17 Jan This Is The Most Fun Way To Make Your Life Awesome
Most of us know what we “should” do to enjoy more health and happiness, more accomplishment and success.
But many of us don’t actually do it! Or at least, not as consistently as we could do.
There are many ways we can get better at building the habits we need for happiness and wellbeing one of which is by making things fun!
If something’s more fun we’re more likely to do it and if we’re more likely to do it we’re more likely to enjoy the benefits …
via Eric Barker
We just don’t take humor that seriously.
Yeah, it makes us happier, but its effects are much, much more profound than you might guess.
People who use humor to cope with stress have better immune systems, reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, experience less pain during dental work and live longer. Surgery patients who watched comedies needed 60% less pain medication. Heck, even anticipating humor has been shown to reduce stress.
Humor improves your relationships. Surveys say it’s the second most desirable trait in a partner. When both people in a couple have a good sense of humor they have 67% less conflict. (Want a tip? Reliving moments that made the two of you laugh is a proven way to increase relationship satisfaction.)
Let’s up the stakes, shall we? What about the office? A lot of people think humor isn’t appropriate at work and those people are, as we say, “wrong.” A survey of hundreds of senior executives showed 98% prefer employees who are funny – and 84% thought those people actually did better work.
In fact, if you’re not going for laughs at the office, you may be hurting your career. Humor increases perceptions of power and status. It boosts creativity. It signals intelligence. Making people laugh increases persuasion and made buyers willing to pay higher prices. In fact, studies show work teams often fail simply because they don’t joke around enough. And leaders with a sense of humor were rated as 23% more respected and 25% more pleasant to work with.
Can I stop there? I’ll stop there.
We need to get to the bottom of how to do this humor thing right. We’re gonna pull from a slew of excellent books and studies including Humor, Seriously, How to Write Funny, Inside Jokes, and Ha: The Science of Why We Laugh.
Alright, let’s get to it…
What Is Humor?
What alchemy, what ethereal fire, gives mere words the ability to make grown adults involuntarily spit coffee?
Humor is our brain’s way of rewarding us for correcting errors in our thinking. Why does it make us so happy? It takes brainpower to decode the joke and having to think kills bad feelings. When you’re in a bad mood humor cheers you up by literally forcing a change in your perspective.
That twist, the irony, those odd juxtapositions, they hit you so hard your brain does a factory reset. It tickles your limbic system and leads to satirical healing.
Watching more comedy is easy but being funnier yourself, that can seem impossible. If I said, “Be funny right now!” your brain would immediately feel like it’d been filled with liquid cement. “How to be funnier” feels like a mystery on par with dark matter. But it’s not. It’s a skill like any other. Sure, some people have more natural talent, but we can all improve…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE