Stress and Laughter aren’t opposites for no reason… you can hack stress with a little laughter.

I love using  Laughter Yoga to support creative thinking and training, help stress and laughter really is the best way.  Just recently I’ve been doing some training using laughter to support organisations with their stress-management, and I’ve been consistently impressed at the benefits that laughter offers… 

…one of these benefits is facilitating creative thinking in a stressful situation. Anyone who’s tried to be creative whilst stressed-out, may well have noticed that stress is not the most resourceful creative state to be in.  That’s because the logical left brain thinking that accompanies the feelings of stress and overwhelm, tends to focus purely on analytical processes.

We’ve all heard about the left and right sides of our brains – left for logic, right for creative.  And like most things in life, we need both sides to be functioning well to really maximise our results.   However being a stressful situation without any release can lead to circular thinking, with the problem and issue just going round and round in our minds as we seek a “logical” solution.  Of course, the solution doesn’t appear and this in itself can cause yet more stress and so the circle turns into a downward spiral.

Once this starts, the issue can often remain unresolved because it needs some creative input – but the log-jam of logical thought processes and stress simply won’t get out of the way to allow the right brain creativity to be heard.

Stop Stress and Laugh – use laughter when stressed out – it offers a release!

The benefit of using laughter at this point, is it offers a very real release from this analytical thinking/dwelling.  In short, it is impossible to be stressed and logical whilst you’re rolling on the floor in side-splitting laughter!

It is the physical activity of laughter that transmits a stress-release signal (endorphins) which finally quietens down our stressy logical thought process and allows us to access the creative right side of our brain and allow creative solutions to appear!

Not convinced?   Well you can evidence this yourself – after all how often do you just dwell on a problem and get nowhere, but as soon as you stop thinking about it, or move on to deal with something else, the solution pops into your mind?

Lighten up stress – use laughter to get out of a brain-spin

So next time you’re in a brain-spin, and desperately seeking a solution, try lightening up instead.  Take yourself out of the stressed situation – watch a funny YouTube clip, or enjoy a laugh with a friend on the phone, and allow yourself to become totally immersed in the humour of the moment. The aim here is to completely forget what you were worried about. Stress and laughter work on opposite sides of the brain (stress on the left, thinking side, and laughter on the right creative side) so stop stress with a laugh to give your creative right brain the respite to come up with the solution.  So have fun for as long as you can, and when you finally choose to return to the problem, chances are the answer will either pop up out of the blue, or the scale of the problem will seem to have shrunk to a more manageable size – and either way that’s a great result!

I’ve just been watching an amazing video on TED (the usual source of all things inspiring!). This particular video, by Jane McGonigal, is called “The game that can give you 10 extra years of life”. In fact I loved it so much that I really don’t mind if you pootle over to it right now and watch it. Because what really matters is not where you get the information from – but that you “get” the information!

Now you may start off watching this video, and glance at the bottom of the screen where you can see the running time is 19 minutes! Ouch, that’s a chunk out of a working day! Suddenly you get thoughts

like “I can’t waste my time sitting around watching some woman talk about video games – I have so much work to do”. Well let me urge you to indulge yourself and watch on!

I promise something magical happens. Yes, you’ll get what she promises (spoiler alert!) but in addition, this little video is the sweetest, most subtle reminder of priorities that I’ve seen for some time. And let’s face it, we need reminding!

You see, whilst the government is experimenting on the economy, and making cuts to services and wages, and the media is bustling and bristling with indignation, fury and exposes, we’re constantly being fed a menu of “fear and urgency”. Of course it’s in the government and bankers’ favour to have us all running around trying to make as much money as possible… they get the tax from every £1 we earn, and the longer we earn it for (think delaying pensionable age). But is it in our own interest?

The stress and overload of work, or the stress of no-work simply cannot be a good thing. As McGonigal rightly points out, the lessons we learn from others on their deathbeds, quite literally, have never been “I should have worked more hours”…

Of course, there are complex reasons why we are all working so hard and so much. After all we didn’t get to be the 3rd out of 28, in the “longest hours worked in Europe league table” overnight. It’s evidently been in our systems for some time and it’s not likely to disappear quickly. But there are things we can do to help.

