Every Day a Friday: How to Be Happier 7 Days a Week (28 page)

Make sure you see people through eyes of love, not eyes of judgment. Don’t be critical, and don’t write people off. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Go the extra mile. Consider that they might be going through incredible difficulties and they are doing the best they can. Be a person who helps lighten the load.

All it takes for some is just one person stepping up or lending a hand. You can be the Ms. Thompson in someone’s life. You can be the difference-maker. Take an interest in that co-worker who is so discouraged. Find out what’s going on with that relative who has lost his passion.

You can be the catalyst for change. If you see people through eyes of love and do not judge them, you will live as a healer, lifting the fallen, restoring the broken. Let me assure you, when you help others come up higher, God will make sure you come up higher. He will pour out His blessings and His favor.

W
hen my father was seventy-five years old, he still laughed and kidded just like he did when he was twenty. He was a responsible and serious man, but he knew how to have fun. One time we were in Mexico, walking down the main street of a little town, when an American couple approached my father.

They asked him, “Do you know where the post office is?”

My dad looked at them real strange and said, “No comprende. No comprende. Español, amigo.”

They thought,
Oh, no. He only speaks Spanish, too.

So they said it real dramatically: “
Post office.
”

Daddy shook his head. “No comprende.”

Frustrated, the tourist said it even more dramatically: “
Post office. Mail a letter.
”

Daddy brightened up and said, “Post off
eece
?”

They got real excited. “Yes! Yes! Post off
eece
!”

Then Daddy said, “If you’re looking for the post office, it’s right around the corner.”

That man said, “Boy, I ought to whoop you.”

We all had a good laugh at that.

My father believed that the world would be a healthier place if we stressed less and laughed more. He never lost that youthful spirit.

He knew that when people are uptight and on edge, headaches, digestive
problems, and lack of energy are just some of the results. They don’t sleep well. Much of this would go away if they would just learn how to properly deal with stress.

One of the greatest stress relievers God has given us is laughter. It’s like medicine. Laughing makes us feel better and releases healing throughout our systems. When we laugh, the pressures of life fade and we feel restored and rejuvenated.

When was the last time you had a good hearty laugh? If it’s been awhile, maybe your laugher is rusted and needs to be overhauled! You don’t know how much better you would feel and the energy you’d pick up if you’d just lighten up and learn to laugh more often—not once a month, not once a week, but every single day.

Many people are too stressed to have fun. They need to restore balance. All work and no play is not healthy. Developing a sense of humor and looking for opportunities to laugh can make a big difference in the quality of your life. You may not be a jovial person by nature. God made us all unique. But I recommend training yourself to laugh as often as possible.

Medical science is catching on to the benefits of laughter as therapy for patients and to improve patient-caregiver relationships. There is even a “humor-in-hospitals movement” that includes using “clown care units” to entertain patients and improve their moods. Some hospitals now have “humor carts” that are wheeled into patients’ rooms with funny-movie DVDs, cartoon books, games, and funny props to provide comic relief from stress and pain.

St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Houston, where I live, had one of the first “humor rooms” in the country. These are special rooms set aside where patients and their families can laugh and have fun without disturbing others. The St. Joseph’s staff found that visits to the humor room led to many patients leaving the hospital sooner because it helped relieve pain and other symptoms.

Another hospital had a humor program in its pediatrics ward. When there was a shortage of beds, a depressed seventy-year-old man with cancer
was put in the pediatric ward temporarily. He felt so much better after staying there he asked to be with the kids the next time he was admitted.

I heard about another hospital that takes some of its long-term patients to a park several hours a week so they can watch children playing. The original purpose was to get them out of the hospital and into a more relaxing environment. But doctors discovered that watching the children play and hearing them laugh stimulated the body’s natural healing process.

Just watching and listening to children at play helped change the patients’ outlooks and they recovered more quickly. If just watching children laugh and play helps bring healing and joy and a better attitude, imagine what laughing and playing yourself can do for you.

I read that the average child laughs more than two hundred times a day, but the average adult laughs fourteen to seventeen times daily. The pressures of life, stress, and more responsibilities steal our joy little by little as we grow older. Just because we are no longer children doesn’t mean we’re supposed to be solemn and never have any fun. Most adults are borderline grumpy a good part of the time. But every healthy adult should hold on to that child inside. Know how to work, but also know how to play.

A study said that one of the traits shared by those who live into their nineties is that they take joy in everyday life. Laughter is their best medicine. A friend of mine had a good-humored grandmother who lived to be 103 years old. When she went into the hospital at the age of one hundred, my friend called and asked her what was wrong.

“Well, so far they’ve ruled out pregnancy,” she said.

I met someone just like her in our church visitors’ line a few years ago. She was a very healthy and sharp ninety-six-year-old lady. Her skin was beautiful. Her eyes were bright. But what struck me most was how happy she was.

It appeared she’d never met a stranger. Everyone around her was her best friend. She was hugging all the people in the line. She was wearing a
bright, colorful dress and was a breath of fresh air. After we talked, I hugged her. As I was leaving, I just said in passing, “I believe when I’m ninety-six years old I hope to look just like you.”

She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Just don’t wear the dress.”

I thought,
No wonder she’s so healthy. She still has a sense of humor. She still knows how to laugh.

Her good humor was like a healing light flowing through her body. I want to follow her example as I grow older. I’ve made up my mind that I’ll never be a grumpy old man. I will not let myself grow more and more sour the older I become. I’m staying full of joy. When it’s my time to go, I’m leaving with a smile on my face, a laugh in my heart, and a joke in my pocket.

Every time you laugh, you reduce the stress hormone and increase production of the human growth hormone, also known as the “youth hormone,” by as much as 87 percent, according to some sources. That’s the hormone that slows down the aging process and keeps you looking younger and fresher. I laugh all the time, and I don’t look seventy-seven years old, do I?

I heard a story about Joey Grimaldi, a comedian in the early 1800s who kept people laughing during his forty-year career. Joey was known to turn angry mobs into applauding audiences, but he wasn’t such a happy man himself. He was a workaholic. He felt pressured to always be funnier and funnier. He was a perfectionist, never satisfied with his routines or his success.

Later in his life he became ill, but he kept performing. He went to a doctor he’d never seen before. Joey had aged because of overwork and self-imposed stress. This doctor didn’t recognize Joey as the famed comedian. After examining him, the physician told his new patient that there was no medical reason for his illness, other than stress from overwork and possible depression.

“I don’t know what you do for a living, but I suggest you just take some time off from work and relax. Go see that great comedian Joey Grimaldi who’s in town this week. I hear he’s hilarious and laughter will do you some good.”

Joey looked at the doctor and sadly replied, “But Doctor, I
am
Joey Grimaldi.” A few weeks later, in March 1823, Joey collapsed and died from exhaustion. Sadly, he could make others laugh, but he never took the time to laugh himself. Don’t let that be you.

I’m sure you’ve known stressed-out people like Joey Grimaldi who seem to age rapidly because of their challenges. When we’re stressed and serious and grumpy, the chemicals that God designed to keep us young, to relieve stress, to reduce blood pressure, to make our immune systems stronger, sit unused. God has given us everything we need to live healthy and whole, but it’s up to us to tap into those things through laughter and seeing the humor in life.

Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist, is the founder of the National Institute of Play. He became interested in the effects of laughter and play in our lives when the governor of Texas asked him to investigate the tower shootings on the University of Texas campus in 1966. As he studied the life of the troubled young man who had killed sixteen people and wounded thirty-two others, one thing that stuck out was that this young man had never played normally as a child.

He grew up in such a dysfunctional, high-stress family that his “play life” was very limited as a child. This so interested Dr. Brown that he went on to interview other death-row inmates. He discovered that a high percentage of them also had not played normally or freely as children. Dr. Brown concludes today that the opposite of play isn’t work. It’s depression. He believes we need play as much as we need sleep if we want to be physically and emotionally healthy.

Proverbs 17:22 supports this as it says, “A happy heart is good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing” (
AMP
). When you’re in a good mood and full of joy, taking time to laugh and play, it’s like taking vitamins or good medicine. In fact, medical science tells us that laughing boosts our immune systems. Laughter reduces blood pressure. People who laugh regularly are 40 percent less likely to have a heart attack than those who don’t, some sources say.

Laughter also triggers the right side of the brain, which helps creativity and decision making. When you have a good laugh, you activate the body’s natural tranquilizers that calm you and help you sleep better. Many people today suffer from insomnia, but maybe laughing more would help them relax and rest.

One poor lady, Virginia, was constantly taking tranquilizers because she hadn’t been able to sleep well for so long. But she took the tranquilizers so often they hardly helped. Virginia tried different diets, doctors, and herbs, too, but nothing seemed to work.

Then a doctor gave her a very unusual prescription. He said, “Every night before you go to bed, watch something funny—a funny movie, a funny video, a funny sitcom—something that makes you laugh.”

Virginia followed his advice night after night. She slept better and better. Finally, she was totally off her sleep medications and snoozing every night like a baby.

What happened? Virginia needed man-made tranquilizers because she wasn’t releasing God’s natural tranquilizers. Maybe you, too, would feel better if you lightened up and laughed more often. It could be that your headaches, backaches, migraines, chronic pain, or fatigue might ease if you played, laughed, and enjoyed life more.

When my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1981, she made sure she kept taking healthy doses of laughter. She was in pain and worried, but instead of staying in bed feeling sorry for herself, she watched cartoons on television. She would sit there and laugh and laugh.