cc >> Hello, my name is Ann Albert. I'm the executive director of Supporting Active Independent
Lives. Today's Positive Aging Lecture Series is all about humor and taking care of oneself.
We hope that you'll join us for our future programs coming up this month: Empowering Patience Through Advocacy, Healthy Aging
and Technology, and Improving Diet for Eye Health. We're pleased to have with us today our presenter,
Dr. Bob McGrath. He's a licensed psychologist and he's coordinator of the University of Wisconsin
Mind/Body Wellness program. This program focuses on healthy and happy living, including eating right, sleeping right,
humor, managing stress, and being physically active and flourishing. Please join me in welcoming
Dr. McGrath. [APPLAUSE] >> Robert McGrath: Thank you. It's great to be here.
I hadn't been familiar with the title of the series, Positive Aging. But when I saw that I thought,
oh, this makes sense because my orientation as a clinical psychologist is positive psychology.
Health and positive psychology is where I work from these days, and it's a nice little change because I work at the
university. I teach a number of classes every year on health and positive psychology and
it's to the students that are 19 to 22 years old. So it's nice to have a whole different age range and someone
was saying, does this fit, well I really think health practice and the humor is going to be a little different.
One of the things I'll actually talk about is the little kiddos. Why don't we keep our sense of humor like those little kids?
We should laugh and smile as much as they do every day. And someone was talking about the importance of laughter being
contagious. So I've got a few people said in there so we're going to laugh a lot so hopefully you'll laugh
a long with us and so on. Just to start with, we'll get to that humor stuff maybe in a little bit, but let's just talk
a little bit about the whole area of positive psychology. It started maybe 10 or 11 years ago, a major figure in the field
of psychology, Martin Seligman, whose research, he had been president of APA, and his research was on learned
helplessness which is another form, learned helplessness is basically like a form of depression.
And what all his studies would be, he'd get students, he'd get animals and this and that and no matter what they did to answer,
it was wrong. So think if you're doing a little survey or a test and every answer you give is wrong,
what do you do? At some point you go heck with this, I'm done. And you just quit and give up
and so on. And the point of that is that learned helplessness, if in your life you think whatever I do it
ain't working, then at some point you just sort of give up and that would be a form of depression, of just sort of low
energy, why bother. But this turned around and he talks about what sort of set him in a different direction.
He was out working in his garden and fussing around a little bit and his seven-year-old daughter was there and he was sort of
complaining or something to her and she said daddy you asked me not to be so fussy, would you quit being so grumpy.
[LAUGHTER] And it woke him up and it turned around and he started really focusing on instead of the
downside of psychology, what's the positive side, and started this field of positive psychology which focuses across
the board on more, not like focusing again on what's wrong but how might we live in good, healthy, positive ways.
And I said you don't often think of that. Where are you on the continuum and they have all these surveys
now and basically that ask how happy are you in seven or eight different ways. So just to reflect, it's
like in the range of happiness, where am I? And focus on living a good life rather than correcting what's
wrong. Of course, everyone wants to be happy, but sometimes it gets lost in business or misguided
attempts of creating happiness. And one of the, for example, linking happiness to money and there's some great research on,
any lottery players? But people that win lotteries, millions and millions of dollars, does that make them
happy? Yes it does. [LAUGHTER] For how long?
Six months. And there's a lot of stress even in that first part of it and then it's down back to normal.
So money really isn't the thing. And I've read now a couple of books of people that have taken this that much further and they
decide how long can they live basically without money. There's a fellow who-- he did it for scholarly reasons.
He lived in New York without money for a year. And just sort of the in-rest, the scholastic in-rest of what
is it like to get into garbage dumps to find food and so on. And there was also this Irish fellow that went off again for a
year. His fiance didn't necessarily appreciate the notion of living pennilessly, but after a couple
of months, so the year came to an end and he said I'll have some variations but I'm going to continue living in the simple,
simple way without a material focus. And so what are the pathways to a happy life?
