Are you laughing thirteen times a day? I consider myself a pretty happy human, and I don’t think I am laughing that often. Darn! Aside from being fun, laughter is great for physical and mental health. Laughter is known to boost the immune system, burn calories, protect the heart and decrease stress. In fact, a good dose of laughter can leave your muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes.

 

What if you proactively sought to laugh every day? Would you make time for it? Would you seek out the people who put a smile on your face? Would you find sources to incite a chuckle?

 

As children, we laugh so often and easily. In fact, we start laughing at 3 months old, long before we utter our first words. (And, by the way, who doesn’t love to hear a baby laugh?) Some studies even say that children laugh up to 300 times a day. I’m not sure that I buy that statistic as they would have to laugh every 2.5 minutes, but I do appreciate that there is an opportunity to laugh more frequently than I currently do as an adult.

 

Here’s something you can try. When I was a kid, we used to play this game called “HA!” I would rest my head on a friend’s stomach, and my friend would start to [fake] laugh. It would bounce my head up and down and get me to start laughing. Within seconds, my friend would hear my laugh and then start laughing for real, and we would end up in stitches. My husband and I tried this recently, with the same result. I’m smiling now, just thinking about it.

 

So go ahead, seek laughter…often…daily…why not? Let’s at least reach thirteen times a day and then aim for more! To get you started, here is a great video of a baby laughing, which is sure to get you going.