Five Ways to Find Your Laugh Again

Several years ago I realized that I had lost my laugh. I remember my naturopath asking me: “How much time do you spend laughing?”

A bewildered expression crossed my face and then a mixture of sadness and embarrassment.

“I hardly ever laugh,” I responded.  

“How much time do spend smiling?” she asked.

“Not much,” I said.

At that time, the world felt gray and numb. I was so tired; I didn’t have the energy to make jokes, to smile often or to laugh out loud. Life had hit me: responsibilities…stress…worry…losing loved ones…and then fatigue. For years at a time, I woke up feeling like a truck had hit me and I could hardly drag myself out of bed.

But I Used to Laugh…

When I was younger, especially when I spent a lot of time with my sister Rachel, I spent SO. MUCH. TIME laughing. You know the kind of laughing I mean: the kind where you can hardly catch your breath, have happy tears streaming down your face, and making eye contact with each other sets you off into another bout of hysterical giggles.

Later when my husband and I were dating, we also found ourselves laughing at so many things. Early in our relationship we had two La-Z-Boy recliners and we would be all set up with snacks to watch a movie downstairs.  As soon as we were set up, our dog would come running over and jump on one of our recliners. It would then swing wildly and hit the other recliner causing chaos because neither of us could easily put our feet on the floor to stop the twirling. We would laugh and laugh.

Another thing that made us laugh was that every so often my husband and I would give the other a competitive look and then start sprinting upstairs in a race for who could jump onto the bed first. It always ended in laughing, especially with our dog taking part. During these times, the colours in the world seemed brighter and hope and laughter were always present.

Ahhh…There’s My Laugh Again!

Recently, my three sisters, Naomi and Rachel, and my sister-in-law Lula, decided we would go on a Moms trip to Hawaii – the first any of us had ever taken without our families. Each of our lovely spouses kindly offered to take care of the kids so the four of us could go and spend time relaxing.

I was looking forward to the trip from the time it was booked. I was excited to visit with my sisters; to sleep whenever I felt like it; to watch movies uninterrupted; to read books; and to work on my novel.

A happy coincidence was that my sister-in-law Lula and I were scheduled to meet up for the second leg of our flight in San Francisco. We don’t live that close together so we were excited to spend some time catching up as we waited for our flight to board. We spent that time remembering the funny things that happened during our last family gathering (the infamous Glomfest 2018) and we often found ourselves laughing so hard we could hardly catch our breath.

Sharing those deep-belly laughs was such a great feeling and it started a cascade of laughter. After that, when other funny things happened we would fall more quickly into fits of laughter.

One example was when they paged me to the front counter: “Kirsten Manley, please come up to the desk” to see if I was willing to change seats so a child could sit with their parent. Of course I was willing and this kindness was repaid with the emergency exit aisle for both Lula and I (awesome!). While I was standing at the counter a woman named “Christine Danley” showed up and kept asking if she had been paged. She looked terribly confused when they turned her away but I explained that maybe she heard my name because our names rhyme? She didn’t seem convinced. When I got back to our seats and told Lula that story, we could not stop laughing.

Another example was when Rachel and Naomi texted us a photo of them on the plane with the caption: “We made it!”

They had been a bit later arriving at the airport and had to sprint to the gate to board just as the doors closed. This set us on another laughing spree (but only because they made the plane of course!).

Later after we boarded the plane, I was trying to get my in-seat television working. I was frantically pressing the buttons and complaining that it wasn’t working when Lula pointed out that I was making the man’s television beside me go crazy. Luckily he was reading. We laughed so hard that tears were streaming down our faces.

My point is that once we started those deep, hysterical belly laughs even things that were only slightly funny spurred us into further laughing fits. And it had been years since I have laughed that hard!

I’m happy to report that during our week long trip, the four of us also laughed a lot. The trip was everything we thought it would be. We relaxed, laughed, and smiled. We enjoyed catching up and going out for meals together. It was a wonderfully rejuvenating week.

So it feels good to laugh – to find that common connection with other people, to appreciate the humour in the situations that arise, and to feel those endorphins running through our bodies. And of course there are the health benefits of laughing: it relieves stress, boosts our immune systems, and improves our mood.

Five Ways to Find Your Laugh Again

So here are five strategies that can help us all find our laugh again:

 1. Start with a smile.

During our one week vacation, my sister Rachel led us in a morning routine, which included positive affirmations, controlled breathing and meditation. For the controlled breathing, she put on the Pranayama breathing app and asked us to breathe along with the rhythm. Then she would pick a theme, like joy, acceptance or patience and talk to us about that as we breathed. She also asked us to smile while we breathed and hold our hand over our hearts. Her regular reminders to smile during this time often resulted in one of us starting to laugh, which then caused a ripple of giggles first thing in the morning.

So smile more often during the day, not to make ourselves look pretty for others, but rather to make ourselves feel happier and make it more likely that we’ll laugh.

2. Create opportunities to laugh.

There are some television shows and movies that are hilarious. For me, there are only a few of these that make me laugh out loud but when they do I really, really laugh. One of my very most favourite movies is Shanghai Knights with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson – the two of those characters together are hilarious. I cannot stop laughing when I watch this movie.

And since each of us find different things funny, there will definitely be a show or movie that tickles your funny bone. So keep track of these shows so you can put them on at intervals when you need a good laugh. This way we can remind ourselves about how great it feels to just laugh and laugh and laugh.

3. Play with the children in your life.

Kids have a way of seeing the world that can be so funny. They come up with the most hilarious ideas and thoughts and can surprise and delight us with the creative and naïve things they say. And best of all, they often have the best laughs. It can be totally infectious to be around a child who is laughing and laughing. So spending time with children is a great way to infuse our lives with more laughter.

My Dad gave me a book called My Quotable Kid designed to capture those moments when our children say funny things. Every once in awhile, as a family, we get the book out and read through it. We laugh and laugh at the funny things our children have said – sometimes I even laugh so hard I can’t even read the stories the first time through. And as we reread these funny stories, we often get multiple laughs from the same event.

4. Spend more time with people that make us laugh.

We all have funny friends. I am lucky to have a lot of funny people in my immediate and extended family who are really funny. And of course, I have funny friends too. My husband has a hilarious friend who wears t-shirts with really funny slogans on them. Whenever we go out with him, everyone that he sees giggles and talks to him about his shirt. So let’s make a point of trying to make sure to see those people who make us laugh regularly.

5. Open yourself up to laughter.

The last tip and probably the most important is to open yourself up to laughter. This is actually a pretty tall order if you are feeling unwell or fatigued. And as worries and other responsibilities pile up, we can easily fall into the habit of letting these moments of lightness pass us by.  We can often react in a grumpy way or ignore the humour of a situation.  But if we have the energy to laugh, rather than letting those funny moments pass, make an active effort to attend to those moments of lightness, fun, and humour.

So think about how you can invite more laughter into your lives.  Let’s find ways to laugh more and laugh often because laughing feels so good!

We would love to hear your comments below this article and if you enjoyed it, share!

For more inspiring articles, check out: