Lifestyle-Guru.com

What do you do when your life starts to seem boring and difficult? Everyone has those days, you know what I’m talking about, days that you wake up and something doesn’t feel right. You dread the thought of getting out of bed, let alone facing the world. On these kind of days you need to kick-start positive thoughts. And one of the best medicines is laughter.

The Benefits of a Good Laugh:

There are a number of well-documented benefits of having a good laugh. Medical researchers have shown that laughter releases natural pain-killing endorphins into your bloodstream and that it may boost your immune system and prevent disease. It will relax your muscles and can induce mild forms of euphoria. Laughter can even be thought of as a form of exercise that massages all parts of your body.

Emotionally speaking, laughter can be so potent that it will dissolve hosts of negative emotions. Anger, depression, malaise, sadness, grief, stress, and anxiety can all be wiped out with a steady dose of hearty laughter.

Laughter will also build up your own self-confidence put your life into perspective. When you are able to laugh off those dumb mistakes in life, you will find that you won’t be so worried about what other people think of you. Those big problems in your life suddenly don’t seem so big after you’ve had a good laugh. Having a good laugh ensures that those little troubles that pop up in life don’t sour your mood.

Laughter will help you rise to any challenge, accept unexpected changes and get out of difficult situations with a smile. You’ll never be embarrassed by the unfortunate situations that life throws at you if you can laugh at them and turn them into funny stories that you can tell your friends. So don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself when you spill mustard on your shirt or forget to zip up your pants (or gobble down a mouthful of wasabi not knowing what it is the first time that you eat sushi).

If you wear your sense of humor on your sleeve, you’ll also find that you’ll build up the strength of your relationships and your sense of community. Nobody likes a grumpy Gus. Everyone loves someone who can make them laugh and feel at ease. By sharing your laughter with others you will attract positive energy from those around you, making your life that much happier. Remember that attitudes are contagious… is yours worth catching?

(Re) Learning to Laugh

Okay Guru, you’ve convinced me, laughter is good. So how do I build up my sense of humor? Here are some tips that might help:

1. Keep a journal of funny situations: Get a small journal or a tape recorder and carry it around with you. Whenever you see or hear something funny or think of something that makes you chuckle, write it down. Camera phones are great for documenting the funny scenes that you encounter in life. Whenever you get down, take out your journal and read a few passages to cheer yourself up.

2. Get a pet: If you’ve never had a pet you don’t know what you’re missing. They give you lots of unconditional love and ask for very little in return. Even when they get in trouble, their innocence will inevitably get you to laugh. I have one very curious and active cat and wouldn’t trade my memories of her exploits for anything. If you already have a pet, resolve to spend some quality time with them. Get out and play some frisbee with your dog. Give your cat some yarn and catnip and watch the magic happen.

3. Start being a kid again: Researchers have found that the average kindergartner laughs about 300 times a day. The average adult laughs about 15 times. So don’t be a Groan-up! Don’t be someone who sees the negatives in everything. Instead take some time out from your life to be silly and juvenile. Play a video game, get some friends together for a board game or a pick-up basketball game. If you have young kids, get active and play with them.

4. Watch a funny movie: Or go out and see some stand-up comedy. Or surf You-Tube for a hour watching funny things. When you do it, try to figure out what kind of humor you like best. Are you a fan of slapstick or one-liners? Do you like witty British comedy or are you a die-hard romantic comedy buff? Seek out the forms of entertainment that make you laugh and share them with your friends and family. Forget about work and being productive. If you take time-outs to laugh you will be more focused and efficient when you do work, and a whole lot happier.

5. Learn to tell a joke: Preferably not one that comes at the expense of another person. And then practice it in front of a mirror. Figure out the timing, the dramatic pauses and when to make the subtle inflexions in your voice. If the joke is long, make sure to memorize each important detail so that it comes out without hitches. Now you don’t have to be a constant joker, but being able to lighten the mood of those around you is a priceless quality.

Do you love your work? Or do you work because you want/need the paycheck and the recognition from society that you get from being part of the daily grind? Are you happy getting out of bed on Mondays or do you begin to plunge into a state of melancholy after Sunday dinner? If you hate your job should you just quit? Tell your co-workers “I’ll be right back” and have them wondering where you went for the next week?

Quitting isn’t for losers

You’ve probably heard the oft-quoted mantra that “quitting is for losers”. Stick-to-itiveness is a quality that is generally admired and praised. There is a sense that no matter what life throws at you that you should always keep going forward. I mean “when the going gets tough, then the tough get going” - and they’re not running away from their problems.

While there is some truth to this, smart and successful people also know when to quit. Winners quick fast, quit often and quit without the guilt associated with giving something up. When times get tough, successful people assess the situation and don’t keep going forward if all that they will reach is a dead-end. Just because you may have put lots of effort into a job or career in the past doesn’t mean that you have to keep pursuing it. If you’ve made mistakes in the past that’s not really a big problem. The big error is to realize that you’ve made mistakes and to keep making the same ones over and over again.

There’s a nice book by Seth Godin on this topic called The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick). I highly recommend it.

But quitting won’t make you happy

There is a catch though. Quitting a job won’t make you happy by itself. In the short run it will probably make you feel more anxious and worried given your newfound lack of a steady income stream. It may also make you feel lonely if your entire social community has been built upon your coworkers.

Clearly, quitting is not always the right answer. If everyone just quit what they were doing at the first sign of discomfort, nothing would get accomplished. We’d all just be lazy. On the other hand, you can’t just run blindly in pursuit of something just because that’s what you’ve been doing in the past. Just because you’ve spent 10 years of your life in preparation of one particular job or career, doesn’t mean that you’ve got to spend 10 more years stuck in the same position. It likely having an old car with mechanical problems. You may feel an attachment to the car, but there comes a point where its better to sell it off than to keep pumping money into it to fix it.

So how do you know when to quit? If you’re designing your life by conscious thought you can do a simple economic cost/benefit analysis of a decision like quit. The key is knowing the variables that you need to measure. There can be lots of these, but for simplicity’s sake, I like using the following three: time, money and health.

1. Time - Your life is not a renewable resource. You only have one shot at living it to its fullest extent. Asking yourself what you should do with your life isn’t just a matter of finding a career that you can tolerate. It’s about choosing how you are going to spend the precious hours of your life that you have been blessed with. Its about deciding how you are going to use the opportunity of life. Are you going to spend your time “working for the man”, or are you going to use it to be true to your individual nature, values and beliefs?

So ask yourself, how much of my life am I spending because of my job? Don’t forget to count commuting or travelling time, time spent working at home, time spent to get yourself mental prepared for work each day, and the time spent each day to unwind your mind from your job.

Then ask yourself what percentage of your life you are devoting to your work? Is it 20%, 40% or 60% or more. For instance, let’s say that you work a pretty standard 9 hours a day and that your commute is short, 30 minutes each way. Let’s say that you spend half an hour each day getting ready for work in the morning and another half an hour “de-stressing” after work. Let’s say that you’re lucky and you only have to put in three hours on the weekend reviewing your files and that you can do this from home so that you don’t have to commute. That’s 58 hours per week. Assuming that you get two weeks of vacation a year (and that you never waste time worrying about your job while on vacation), that’s 2900 hours a year! Or about one-third of your life. Now imagine putting in 80 hour weeks in the office and constantly worrying about your job when you’re not there. Is your life worth it?

2. Money - This brings to the great denominator of life, money. Surely putting in all the long hours is worth it if you bring in the big bucks? From a purely economic point of view it might be. Time and labour is the quid pro quo that you have to give up to earn money, and I’m certainly not naive enough to say that money doesn’t matter. Money matters - you need money to live properly. The amount of money that you think that you need to live happily might be vastly overstated, but that fact remains that being destitute isn’t most people’s lifestyle choice.

That being said, when comparing the amount of time that you spend on the job with the monetary rewards that you get, you must remember to measure all the money that you spend solely because of your job. Do you need invest in a new wardrobe? A second car? Daycare for your children? Would you want or need these things if you didn’t have to go to work each day? If the answer is no, then you’ve got to subtract these from your after-tax salary.

And that brings up another point. If you choose to be employed it is pretty hard to avoid the wrath of Uncle Sam since your taxes are deducted directly from your paycheck. And the scope of permitted deductions as an employee is far narrower than it is if you were self-employed. So ask yourself if working those long hours is really worth it if 40% of your “compensation” goes directly to Uncle Sam?

3. Well-Being - By well-being I’m not referring to your physical health alone. I’m really referring to health or “being” in an all-encompassing holistic way. While time and money can be quantified in a relatively easy way, well-being is a variable that is qualitiative in nature. The amount of time and money can thus give you some perspective, but ultimately it is your “being that is determinative. One’s life is ultimately measured by who they are and not by what they have. So when deciding what to do with your life you’ve got to evaluate how it affects who you are and how it affects your physical, mental, spiritual, emotional and social well-being.

This is an intensly personal inquiry that takes a fair bit of courage to undertake. You have to ask yourself how your job is affecting your happiness, your relationships, your self-confidence, your sanity and your physical health. Does working long hours prevent you from forming lasting relationships? Has it stopped you from exercising or forced you onto a steady diet of greasy fast food? Has the stress of the workplace gotten you so frazzled that you’re ready to attack anyone that offers you a suggestion?

The effects of your job on your well-being are endless and don’t think that they are all negative. Seeing how your work positively impacts others can bring a deep sense of fulfillment to your life. The relationships that you build with co-workers or clients can be meaningful. The stresses of your job can be positive if you embrace the challenges that it offers. The praise that you earn from a job well done can build your self-confidence. Even working long hours can be fulfilling if you’re able to do so in a sense of flow, a state of mind where you are fully immersed in what you are doing.

There are no right answers here, only questions that you have to continually keep posing yourself. If you choose to pursue a job or career, it is imperative that you periodically re-evaluate it to ensure that you’re still travelling on the path that you want to be on. If you do this honestly you may find that its time that you seriously consider quitting your job or changing the parts of it that are damaging your well-being. Or you may find that despite working for long hours and earning little money, that your job is so emotionally fulfilling that you wouldn’t trade it for the world.

The key is to remember that you are allowed to be true to yourself. The economy is huge, and you don’t have to grind it out forever in a job that you hate. You can earn a sufficient living doing almost anything if you put your mind into it. The choice is yours. Remember, it is not what you do that defines who you are, but who you are that defines what you must do.