Meditate Awake

When was the last time you did something…ridiculous? Studies show that humor and laughter have an instantaneous impact on stress levels. And this can lead to long term improvements in mental and physical health. In the 1960s, a man named Norman Cousins even used laughter and humor to self-treat a degenerative disease — he had been given a prognosis of only a few months to live, but by using positive emotions to create positive physiological responses he lived for another 25 years. The lesson here is simply not to take yourself too seriously. Go out, be weird, and laugh. Fill your life with brilliant strangeness and do those things that you think you’re too old to do. We’ve convinced ourselves that growing up means being sensible. But…why?