Laughter...the Best Medicine!!

Today I woke up thinking about the next Relationship Recipe Ingredient to be shared.  It's LAUGHTER.  I decided to look in the PhotoSchmoozer archives and find something that would make me laugh!!  This you say?  Yes, I have a collection of Isiah's Magic Garden on South Street in Philadelphia and this made me laugh.  I could have shared dozens of others, but hey, this is it for today!!  Thanks you say for bringing a smile to your face.  No problem.  When we began the Key Ingredients training, we didn't even have laughter on the list but were quickly brought to task by a lively group who laughed about everything we did and asked why we had not included it!  Being concensus builders who can listen and make changes, we looked at one another and said, "WHY NOT?"  So laughtere it is.  Last month we did a training in Atlantic City and when we asked people to rank the ingredients, every single person independently chose Laughter as their first ingredient in their Relationship Recipe.

Now you ask, what is this banjo picking guy doing in this story about Laughter??  Ya know Kevin Bacon talks about 6 degrees of separation.  This guy has maybe less than that to make our connections.  In our town, Pitman, NJ,  is the Bus Stop Music Cafe.  One Saturday a month, there is a bluegrass jam and "Banjo Paul" is a picker in the group.  Nice guy - interesting- good conversation.  NOT all of the story and no direct connection to Laughter/humor...yet.  A few months later, Bill goes to one of his obligatory company 'fun' breakfasts - and who is the keynote speaker??  You guessed it - Banjo Paul.  For today though he is without the banjo and is introduced as Dr. Paul McGhee - expert on Laughter and Humor.  Oh my the coincidences are all around us in life.  Paul is know internationally for his research and writing on humor.  In fact, I told Allison about this synchronicity and she said that he had been the keynote speaker at the DAEYC conference a few years back!! 

Paul, in his book HUMOR: The Lighter Path to Resilience and Health, (c) 2010 Author House, writes about the connections between humor and resilience, humor and physical health and humor and the brain! 

He quotes Bertrand Russell:   "Laughter is the most inexpensive and most effective wonder drug.  Laughter is a universal medicine."

He tells us that Groucho Marx said; "A clown is like an aspirin, only he works twice as fast."

Remember Norman Cousins years ago - he wrote the book Laughter the Best Medicine.  When diagnozed with cancer, he checked himself out of the hospital and into a hotel and watched comedy movies that provided great belly laughs for days and days ...and he steadily improved!!  Shame on me for laughing at Bill when he likes this kind of stuff?!?!

I am sharing this because "THE HOLIDAYS" are upon us and I ask you to STOP and BE STILL and consider the stress that you are laying upon yourselves...spending $ you don't have to buy presents for people you don't even like??  Eating and drinking yourself into a stupor so you can beat yourself up for what you should have not done? 

Why not try stopping and looking around to see what you have to be grateful for??  I am cleaning and purging and sorting.  I have too much - many of us do - and still at times want something more because it is bright or pretty or we don't have it and it might be the perfect thing to make us happy.  The time feels right to gift friends and family with my treasures.  Sharing is caring.

If you think about it, we all wake up every day, put our feet on the ground and have the capacity to breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeathe!!  Wonder of Wonders.  CELEBRATE LIFE!!