Do you remember your last playday? Your latest belly laugh? Your stressfree day?
I do.
I play and laugh every day and it brings less stress to my life. But I am a professional laugher, you may think, and I say, yes, but I am also a normal human being experiencing ups and downs, tears, rage and lots of laughter.
Laughter became my choice of change. It is so easy to get absorbed by negativity because we see it every day all around us, in the news and in the interaction between people, lack of patience, lack of compassion.
Extended, deep, hearty laughter may not be your choice of daily activity. However, I invite you to try it and not just for one day but for a month.
My world turned around. It doesn’t mean I don’t have days when I cry or want to scream and be angry. No, it just gives me the conscious choice of moving on from my dramas.
When I experienced the first onset of MS 10 years ago I was devastated and the thought still has the odd chance of making me tearful when I think back to my life in those days. Bear in mind that at the time I had been laughing for six years or more but I didn’t laugh every day so the experienc of change and health through laughter had no real impact on me at the time.
The change happened when I decided to laugh every day. To have a Daily Laughter Practice.
It took me 10 years to acknowledge that I was just human afterall when I had a second episode of MS symptoms. This time it became real, I live with MS more so than I did in the past because a second episode cements it into your life.
However, this is not my MS.
In hindsight I know the stress that caused my health to be affected in such a detrimental way and I allowed it. As I mentioned, I am just human on so many levels and having stressors hit me from all angle both in personal and professional life had a huge effect on me. On the flipside laughter and friends brought me back to what is important.
Our lives are intertwined and often we don’t acknowledge or appreciate it fully but take things for granted instead. Until that moment when we really need each other.
Life does not happen here, on the World Wide Web, on Social Media or other places online. Life happens in person, in nature, with others, alone, sharing experiences, being in solitude, loving, laughing, living with other people in our lives.
Choose every day as if you have no idea what is happening, be curious, be playful, be you as you were when you came into this life, be full of fun mischief. The importance of play is not to be diminished, with play comes laughter. Watch those children play and you see that laughter follows their activities.
It is easy to forget who we truly are when life adds layers and layers of commitments, discomfort, dramas and stuff. How we see things is what creates our reality and the way forward is to regain our bright coloured spectacles and see possibilities in life.
Be friends, be playful, be full of smiles and laughter – it helps you through any situation.
We are here on borrowed time so let’s make the best ever of who we are!
Who are you?
Lotte Mikkelsen, Founder of The Laughter Company (TLC).