“Ha. Ha. Ha.”

There are so many ways to pronounce the sounds: “ha ha ha.”

Do you say it with emphasis?

If so, where is your emphasis?

If not, well, that’s funny too.

Try it 5-10 times in different ways & tell me you aren’t feeling a little bit better.

It’s actually Science. 

More research is being done in this area but here are a few relative studies and part of their conclusions discussing how even simulated laughter increases positive feelings/endorphins.

—A study on how social laughter releases endorphins in the brain

—A couple studies showing that simulated laughter had positive effects on multiple aspects of health, including heart health. (First study)  (Second study)

A Study on combining simulated laughter and physical activity showed significant improvements in participants mental health, aerobic endurance, and self-efficacy for exercise.

So science shows that simulating laughter and even smiles can induce endorphins & positive feelings.

Guess who else thinks laughing is one of the most beneficial things anyone can do?

Like everyone. Literally. Well not literally, but check it out:

And after the quotes you can find a list of ways to simulate laughter into your life.

Don’t forget to laugh today!  🙂

“Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It’s more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.”
Dr. Seuss

“As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don’t bother to brush it off. Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance. Having a sense of humor saves you.”
Joseph Campbell

 “With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”
Abraham Lincoln

“Trouble knocked at the door, but, hearing laughter, hurried away.”
Benjamin Franklin

“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”
Charles Dickens

“I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable.”
Viktor Frankl

“Frame your mind to mirth and merriment
which bars a thousand harms
and lengthens life.”
William Shakespeare

“Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.”
Mark Twain

“When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.”
Buddha

“Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans. It is lovely to be silly at the right moment.”
Horace

“I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh.”
Maya Angelou

“There is little success where there is little laughter.”
Andrew Carnegie

“I’ve always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying, ‘Ain’t that the truth.’”
 Quincy Jones

“Laughter is America’s most important export.”
Walt Disney

“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.”
Elbert Hubbard

“It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.”
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“The size of a man’s understanding can be justly measured by his mirth.”
Samuel Johnson

“If we couldn’t laugh, we would all going to go insane.”
Jimmy Buffett

“The child in you, like all children, loves to laugh, to be around people who can laugh at themselves and life. Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives, the better.”
Wayne Dyer

“A man isn’t poor if he can still laugh.”
Raymond Hitchcock

“You have as much laughter as you have faith.”
Martin Luther

“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”
George Bernard Shaw

“And the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter, which irritated me very much. I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder

“My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.”
Jim Carrey

“If you would not be laughed at, be the first to laugh at yourself.”
Benjamin Franklin

“Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.”
Anthony Burgess

“It is cheerful to God when you rejoice or laugh from the bottom of your heart.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

“If you’re funny, if there’s something that makes you laugh, then every day’s going to be okay.”
Tom Hanks

“We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.”
Agnes Repplier

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
E. E. Cummings

“A person who knows how to laugh at himself will never cease to be amused.” Shirley MacClain

“Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.”
Vaclav Havel

“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”
Voltaire

“He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh.”
Koran

“As soon as you have made a thought, laugh at it.”
Lao Tsu

“From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.”
Dr. Seuss

“One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man’s laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”
Ken Kesey

“To make mistakes is human; to stumble is commonplace; to be able to laugh at yourself is maturity.”
William Arthur Ward

“What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.”
Yiddish Proverb

“A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.”
Irish Proverb

“You must learn to take life less seriously and to laugh.”
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

“The greatest prayer you could ever pray is to laugh every day.”
Ramtha

“The person who can bring the spirit of laughter into a room is indeed blessed.” Bennett Cerf

“Don’t take yourself too seriously. Know when to laugh at yourself, and find a way to laugh at obstacles that inevitably present themselves.”
Halle Berry

“There’s power in looking silly and not caring that you do.”
Amy Poehler

“If you can’t laugh, you won’t make it.”
Jennifer Love Hewitt

“Fame comes and fame goes, but you have to be able to laugh about yourself and to take it with a grain of salt.”
Khloe Kardashian

“If you can’t laugh at yourself, you don’t deserve to laugh at anybody else.”
Charlie Murphy

“Nothing feels as good to me as laughing incredibly hard.”
Steve Carell

“Life is tough; and if you have the ability to laugh at it, you have the ability to enjoy it.”
Salma Hayek

“Sometimes you almost have to laugh to keep from crying to deal with the pain associated with the hood.”
Gucci Mane

“I surround myself with people who make me laugh.”
Allen Iverson

“I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it’s the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It’s probably the most important thing in a person.”
Audrey Hepburn

“Wit is the key, I think, to anybody’s heart, because who doesn’t like to laugh?”
Julia Roberts

“It’s important to remember that life is a joke, and that outlook grants a lot of perspective, but I don’t think comedy should change and become political due to other things. It should just laugh at that cosmic joke that life is all the time.” John Mulaney

“Laughter is a bodily exercise, precious to health.”
Aristotle

“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”
Mark Twain

“He that is of a merry heart has a continual feast.”
Proverbs 15:15

“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:3

“Anything with the power to make you laugh over thirty years later isn’t a waste of time. I think something like that is very close to immortality.”
Stephen King

“If you become silent after your laughter, one day you will hear God also laughing, you will hear the whole existence laughing — trees and stones and stars with you.”
Osho

“The point is seeing that THIS — the immediate, everyday and present experience — is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe. I believe that if this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter… “
Alan Watts

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.”
Mark Twain

Ways to create and simulate laughter

“When you are totally depressed, you should try giggling. Just make yourself laugh. Force yourself to laugh.”
Yoko Ono

**Smile for 5 minutes

**Surround yourself with positive and fun people

**Count your blessings

**Watch funny videos/Read funny stories & jokes
(Rodney Dangerfield jokes below)

**Schedule time for fun activities

**Bring humor into conversations
(Ask someone “what’s the funniest thing that has ever happened to you?”)

**Go to a laughter yoga class
(I went to a few of these in college and it was awesome!)

*Remember funny things that have happened recently

**Remember fun times from your childhood

**Laugh at yourself.

**Remind self to laugh

**Laugh every day! 🙂

“Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, ‘Children’s Letters to God.’ You can open it anywhere. One I read recently said, ‘Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.’”
Maya Angelou

Some quite funny Rodney Dangerfield’s jokes:

“I asked my old man if I could go ice-skating on the lake. He told me, ‘Wait til it gets warmer.’”

“I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.”

“Last Halloween a kid tried to rip my face off. He thought it was a mask. Now it’s different when I open the door the kids hand me candy.”

“My father carries around the picture of the kid who came with his wallet.”

“My uncle’s dying wish was to have me sitting on his lap. He was in the electric chair.”

“One night I came home. I figured, let my wife come on. I’ll play it cool. Let her make the first move. She went to Florida.”

“My wife isn’t very bright. The other day she was at the store, and just as she was heading for our car, someone stole it! I said, ‘Did you see the guy that did it?’ She said, ‘No, but I got the license plate.’”

“I tell you, with my doctor, I don’t get no respect. I told him, ‘I’ve swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills.’ He told me to have a few drinks and get some rest.”

“I had a lot of pimples too. One day I fell asleep in a library. I woke up and a blind man was reading my face.”

“A travel agent told I could spend 7 nights in HAWAII no days just nights.”

What is something that makes you laugh? 🙂