If the title made you think post is more exciting than most…you’re right. Because a song and dance is always exciting.
In one of my my girls’ dance classes, they are rehearsing some of the numbers form Annie, the musical. The other day, one of them was playing some of the music, and I heard for the first time one of the songs they are NOT dancing to: You’re never fully dressed without a smile!
Who cares what they’re wearing
On Main Street,
Or Saville Row,
It’s what you wear from ear to ear
And not from head to toe
(That matters)
So, Senator,
So, Janitor,
So long for a while
Remember,
You’re never fully dressed
Without a smile!
Annie is a pretty popular musical, so I know many of our readers will be familiar with this one, but it is a wonderfully upbeat song to enjoy one more time. And if you are like me and have never seen Annie, I hope you will enjoy this for the first time.
Make a face in the mirror. Make another. OK, now make another face.
Make sure they are funny faces.
We adults are so silly. We sometimes get so caught up in our serious worlds that we forget to act silly. And that is silly, because acting silly is a great stress reliever. It is a great reminder of our own humanity. It helps us to go easier on ourselves for our slip-ups. It connects us with our selves.
It’s not that we are happier when we act silly, as much that we are usually happier if we act silly every now and them. Acting silly is like a release valve, and all the tensions and all the guilt and all the negative energy is allowed to dissipate into the atmosphere.
If you don’t want anyone to get your goat, don’t let them know where you have it tied.
One of the very early lessons we determined to teach our daughters was how to be teased. Yes, I know that might not rank high on the typical;list of priorities, but we knew that is they see their parents teasing each other in a positive way and laughing at ourselves, and if we tease them and let them tease us, they would enter school tease-proof. Let’s face it, the worse a child reacts to teasing, the more she will be picked on.
I wrote about this in The Daily Dose of Happiness eight years ago, and based on how freely they will tease us, we haven’t totally failed. They keep chasing our goats.
Teasing does not go away as an adult; it just gets subtler. It is never to late to hide your goat. (For those who have read Climb your Stairway to Heaven, you may be thinking of hiding your goat with a sheep down a well, but that’s another story.)
The next time you are teased, try laughing with the teaser. It can be a very liberating experience.
No matter what I’m spending my time doing, I have learned through many, many choices that I also have a choice about how I’m feeling while I do whatever I’m doing. Years ago an inspiring teacher changed my life with a sentence. Maybe it will do the same for you. He said:
“I need no excuse to experience and express pure joy.” – Paul Solomon
It is helpful to practice. To actually practice feeling good – for no reason. It’s not difficult. All you have to do is smile. That’s it. Go ahead. Put a smile on your face, and hold it for 60 seconds – SIXTY WHOLE SECONDS – and try feeling bad. Can’t do it. It’s very hard to smile and feel bad at the same time. Try it!
Think about times when you were happy, when you did feel joy. And notice that just thinking about such times, causes you to begin to feel the way you did then. (Feel a little smile curling up the corners of your mouth?) The more detailed the imagery of your memory, the more imaginary senses you involve, the more intense the emotion (positive or negative by the way).
So, practice feeling good for no reason, and when you find yourself not having a reason, remember – you don’t need one!
At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Dr. Rob Pennington, psychologist and professional speaker is author of Find The Upside Of The Down Times: How To Turn Your Worst Experiences Into Your Best Opportunities. You can get more information about having Dr. Pennington speak to your organization by going to his bio at: www.DrRobPennington.com or catch more of his entertaining insights on this topic and others from his blog at www.upsidedowntimes.com.
How does happiness affect the life of an individual? Happiness is the greatest feeling that everyone wants to feel each day. Are you confused on the techniques on how to share happiness with everyone? Well then, this article might help you.
SMILE! A simple act, but sometimes hard to give. When people are feeling joy and happiness, SMILE is present. Laughter follows within. Imagine the world when people are happy everyday. Chaos, sadness, sorrows, anger and other negative feelings surely have no place. One technique which is surely effective is having a sense of humor. A very simple, inexpensive and easy way. Crack some jokes, share fun stories and have fun. Anywhere is a good venue for it.
Problems are always part of every life and there is no way to avoid them. No matter what lifestyle or life status is, problems are always there. Every man or woman, single or married, child or adult, rich or poor, nobody is exempted from it. The best means to overcome problems is through great happiness without a cost.
No matter how tired and heavy feeling each person has, a simple joke and fun can take it away. Sharing jokes in a group of friends could possibly reduce the feeling of sadness, worry and sorrows too. Tell them happy stories or even share a comedy story. Let them share their own happy stories too. Create a topic and let everyone have a panel of comedy discussion. Facial expressions are also very useful. Be a joker or clown of the day. Have a passion to it. Sneak even a little time from them and surely they will never regret spending their little time cracking jokes and sharing happy stories in life. In fact they would forget the time and would never want to stop it. Seeing their faces with a big smile and laughter is the best gift each can give and share. And surely they will never want to miss a day without it. They would even remember it when they go home and sleep. It will continuously flash back in front of their happy faces, ending their day with a smile.
Family, friends and everyone is invited. These people are very important for it is them should be shared and not just for oneself. These people might have different trials encountered in life and the smile is surely what they have been waiting for. Show to them that no matter how hard the life is, be confident and tell them your secret to it. Smile! Live life to the fullest and never let the day pass without a simple smile. And surely everything follows.
