and decreasing our cortisol and epinephrine (the stress hormones).
• Lowers mortality and heart disease 
• Improves the quality of life in those with cancer and HIV

And the staggering benefits of laughter at our workplace are:

• Stress is decreased by 39% just by simply anticipating humor
• We’re 2X more productive after taking a humor break
• We have a 23% increase in memory recall after watching a funny video
• When our leaders demonstrate humor well, our behavior is positively influenced.

The statistics on the benefits of laughter are staggering!  It’s so nice to see the word ‘staggering’ alongside the word ‘benefits’ for a change.

We had no idea about all of this when we created FORGIVITY.  We use humor throughout the FORGIVITY program because we think medicine is best served sweet, plus it’s just fun to laugh.  We also believe in the proven science of the Hebbian Learning Rule which basically states that neurons that fire together, wire together. 

Building our laughter muscle is an excellent alternative to skipping the gym.  Creating new healthy neural pathways that are well-defined helps healthy behaviors become second nature.  Smile and the world smiles with you.  Let’s not forget, the wise words of Elf  “I love smiling, smiling’s my favorite”.

So maybe Patch Adams is right after all when he spoke of happiness being the most radical act that we can commit?  Laughter does lead to a happier life.  And what better way to show the many systems in place that want to keep us shackled to fear, self-loathing, and division than to reach for our happiness?  So good ahead and laugh, you rebel you.

To learn more about what we do feel free to visit www.forgivity.com and get a link to download the FORGIVITY app for free!  Just in time for the holidays with the family.