How Laughing by Choice—Not by Chance—Can Change Your Life Now!

My driver, John, glanced quickly over his shoulder as he was driving me to my speaking venue and said, “So you’re the speaker? What do you speak about?”

Ah! Did he know that this is a professional speaker’s favorite question?! “My body of work for the last 30 years has been the study of humor’s relationship to profitability and health. Today I’m going to share how to use humor as a competitive business edge,” I explained, delighted to share my passion with him.

I could see John’s smiling eyes in the rearview mirror. “Did you know that humor is really, really good for you?” he asked in all sincerity. (Yep, I knew that!) John then went on to tell me a somewhat fuzzy version of Norman Cousins improving his illness by watching funny movies. It was fun to hear someone else extol on the benefits of humor. (And if you don’t know who Norman Cousins is, you can read his story of overcoming ankylosing spondylitis in his book, Anatomy of an Illness, but I digress…)

As I got out of the car and headed toward my conference, I thought about what John had shared with me. We all know humor makes us feel better. We all know it’s enjoyable. We all know that “it’s good for us.” So, making humor part of our daily repertoire would just be common sense, right? But as integrative neuroscientist Dr. Heidi Hanna…