The more you laugh daily, the better. Humor, while deeply enjoyable, is also utterly fantastic for your physical, mental, and even emotional well-being.
And the cool thing about laughter is that your body doesn’t see much of a difference between whether you’re laughing spontaneously or faking it. Simulated laughter can be therapeutic, too.
So, one of the best new habits that you can pick up is seeking out opportunities and content that you know will likely make you laugh… or to intentionally make yourself laugh.
UCLA Health has some great advice for how you can introduce a bit more humor into your life. For one, you should reframe your perspective on humor. Make it a habit to look for humor in everyday situations.
This includes embracing embarrassing mistakes and giving yourself permission to laugh. “If you spill your tea, find the funny in it. If you see something funny, don’t hold back your laughter.”
Something else that you can do is intentionally schedule breaks for laughter. Essentially, this means that several times each day you slow down and carve out a few moments to look for something funny.
You could look for hilarious posts about internet humor (hi!), watch funny videos, put on a few minutes of stand-up shows by those comedians you love, or reach out to the funniest people you know.
Watching or reading hilarious content online is fairly easy if you have an internet connection. But if you want to take things a step further, you could think about combining laughter with exercise and being social.
Laughter yoga, for instance, uses breathing and movement exercises to encourage laughter. And, since you’d be signing up for a class, you get to meet lots of new people.
It’s a huge win, considering how important positive relationships are for your overall health, happiness, and longevity.
According to UCLA Health, adults laugh approximately 15 times per day. While this might sound like a lot, it’s anything but. For comparison, children laugh around 400 times daily!
Laughter improves your immune system, making you more resistant to germs and infections. On top of that, it also lowers your (chronic) stress levels. This, in turn, reduces inflammation. The knock-on effect is that you are less at risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses.
Even a single session of laughter has huge benefits for your body, reducing the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, by around 37%. One laughter session also relaxes your muscles, lasting for up to 45 minutes.
It’s not quite important how long you laugh or what your reason for laughing actually is, so long as you laugh.
