I just finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchin Rubin.I loved it! I gained a lot of useful tips that I hope to incorporate into my own life (hopefully sooner than later).
A basic overview of the book is that Gretchin finds herself on the city bus thinking that her life isn’t happy. Not that she’s depressed..but she thinks that she could be happier instead of going through the dull routine of life.
She takes a year to go through her happiness project, taking a month for something different and trying her best to really work on a “resolution”. Not everything worked for her but she said in the end that she did feel happier. She gives some practical advice that everybody can do if they just work on it.
It’s a good book. It’s worthy of reading.
Anyway…must get to my point.
One of the things she focuses on is “learning to laugh more”. One of the quotes in the book says this:
A small child typically laughs more than four hundred times a day…and an adult 17 times
This spoke VOLUMES to me!
How sad is it that our life goes from four hundred laughs to seventeen laughs. Have we really lost that much joy in our lives? I know…we aren’t as innocent as we once were but come on! That’s a significant drop!
She talked about how sometimes her child will tell her the same joke ten times in one morning. Most of us have been there. You get tired of hearing the same old joke over and over again and usually we just tell our children that they need to find a new joke or let’s move on to another topic. She suggested laughing at your child’s joke. Let them see your joy (even if it’s forced) and then watch them light up with joy because you acknowledged it.
Laughing makes people happier. Let’s face it…with the world today we can definitely use more happiness. So let’s laugh more!
I, for one, am going to implement this in my life (or try to). I tried it tonight while giving my boy his bath. He was having so much fun playing with his bath toys and laughing. I decided to try this “laughing theory” out. You know….it WORKED!
I usually hate giving him his baths and let my husband do it. I only hate it because we give him his bath after supper and I would rather clean up the mess while daddy gives him his bath..plus I figure it’s bonding time for daddy and son since daddy is gone all day at work. Today daddy was running late so I gave Elijah his bath. I laughed with him, played with the toys with him and bath time was so much fun! We were both happy (well..until he had to get out).
If you are in a bad mood it brings others down. Laughing creates a good mood boost.
So. I’m going to laugh more and see where it takes me. Hopefully it will bring me more happiness. Nothing wrong with that. :)
Here is a link to Gretchin’s Happiness Project page:
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