And they sort of talk about the pleasant life, having as many pleasures as possible, drinking, shopping, having fancy cars.
Now and then you hear about the politicians, they had 10 different cars, are you going to be 10 times happier if you have
10 fancy cars or is one fancy car enough or do you just need something that works or even a bike?
The next sort of the good life. Knowing what your signature strengths are and using those strengths creatively.
And the handout I gave you is a little list of the signature strengths, and we'll talk about that a little bit later.
And then the last area, the meaningful life, so using those strengths and services is something you believe is larger
than you are. So there's just sort of steps, just living that good, fancy, happy life or living a good life
or taking it one step further and making it meaningful. And, of course, that flip side, that unhappiness thing, what
keeps people from getting into that more positive side? Again, materialism, the satisfaction, this sort of
negativity or sometimes, and this can be a real challenge with students, perfectionism. They got to get that, if they
get an A minus instead of an A, oh, no. So you got to get that perfectionism going.
Are there benefits? Of course, it seems like being happy is a good positive thing but is there any real benefit?
Do you think people live longer if they're happy? It actually has more impact, I hope none of you smoke, but it
actually has more impact. It increases people's lives up to nine years and throughout that extra nine years, a lot
more energy. So laughter, has there been enough laughing? What's the whole laughter thing?
This is not new. This is not something that the positive psychology people discovered like 10 or 11 years
ago and the other areas aren't either except there hasn't been that much looking at the whole, of course everyone laughs, but
what's behind it? And this is actually maybe 20-30 years ago Norman Cousins sort of got this thing going.
He was a writer and so on in, I think, the political area, but he was diagnosed with a chronic, irreversible illness,
spondylitis, which is an incurable disease of the spine. And so on the treatment 26 aspirin a day, codeine, sleeping
pills, and basically just laying there in the hospital bed. And he said if I've only got months to live, do you want to
live this way? And he said no. So he went back and started, how many of you were Candid Camera
fans in the old days? There you go. So he started his own program of laughter.
And he ended up every day spending an hour or two, or how much time I'm not remembering, but spending time laughing,
watching Candid Camera and other things. He not only survived but he changed his career and started
writing about the importance of humor as a major health. How many of us think of humor as oh, this is a great medicine?
It's like, hmm. But it is. But why? And actually one of the things
that physically it's very similar to a good workout. It may even be better. If you're out running or doing a
vigorous walk or something, do your facial muscles get used? Do your abdominal muscles get used?
So when you're laughing, your whole body is pretty well involved. 400 muscles are involved.
I was going to tell you earlier since I'm used to working with students, there's going to be some homework and we'll have a
test and one of those items on the test name those 400 muscles throughout your body. [LAUGHTER]
And Norman Cousins actually called it internal jogging. And now I guess it would be internal aerobics.
But really it gets your whole body moving. So what happens? It increases endorphin levels
which are the body's natural pain killer. It's a natural euphoriant. It just picks our mood up
without side effects. It's like all these other, a lot of different things that people put in their body to make it
feel good for a little bit but they have, let's say, side effects. But laughter relaxes the whole
body, relieves physical tension and stress leaving muscles relaxed for up to 45 minutes. And one of those other things,
in particular this is for all of us, does anyone here like to be bored? It relieves boredom, a good
laugh. And it also really connects people. It's very contagious and it's
like sometimes even if you're watching Candid Camera and you're alone you have some good laughs maybe, or whatever
current comedy it might be, but if you've got a group that's laughing, it's contagious. It just feels good.
It connects people. How can you argue against that. And it improves your immunity. You have a bunch of good laughs,
you're going to have fewer colds. It increases your immune cells in infection fighting
antibodies, improving your resistance to disease. Specifically immunoglobulin A. How's everyone's
immunoglobulin A levels? You're okay? Get those immunoglobulin A levels going.
[LAUGHTER] If you're feeling low on your immunoglobulin A, go have a good laugh.
