Welcome to the Our Moral Compass Podcast. Each daily reading focuses on a different quote on how we can best apply it to our own moral compass and one of the five areas in Social Emotional Learning: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills and Responsible Decision Making. Thank you for listening and we hope you consider subscribing to the podcast for future episodes.
We All Need A Little Laughter In Our Lives
“Without laughter, life on our planet would be intolerable.”
-Steve Allen
Often times when we talk about our emotions the usual suspects that come up are happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise and anger. But underneath these staple emotions are other emotions that help to bring these out. For our purpose today happiness can be comprised of feelings of joy, gratitude and in today’s quote laughter.
When you even see the word laughter or actually here someone laugh its very hard to not smile or laugh yourself. How often have you see a video of a little baby laughing hysterically and uncontrollably as a parent or relative is doing something like making a noise or funny face? Their laugh is contagious. I can still remember my wife and I doing this with our daughter whose laugh, when she was a baby was that kind of infectious laugh. It truly was a magical and memorable time.
Comedian Steve Allen reminds us how important laughter is in the world we live especially in these uncertain times. Without it life would be unbearable causing other, much more negative emotions overtake those emotions that are positive. As I have read before on articles about laughter, laughter is something that helps lighten the load of what may be weighing on us mentally and actually helps to induce positive physical changes in the body and brain.
It is often encouraged for us to at least laugh each every day. The late basketball coach and analyst Jimmy Valvano in his 1993 famous ESPY speech said that “if your laugh, you think and you cry that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day…” Notice that even as cancer was severely affecting him during this time, taking away much of his physical strength and having Dick Vitale and Coach K escort him to the stage for his speech he led off that statement with laughter. Laughter. He could have chose any other emotion to say first and that is what he led off with. Simply amazing and inspiring if you ask me.
There are going to be times where our emotions get the best of us. Why not have the emotion of laughter happen more often? I’ve never had a time where after laughing, I didn’t feel better about something. It served more as a release and that no matter what I was going through at the time, allowed me to be me. Even if I don’t necessarily find something that is currently happening in my life as always funny, when I feel like a laugh I think of memories that give to me what I am in need of. I even talk with others and reminisce about the same experience we both had and no matter how many times we have talked about that same story over and over again it still makes us laugh.
Remember to never lose that ability to laugh. We all have it. We just need to use it. So make a promise to yourself right now and pencil this into your daily planner: make it a point to laugh each and every day. Whether it is through reading a funny joke or comic or even watching a comedy or funny movie, find the laughter that is out there. Even try this for a week straight. You and your state of well being will be better for it.
What does this quote mean to you and how can you apply today’s message towards improving your self awareness?
To subscribe to the daily blog via email please go to our website:
https://our-moral-compass.com/
Music from https://filmmusic.io
“Relaxing Piano Music” by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
A special thank you to Feedspot for recognizing the Our Moral Compass podcast as one of the Top 10 Social Emotional Learning Podcasts on the internet. It is an honor to be amongst the other podcasts on this list as we all strive to make this world a better place.
Becoming The Change 