What makes you laugh?

What do the Dalai Lama, Isabel Losada, Desmond Tutu, Martha Beck, Susan Sarandon and many more have in common?

They all value the power of laughter. As well as feeling good at the time (unless you're desperately trying not to laugh in an inappropriate situation), more and more research is showing how good this free medicine is.

Yet we still take life soooo seriously. If the Dalai Lama can find things to laugh about in his life, I'm sure you can in yours.

I have a friend I've known since we were ten. She can still make me literally fall down laughing. This was embarrassing for me, aged eleven, walking back from the station after school. As an adult it can be even more so (in a restaurant or shop, drawing strange looks from everyone). But it's still a lot of fun.

How can you make more space for laughter in your own life? Which friends and family members have you doubled over laughing? What kind of books make you laugh aloud on the train? (For me, authors who make me both laugh and cry include: Lorna Landvik, Pearl Cleage, Marian Keyes, Rebecca Wells, Alexander McCall Smith, Sue Grafton, Anne O Faulk, Maeve Binchy, Martha Beck, Isabel Losada, Gloria Steinem, Eve Ensler, Maria Shriver and, of course Elizabeth Gilbert).

Your sense of humour is likely to be different from mine (most people's is). But scan your own book shelves / film collection / TV guide.

List three ways you can schedule in some likely laughter over the next few days:

1)

2)

3)

What do you call two rows of cabbages? (scroll down for the answer)











A dual cabbage way...


© Eve Menezes Cunningham / http://www.applecoaching.com/ 2008