Improves your mood. Moves away from negative motion. Just like you to reflect, when you've had a good laugh, do you
come away from that going that could have been funnier, or this or that? It just changes that little
negative and down side of things and fosters sort of a happiness. If you have a good laugh, do you think you sleep better?
Data says yes. It lowers blood pressure. It enlarges your thymus. Get your thymus, anyone's got
thymus issues out there? One of the things I encourage, is it a joke or not, but there's a thing called thumping your
thymus that you start your day just with a good bump, bump, bump, bump. And I've told people this and
they'll start laughing, and I thought which is better for them to be thumping their thymus or laughing about someone else who
promotes thumping their thymus? Probably the laughing part is better than actually thumping your thymus.
But first thing in the morning, why not? Bump, bump, bump, bump. Everyone here quick give
yourself a... I don't know that you're going to feel any effects today but tomorrow before you brush
your teeth, thump your thymus. [LAUGHTER] So what else does this humor do? It clears negativity
and it burns calories. So anyone thinking they should be dieting a bit it's like oh, I can have that cookie because I'm
going to have a good laugh about it and so on. [LAUGHTER] Again, it connects people,
reduces anxiety. But one of the little challenges, anyone want to talk it, it's like the challenge of
where do you get a good laugh? Sometimes that can be challenging. Particularly if the
recommendation is 15-20 minutes a day. And even if you find a good TV show, you might have 15 minutes
left but there's going to be about 15-20 minutes of commercials so I guess if you laugh at all the people that are
going to take this medication when they list 18 reasons why you shouldn't take it because it's going to make you suicidal
or make you feel like this or that or hurt your heart. So there's a challenge. Where do you get that good
humor? Anyone have any good answers where they can just go? One of the things, and it's an
interesting area, it's called laughter yoga where essentially there's meetings, they meet for 40-50 minutes and they just
laugh. And it's like huh? And so they'll just do things like say everyone just turn and
look at each other and laugh. Wait a minute, is that going to be funny, are you going to offend someone?
No. And one of their little things is the aloha. Aloha-ha-ha-ha.
So one quick aloha-ha-ha-ha. Just start laughing. Come on, come on, come on. Ha-ha, ha-ha-ha, aloha-ha-ha-ha.
And you get doing that, again, 45 minutes but they'll just go from one little, and you can Google this and see, so
sometimes it looks like it's fun. There's a group in town that does laughter yoga.
You can look in the paper. It's like once a week. Just for a little laughter yoga and maybe invite them to come
out. And just go through different positions and mostly spend time laughing.
I don't know what this means but I said laugh a little bit or thumping your thymus before you brush your teeth but they call
this laughing mental floss. So you're supposed to floss your teeth every day so don't do just dental floss, do your mental
floss of laughing. Do at least a couple minutes. So one of the little issues that psychologists always have to
look at things and analyze, are there gender issues between what men find funny and what women find funny?
There seems to be. And whenever you get into this it's like well there's going to be an example where a woman
finds this funny just like a man does. But it's kind of fun just thinking about what the
difference and sometimes the things that men like aren't the best. This is one of those things, but
men like less intelligent humor. [LAUGHTER] Silly slapstick, cruder humor that has profanities.
Jokes at other people's expense, aggressive humor, and shorter, quicker delivery. None of these elaborate dirty
jokes but quick dirty jokes or something. So it's just one of those little challenges.
And what do women like? Dryer humor. Often at their own expense humor.
Humor about relationships and the battle of the sexes and jokes that are not raunchy or dirty.
One of the little challenges like anyone got any great humor, and even in presenting or talking about humor how many
jokes cannot offend somebody or at least maybe it's just that male thing. So I'll do surveys and ask a
number of people you got any jokes I can convey? The only one, and this someone might say there's a gender issue
here. It's the man and the woman that were in the grocery store and she says you go get the orange
juice and I'll go get stuff in the other lane. So like 5-10 minutes later she goes where is he.