About Author: This article is written by Sarah Hoekstra, who also writes for top-cleaners.com, a site featuring various reviews and tips on free computer clean up.
I would like to introduce you to Fang Li Yun, a 52-year-old Malaysian pharmacist of 24 years. She is part of what they call the “Funny Action” project, which helps people learn to laugh and to smile even when there is no good news to smile about.
Like so many other people, Fang Li Yun thought happiness would follow her income, and as a pharmacist she was making good money.
But in 2006 she discovered clowning and discovered there was more happiness to be achieved. This lead to a mission or pilgrimage of sorts with Hunter Doherty “Patch Adams” and a group of thirty other people from various countries to Mexico last year. Together they visited patients, the homeless, the elderly, shut-ins and HIV-infected people while dressed in their best clown attire
What made the biggest difference? In 2008, a friend of hers who was president of a breast cancer support group, asked her this question: “The happiness a clown brings to people is only momentary. How are you going to make the happiness last?”
Now she teaches people how to laugh: “Everyone is born with the ability to laugh. Laughter is the best medicine and an effective way of fighting illnesses. Based on statistics, babies can laugh up to 400-500 times a day, while adults laugh an average of only 14 to 15 times a day.”
Fringe benefits of clowning around include increased self-confidence and reduced stress. Fang Li Yun discovered that whenever she focuses on making other people happy, she also experiences a surge of joy and forgets all her worries and cares.
Want to improve your face value? Smile more often. Here are four thoughts about smiles, just in case you need motivation to smile a little more often.
When they say someone was “wearing nothing but a smile”, that might be bad news for garment manufacturers, but it is wonderful news for humanity. A smile is the most important thing a person can wear. It is somewhat ironic that so many more people wear clothes than wear smiles. Perhaps we have misplaced priorities.
Be your own florist. You know how flowers brighten up a room? Just like a smile? In fact, flowers also brighten up people’s faces…causing them to smile more, too.
Want to brighten up a room? Smile more, and you will be your own florist.
Smiling Poem
Don’t cry when something is over
Don’t cry for the loss.
Smile because it happened,
Smile for what once was.
OK, time to pamper yourself. I mean, if you’ve been working hard to be a better person, to be friendlier and fitter and more generous and more efficient and make whatever improvements you feel you need, take a few moments to pamper yourself. Find something that is in sync with the changes you have made in your life (If you’ve decided to eat healthy from now on, a triple fudge sundae is NOT the right means to pamper yourself).
Pick something that makes you feel special and worthwhile. Perhaps it’s a spa treatment. Perhaps a few hours in a quiet place away from the chaos of kids and the chores of home. It might just be a hot bath with soothing music.
You are special. You do deserve it. So go ahead and pamper yourself.
You can diet. You can work out at the gym. You can take up martial arts. But why bother, when laughing is such a fun way to shed those pounds?
A burst of hearty laughter can give your body what neuroscientist Dr Helen Pilcher calls a “mini-aerobic workout”. It makes your heart beat faster. It makes your chest heave. It makes your belly muscles tighten. Facial muscles tighten (good for keeping the skin looking young). It’s a good all-round workout – a belly laugh can help shrink the belly.
There is some bad news and some good news in this. The bad news is that you have to laugh heartily for an hour to burn off 100 calories. The good news, is that an hour of extra laughing each day would be good for us party-pooper adults who forget to laugh throughout our day. How can we add more laughter?
Sign up for some humorous email broadcasts.
Follow some funny people on Twitter and befriend some funny people on FaceBook.
Get up from your desk every now and then and drop in on the office clown, or anyone with whom you have found you can share a laugh.
Tickle somebody (probably best to do this one at home); it often can end in getting very playful.
Have kids. Yes, they also can cause a lot of stress, but they give you someone you can repeatedly tickle.
How would you increase the laughter in your day? Please let us know in the comments below.
By the way, you can tweet this post by clicking here: ReTweet this
Haven’t I always said it? Happiness is contagious. Just smiling at people in a room can pick up the mood of a room…and in the process help you keep your own mood up (because happiness is contagious whether you are giving or receiving).
Dr. Nicholas Christakis, professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, and James Fowler are co-authors of a 20-year study called Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network. Here is the abstract of the study
Clusters of happy and unhappy people are visible inthe network, and the relationship between people’s happinessextends up to three degrees of separation (for example, to thefriends of one’s friends’ friends). People who aresurrounded by many happy people and those who are central inthe network are more likely to become happy in the future. Longitudinalstatistical models suggest that clusters of happiness resultfrom the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for peopleto associate with similar individuals. A friend who lives withina mile (about 1.6 km) and who becomes happy increases the probabilitythat a person is happy by 25% (95% confidence interval 1% to57%). Similar effects are seen in coresident spouses (8%, 0.2%to 16%), siblings who live within a mile (14%, 1% to 28%), andnext door neighbours (34%, 7% to 70%). Effects are not seenbetween coworkers. The effect decays with time and with geographicalseparation.
In other words, it is in your own self-interest to make people around you happy. Smiles, random acts of kindness, humor, music…adding all these uplifting features to your neighborhood will make your life better. I wonder why the effect was not seen between coworkers; it really should have been, considering how close many people are to their coworkers, spending huge portions of their day with them and being incredibly affected by their moods.
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