Humor Makes Us Happy and Happiness is Contagious

The tragic things we might see every day on TV show us a world where negativity is the star. Also, the people around us complaining all the time make us wonder if the world is really good.

That’s what we’re fed. And we’re so conditioned by this extremely negative view of life that we end up constantly complaining over spilled milk.

Concern seen as a sign of respect

Going through life with a sense of humor is incompatible with a culture where concern is a sign of respect. It’s true that joking about tragedies or death is inconsiderate.

But, sometimes we have to see the positive side of of the bad things that happen to us. Either way, it’s happening, and we can look at it however we want. We’ll give an example with a great story.

Fernando was 32 years old when he lost his job. He was head of accounting for a management company, but the recession hit and they had to lay people off.

Everyone felt bad for Fernando. They said tried to cheer him up, but they looked sad and discouraged, you could see it on their faces.

None of this affected Fernando. He’d lost his job, that was true, but it was a great opportunity to go and start his own business. Or start other projects, who knows!

In fact, he always had a smile on his face. Well, this apparently annoyed a lot of his family, because they would say: “how can you be so happy and carefree after they just tossed you out like that!” “Don’t you care?”

We live in a world where complaining and feeling sorry is the norm. And for anyone who breaks the mold, we make sure they know — or judge them silently.

For example, haven’t we all wondered how someone could be doing so well when just a few weeks ago their spouse died, or they just ended a relationship?

Going through life so seriously means we sometimes over-dramatize situations that actually have an easy solution.

Obviously every circumstance is different. But if we know how to smile and look optimistically at the future, everything will be better and opportunities we’ve been dreaming about will appear.

You choose how to go through life: tragedy or comedy

Going through life with a sense of humor doesn’t mean laughing at everything that happens to other people. It also doesn’t make taking all those complicated situations we’re dealing with lightly.

No, going through life with a sense of humor means not seeing yourself as a victim. It means getting rid of the downward spiral of negative thought, it means not feeling sorry for ourselves. Instead, we act.

How many times have we fallen into the trap of calling the things happening to us “bad luck”? We sit there and do nothing about it.

We still have a lot of ground to cover before we can accept everything that comes our way. To accept what we have no control over. But at the same time, we aren’t neglecting the part that we do have control over.

Learning to laugh about a tragic situation or a painful thing we’ve gone through, that’s a sign we have really high resilience. 

It doesn’t mean our pain is less, just that we have a more useful tool to smother it with: humor. Gathering up the strength to raise our heads and smile at life, even if it has some tough blows for us too.

Moving forward isn’t possible if we don’t start digging ourselves out of the hole we’re in. What’s the point of feeding a negatively charged emotion until it becomes who we are?

This doesn’t help us move forward. It doesn’t help us find out how strong we are. And it doesn’t help us realize we have plenty of amazing abilities we can use to face our trying situation.

Bringing just a pinch more humor to our worldview should be a way of life. Because it’s easy to forget that happiness makes every day more beautiful.

It sends fear packing. It makes the wounds on our heart hurt less. Also, humor makes us happy.

Laughter and endorphins go hand in hand. But why neglect nature’s wonderful painkiller? Isn’t it time to balance tragedy with humor?