And so she goes and looks and he's just staring. And she says what are you doing, and he says the orange juice
says concentrate. [LAUGHTER] Sorry. So I don't know if this is a
breed of grocery store humor, I don't know where that's on the list, but someone else sent a thing that said, again, the
woman is sending the guy off for shopping or whatever and she says get a gallon of milk and in they have eggs, six.
And so he comes back with six gallons of milk. And she says what and he says you said get a gallon of milk
and if they have eggs, get six. And his interpretation is get six gallons. So maybe one last.
This qualifies in that is this male humor, but as I checked various family humor, one family had this, their family joke was
these two people that were drinking outside and they were apparently sent outside the bar, and they're arguing out there
and one says it's B-R-O-O-O-O-M. And the other is saying no, it's B-A-R-O-O-O-M. And some guy is walking by and
says it's right there on the sign B-A-R-R-O-O-M, bar room. And the guys walks on and he says that guy doesn't know what
we're talking about, we're arguing about how to spell the sound of an elephant passing gas.
[LAUGHTER] And that family should be pleased because there's actually a book out now.
It's a kids book on "The Gas We Pass." [LAUGHTER] So apparently the answer
is right in here. The answer is B-A-A-R-O-O-M-M, baaroomm. So now you all know.
It's like I went to this talk today and now I know how to spell the sound of an elephant passing gas.
But this family, and one of the things families can generate, so every house mostly has a broom closet, right?
So if at the dinner one of the kids expressed themselves in a certain flatulent way, they had to go into the broom closet for
three or four minutes. [LAUGHTER] Okay but maybe better to go to laughing yoga rather than
hearing about broom closets. Well, if you're not ready for a big laugh, what about just smiling?
And one of the, it's interesting, this is what I was talking about kids. Kids smile and laugh, the six-,
eight-month, year, two years, how many times a day? Hundreds, 400 times a day. So just a quick reflection,
yesterday how many of you laughed or smiled 400 times a day? It's like we got to get back in
touch with that. Where did we lose that? And so smiling, again you don't even have to laugh, but just
smiling is like can you list as many benefits just there are benefits of smiling. There's one, baseball players
smiling on their baseball cards. What? And they go back and track, those who were smiling lived an
average of seven more years than non-smilers. So come on, smile. Research on people who were
smiling in their high school yearbooks. The non-smilers-- smilers, were much more likely
to have a marriage that lasted. The non-smilers were significantly more divorced. So hmm.
And it's like what, is there something to smiling? For one, it boosts the immune system, lowers blood pressure.
I don't want to get everyone here obsessive but don't smile and go you know I'm releasing some endorphins.
Don't mind if I'm smiling, I'm getting a natural painkiller into my system or my serotonin is up and so on.
But remember smiling is contagious and the more you smile the more others do too. So if nothing else, that's one
of the homework assignments, go out and smile a little bit. All right, have we had enough of this serious stuff?
But the little sheet I gave you, and actually if someone had an extra sheet, I didn't leave one for myself, that would be great.
So this whole positive psychology thing, thank you, what are some of the things they started focusing on?
And one was just on personal strengths. And so I passed this out for you to just take a look and for you
to quickly reflect where do you think you fall. If there are 24 strengths, make your own personal list.
What do you think are your signature strengths? And they're going to be very different for everyone in the
room. But whether you're focused on being open-minded, loving of learning, courage, being
valorous or integrity. There's a whole range and on the flip side of this is the website where you can actually go and
take, they call it the values and action. And it takes about 20 minutes. A lot of different questions and
then you get your ranking of your 24 signature strengths in which order. And one of the things about
strengths, they don't say if you've got a list what are you going to pay attention to? The top five or maybe those
bottom five? Oh, I should strengthen these bottom five ones. And they're real strong
encouragement is no, concentrate on the top five. And what do you do by concentrating?
Just thinking about them from day-to-day and going off and enacting those. So if, we'll talk about
gratitude, but if, fairness, just paying attention to your day and treating people, particularly fairly.
