I had a good laugh yesterday, and the day before, too.  I seek out laughter as much as I seek out play. The two go hand in hand, so in looking for one, I find the other.

Scientific research has shown a correlation between laughter and health, but this one is a no-brainer.  I know I feel better when I laugh, both physically and emotionally.

When I was first struck with agonizing pain, I let laughter and play leave my life.  I was serious and dedicated to solving my health problem.  Laughter and play were frivolous, useless things that only people who were free of pain could afford.  My focus was entirely on my rotten luck, the terribleness of my situation, and my panic.

It took me several months to realize my victim stance was harming me instead of helping me.  Seeing myself as the victim made it true, and then I felt powerless.  I decided to stop being powerless, and so I became powerful.  Sound too simple?  It’s not.

I decided to become healthy by listening to my body and learning how my mind and body work together.  Never underestimate the power of intention!  As soon as I started listening to my body, I could hear all kinds of wisdom.  I felt compelled to find ways to play and laugh again, and realized that I’d had it backwards – I didn’t need to wait until I was healthy to have fun; I needed to have fun to create health.

Humor and play make life worth living.  What are you waiting for?  Find a way to play today, find something to laugh about, and share your story in the comments area below.   Decide what you’re going to create in your life.  Tell us about it!

It’s time to change the cultural belief that work comes first.  Play makes you laugh, laughing makes you feel good, and feeling good makes you do everything with presence, awareness, and love.  Now that’s the way to make the world a better place!

Here’s my playlist for today:

An intensely fun hour of hilarious talk with four great friends.
A ten-minute reading break over lunch.
A Mozart backdrop to my writing time.
A date with my husband.

Tomorrow, I’m taking my monthly play day.  That’s right – an entire DAY of play.  I no longer wait until I’m sick to take sick days, because sick days are no fun.  Now I take play days.  Which, come to think of it, has drastically reduced the number of sick days!  I’ve never been healthier in my entire life.  I used to have some kind of illness every couple of months – flus, bronchitis, sinus infections, etc.  In my journey to learn how to hear my body’s wisdom, this is the final piece of the puzzle.  When my body wants to relax, to play, and to hang loose, I listen.  I no longer constantly override its messages and put off playtime.

Here’s my playlist for my play day tomorrow:

A massage.  (Heaven!)
A leisurely swim.
Yoga.
My favorite TV show. (Bones!)
A pile of good books.
Snuggles with my dog.
A nap.

What’s on your playlist today?

I know what it’s like because I’ve been there.  I’ve been in that murky, dark, hopeless place.  I’ve felt the powerlessness, the despair, and the black depression.  In my opinion, those emotional black holes were far worse than the physical pain I experienced simply because feeling hopeless is just plain awful.

Feeling hopeless doesn’t exactly help your heath, either.  In fact, the more emotional stress you feel, the more difficult it is for your body to heal.  It’s too busy pumping out stress hormones, creating tremendous amounts of muscle tension, and promoting widespread inflammation as you navigate life in a constant fight-or-flight state.  So digging yourself out of the emotional hole becomes of the utmost importance – so you can feel better in as many ways as possible.

The most helpful and interesting technique that helped me crawl out of my emotional pit was actually something I did not really understand clearly until I became a coach.  While I was in the process of crawling, I didn’t really know how to articulate what went on in my mind, but looking back on it brings a lot of clarity.  In a nutshell, I changed the way I was talking to myself, in my own mind.

I spent a great deal of time feeling quite victimized at the beginning of my illness.  “Why me” was a refrain that played often in my mind, and I kept hoping for a white knight to ride in and rescue me, somehow, from my agony.  The way I worded my own story as I thought about it daily was very self-defeating.  I was caught up in the quicksand of my own thoughts, and I was sinking, fast.

I’m not really sure what made me realize the futility of my own thought processes.  I just know that I woke up one morning and saw there was no white knight – there were supportive people, and people who loved me – but their ability to affect my emotional state was a big zero.  It was up to me.

I changed the theme of my story from “I’m suffering from this horrible illness and it’s not fair” to “I’m taking charge of my emotional life and looking into the power of mind-body healing.”  Little did I know the power of this significant mental shift.  In fact, it may have been the single most important tool in my actual healing process.  It pulled me up out of the murky darkness and into the open light, where I found hope everywhere I looked, despite my physical pain.  Hope is unbelievably powerful – just look at the placebo effect.  Researchers have to try to find ways around that mental magic when studying medications, because the simple hope a medication will work often effects physical change within the body.

This is a mental tool that is so easy to use and yet so difficult to apply.  It’s difficult because it’s easy to overlook its power and skim right past it on our quest for mind-body healing tools.  In Martha Beck coaching we call this tool Telling the Hero’s Tale.  Are you telling your story from the perspective of the victim, or are you stepping into your role as a hero in your own life?  Choose to become the Hero – and yes, it is a choice – and you will reap the rewards.

When I use this tool with clients, it is always fascinating to see the change it creates in their emotional state and their sense of power.  Try it in your own life with a past event and see how you feel.  Write your story from the victim’s perspective first and then re-write it as the hero.  Use something small at first as you practice thinking in this new way.  Progress to the harder subjects slowly.  You’re not trying to fool yourself – you want to believe your Hero’s Tale.  So tell the truth, the positive aspects of your story, and take a look at their validity.  There are always two sides to the story, even when it’s just your own.

Here is an excerpt from a client’s work as she perfected her use of this tool:

The Victim’s Tale

I was a perfectionist. I always had the best marks at school. Out of obligation and desire to please my parents, to get their attention with how good I was, I had equally good marks at every subject. I didn’t know what I liked and what I didn’t like. I forced myself to study everything. I had sleepless nights when I didn’t do homework for the next day. Even though I was an excellent student, there were still people who were better than me at some subject – I couldn’t stand that. I competed with them non-stop.

The Hero’s Tale

In school, I was extremely versatile. I studied every subject with ease. I was even further encouraged when I received praise from my parents. As a child, I knew that to please the parents means surviving in the house as long as you depend on them. I was a clever child and I guided myself towards adulthood and survival. I was not sure what I wanted to be when I grow up, so I paid equal attention to all my subjects and got good marks. I enjoyed studying so much that I never had any problems with homework or tasks I was given in school. Early, in primary school, I also noticed that some of my friends who were less creative than me used to get better marks. I realized then that the education system can never give me approval and I continued developing my creativity regardless of the teachers.

When I asked her what it was like to tell the two stories, here is what she answered: I loved doing the hero story. It’s very liberating. It made me look at my life in a completely different way, it gave me CHOICES. It made me realize that we have choices always!

Don’t underestimate this quietly powerful tool.  Give it a try – more than one – and you will begin to see the hope you can create in your own life, and the power you have to change how you feel in this moment, right now.