Chapter 3: Life is Also Funny… and Incredibly Funny In the book, Life’s Greatest Lessons: 20 Things That Matter by Hal Urban, the author describes how we as human beings must be able to look at the funny side of life. Urban tells the readers that one major key to life is to make your life funny. By making life funny, we relieve or forget about problems that are occurring in everyday life. From being a tension breaker, to having health benefits that include creating endorphins, laughter as the author put it is the “tonic of life” (p.24). Laughter puts our minds at ease and we use it to simplify our lives and create diversions from the added stress in our lives. It makes us forget about the bad and enjoy the good. With the author’s reasoning, I believe a major key to our life is to make it funny and to include laughter. Not enough people laugh and enjoy their lives anymore. As I see it, people see life as a burden. We like to pick out our worst qualities, our fears, and the most, our dislikes. We don’t consider the things that make us want to wake up every morning. When we look at life as a positive thing, we start to enjoy it, and we start to laugh, and very soon, after the negative thoughts will soon diminish. In my life alone right now, I am starting to look at life at the positives. I attend a great high school, I'm attending a great school in fall, and I have a steady job at the age of seventeen. Even when these things become stressful or we feel there is no light at
1-Aside from improving our moods, laughter can reduce stress, help fight infection, and reduce pain.
Norman Cousins said, “Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions" (Moss 1). Humor is studied by many researchers in sociology, psychology, art, literature, and medicine. When people wonder whether humor aids in areas other than health, a treasure trove of possible benefits to the learning or educational community is opened up. Humor can be used as a tool to promote learning.Research speaks to the many benefits of humor in healing, to its benefits in the classroom or boardroom, from reducing stress of students or employees, to boosting self-esteem and feelings of camaraderie. Additionally, studies show that those who use humor to convey a message are often more favorably perceived. Humor helps deliver the presenter's message to
Laughter relates to positive thinking. The positive thinking helps us to improve our immune system and become healthier. It helps in removing the negative thoughts from our mind and not letting our immune system become worse further.
Laughter relates a lot to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It is a representation of the ability to decide for your self. Billy Bibbit was always being bossed around by the nurse and his mother. Once he knew he could laugh and stop listening to what everyone demanded of him he started to loosen up. . "It's natural to all human beings to laugh. It's society which restricts us and tells us that we must settle down.'' (Murphy) The society that Billy was in, was putting to much pressure on him to settle down when he was just trying to be himself. That was the part that was making him crazy. The pressure the ward and his mother put on him to be restricted led him to his suicide. When Billy started laughing he actually started to seem normal. He actually slept with a prostitute, knowing that if his mother found out she would never see him the same way. ."It affects our psychoneuro-immunology.'' (Murphy) “In other words, medical research has established a link between emotions, the nervous system and endocrine
You can see that laughter can pull people out of a negative moment. Another instance that laughter brightened the situation is when the Hubermann had an extravagant time with Max. The Hubermann had a nice, fun moment with Max when they all were throwing snowballs at each other. That moment brightened up the negativity around them (Doc
Patch may have been on to something since science itself claims laughter is good for the human body. For one, decreasing the pain you feel and helping your blood vessels to function better; allowing them to expand which increases blood flow. All of which is good for the heart and brain. (Hara Estroff Marano,
The holocaust was a scary and rough time for Jews. They were taken from their homes and forced to work in concentration camps until they died. Things were pretty hard on them yet they still found ways to shed a little bit of light on their situation. That leads me to this question; how did spirit triumph during the holocaust? Love, laughter and nature were all ways the human spirit triumphed during this sad time in history.
Laughing in itself is therapeutic. People laugh for many different reasons. Some people even laugh when something horrible occurs, it is a method of escape from what horrors or mishaps are going on around you. "Many psychotherapists find humor a valuable tool in helping their patients to solve their social and emotional problems." (G. Samuel) Chief bromden was
People always say that laughter alleviates tension. If this is the case, then it makes sense that the use of humor when discussing uncomfortable topics can make the conversation easier and more light-hearted. One of Mark Twain’s most frequently used devices in works such as “Advice to Youth”, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness”, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is satire, which can provide society a method to bond over uncomfortable topics, and facilitate the ability to sustain that bond through an easier way to create discussion.
When I first think about why I have a passion for comedy, I think of it as being powerful and special. It is one of those things that can unite people. Laughter doesn’t discriminate, it doesn’t matter your ethnicity, religion, political opinion, etc., this is what I believe makes it so captivating. With humor you can as least for a little while forget about everything going on around you, regardless of the simplicity or complexity of the situation. It is a way for us to keep our sanity and gives us the opportunity to come together and put serious issues aside or be able to look at those issues in a less hostile manner. Laughter is one of those things everyone can appreciate, and should have a healthy amount of
Having a sense of humour often reduces stressful situations and may help a
From sorrow. From stress. No matter the magnitude of any situation, laughter will always heal an individual to an extent. The concept that causes laughter is humor: something that an individual that finds amusing or comic. What is unique about humor is that no one individual has the exact sense of humor as another individual.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of laughter/humor therapy on the outcomes of the adult patient population including biological, psychological, and the nurse-patient relationship, by analyzing current research. Implementation of complimentary
At the time, this event seemed rather insignificant and did not merit remembrance. However, its catastrophic effects on my attitude that evening may have helped to mold me into the person I have become. I learned that suffering through such an event, as childish as it was, is quite necessary in any life. Such pains are part of an interminable cycle and only generate balance in one's life (p. 62, 'Life as Suffering'). Despite my horrid time spent that evening, the laughter brought since the incident is a worthy tradeoff. Laughter is an all too necessary function of life, just as suffering and the wide range of other emotions. "Some thinkers would emphasize the importance of sophistication in humor, but others would say that laughter itself is what is important." Whatever the case may be, laughter is an important ingredient in life, and must not be taken for granted nor ignored.
As humans, laughing and joking is something that comes natural. This is something that we have been doing even before we knew how to walk or talk. As we start to grow up, we all develop personality traits and our humor styles follow. Before taking this course, I have never consider identifying what my humor styles are until now. I took the Humor Style Questionnaire (Martin et al. 2003) and calculated that my top humor style is self-enhancing and closely following is affiliative. Throughout this paper I am going to reflect on my top humor styles with personal examples, and how it relates to my mental health, with several methods I can use to make myself healthier and happier. I will also be considering the other two styles and how then do not relate to my humor style and mental health.