Continuing on ways to fulfill your prescription for resilience. Our third action (actions one and two were discussed yesterday) is to Laugh it off!
Who doesn't love a good laugh? There is a reason a good laugh makes us feel better. Humor is a hit of pleasure that spikes dopamine and other feel-good brain chemicals. It increases positive emotions, broadening our thinking. With a more open mind, it's easier to engage in the reappraisal and perspective-shifting that help us deal with tough stuff. Humor has been linked to the lowering of both anxiety and catastrophizing thought patterns. It also helps you feel closer to others, which shores up your support network, another big factor in resilience. Science suggests that memes or jokes that take direct aim at pain points can be especially effective because they manage to combine the positive (laughing, humor) with the negative (struggle).
Humor...
- increases postive emotions
- broadens our thinking
- makes it easier to shift perspective
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