Feedback to your boss if you feel you have too much stress. If they don’t know about it, then they can’t help you. Remember if you accept additional work that is putting you under stress and strain, then you are colluding with the establishment and perpetrating the culture of “must work longer and harder”.

Enjoy your work. OK, for some of us that may sound like tough one, and I don’t mean to be flippant. So assuming that you cannot change or leave your job for whatever reason, at least there are measures that might help you even if you absolutely hate your work. Firstly dwell on the good bits. Moaning about the bad stuff just makes them seem even worse, whereas thinking about the positive bits (the pay, your nice colleague, the view from the window, the fact that you have a window!) can make work seem a lot more pleasant. Remember wherever your focus goes – grows!

Put on a cheerful face. There’s numerous studies that show that if you’re smiling and looking happy, you can trick yourself into believing you really are happy. Even a fake smile will do the job. Just grin and bear it!

Take every opportunity to laugh. Laughter is the ultimate in stress release and stress relief. Good hearty laughter for 15-20 minutes a day will help you release endorphins, reduce cortisol, improve your mood, enhance your self-esteem, improve your connectivity to others.

…. and it’s proven time and again, that people who are more smiley, positive and happy-looking are more likely to get the better jobs, as people would prefer to work with them.

And finally, take McGonigal’s advice, do all the things she suggests in her video – because you can, and because they are fun… But a word of warning before you start, please ask yourself what are you going to do with an extra ten years of life? I wonder how many people will think “when I retire, I’ll have an extra 10 years to enjoy life, spend time with friends and family, and play more”

And I’d like to ask – why wait? On exactly what date does that extra 10 years start? I’d suggest it should start TODAY!

Here’s the link to that video:  http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal

I’ve just read a particularly interesting article by a Stanford Geneticist (RT.com, 19/2/2013). It states that our human intelligence is genetically declining and humans were more intelligent 3000 years ago, I wondered how many of us would agree?After all, don’t we enjoy computers, technology, cars, a higher standard of living and health than 3000 years ago? Well perhaps…

But given what our predecessors had to deal with, between 4000 and 1000BC, it’s not so surprising that their intelligence had to be so much higher than ours today.

The weapons may be more sophisticated, but were prehistoric warriors more intelligent than today?

I wonder, are we crediting ourselves (individually) for too much intelligence today? We can use a computer – but that’s simply a set of instructions. However could we track and hunt down a deer, stay safe in a wilderness, know what plants to eat, communicate with a hostile tribe in a different language? Perhaps it’s high time we stopped patting ourselves on the back for getting to grips with that new smartphone so quickly, and look to what “real intelligence” is instead.

Our first initiative, perhaps, is to really consider exactly what “intelligence” is. IS it, as so often promoted – a set of qualifications showing an academic aptitude? Does that ability to learn and recall truly deserve the accolade of “intelligence”?

Or is “intelligence” a less definable entity? More recently IQ has been joined by EQ, the Emotional Quotient. A way to measure our ability to empathise.

But what about our other abilities? Our Creative Quotient? Our Intuitive Quotient? Our Physical Quotient? Is it simply that our academic system chooses not to measure these areas, or that our political systems finds them too difficult to tax.

In the past, our ancestors undoubtedly enjoyed numerous outlets for their creativity to solve problems and pass the time, their intuition: where the herds were grazing today. And their physical abilities, simply staying alive. A close look at the arts and lifestyles of these people shows a high level of play, creativity and collaboration. Something else that is seriously missing today.

According to the article, the doctor from Stanford claims, “humans were at their most intelligent when every individual was exposed to nature’s raw selective mechanisms on a daily basis.” Under those conditions, adaption, he argued, was much more of a matter than fight or flight. Rather, says the scientists, it was a sink or swim situation for generations upon generations.

It seems impossible to imagine a return to the harsh living conditions of our predecessors, but I suggest that there’s at least one area that we can achieve. Perhaps now is the time to consider the low-tech lifestyle benefits of our predecessors – and reconnect with each other. Perhaps we could start by putting our smartphones down for a minute or two and adding more active play and laughter into our lives.

Laughter, fun and technology – truly the best of all worlds. Let’s start now! Because if we can’t understand the benefits today – it sounds like our own ancestors certainly won’t be intelligent enough to see it in the future.