And one of the things they encourage don't just do the regular old things, but let's be creative now and do something
with that strength slightly differently than you have in the past.
Creativity is right up there. Bravery, I don't know, how do you use bravery creatively? And vitality.
Again, there's a number of them that jump out and so take a look which ones click with you. Do a little test of your sense
and go ahead and take the values and action test on the website. One of the other things they really encourage in this
positive psych movement is called random acts of kindness. And someone was pointing out, I guess it's a little play on the
word that is unfortunately from how many years ago, the random acts of violence and so this is a flip.
So they don't have to be random but just thinking, and here's more homework, I'm not sure when you're going to meet again that
you'll turn these in next week, no, but to go off and do three to five random acts of kindness per day.
And, again, random acts are just whatever, and I'll ask my class and they have to go off and do them, just coming up with very
interesting things. They can be as minor as opening the door for someone or smiling at someone.
But they can be volunteering, helping someone that seems to have a heavy package. One of the things that comes up
a lot is leaving a large tip. As a cheap fellow, it's like it's past 15% but just leaving like a, for a minor thing just
leave a nice tip. But one of the things people talk about is going through a drive-thru restaurant
or whatever and paying the car behind for their lunch. And apparently it's not totally uncommon for people to do that
like driving through a toll zone and paying the toll for the person behind you. Again, is it significant?
It's a nice little thing to do. And it's just to get oriented toward doing nice things. Helping a biker with a flat
tire. So anyone have any great ideas real quick of random acts of kindness?
Think about that a little bit. And really, three to five a day. It's not like a big, big thing. So another area that really is
like absolutely nothing new except someone is actually saying we should look at this instead of just having it in the
background: gratitude. So a number of years ago I went to a workshop, and Bob Emmons is a psychologist, and he actually
was in the same program I was in down in University of Illinois except he was there probably 20 years after me but he just gave
this presentation. And it's like holy cow, this is the best thing I've ever heard. It's just very engaging and
really to think about, of course gratitude's been around forever but really thinking about and being thankful for things that
are going on throughout your day. So gratitude, the inner sense of appreciation for some benefit
received, an affirmation of the goodness in one's life, and the recognition that the source of this good lie at least partially
outside yourself. One of the real challenges in our lifestyle or in generations is like we deserve this, right?
It's a beautiful day, you deserve that. You can complain about the bad ones.
But being grateful, it's great for your mind and your body. And just take a moment to reflect, hmm when was the last
day I have been so thankful for? And there's something about, and one of the things that he's done plenty of research on this,
keeping a gratitude journal. And interesting and some of the first stuff was working and students.
And he had the one group had to keep a gratitude journal. The other group kept their hassles journal.
All the little annoyances of the day and so on. And then there was a placebo group.
And so how does that work out? And it's like, hmm, those people when the gratitude journal, their mood lifts, and
surprisingly enough their grades even lift. It just picks up their sense of self and appreciation, and it's
like a lot of exercises or things you have to go do, it's like how easy is this just to be thankful.
So it's an easy one to promote and so on. What are the challenges to gratitude?
Sense of entitlement like I deserve all of this, right? I deserve this beautiful day. Distractions, being too busy,
and sense of deserving everything because I already worked so hard for this. But I gave you that big long
list for the benefits of humor. Here's, again it's the same and it's not that someone with opinion, they've done research
on this and just noticing the differences between the gratitude groups and other groups.
Increasing optimism. Somehow they end up exercising. Why would keeping a gratitude journal lead you to get into
exercise? But apparently it has that benefit. They feel better, physically,
and they feel better about their lives in general. They end up feeling less lonely and isolated.
Have more high energy, positive moods, greater sense of well-being, and a greater sense of being connected with others.
And just like with that exercise and some of these other things, they sleep better. Hmm.
Just being thankful leads you to better sleep. I don't know if anyone's got sleep issues out there, just be
thankful and you'll sleep better. Lessens negative emotions and in general resentment and regret
starts dropping and happiness increases by 25%. So a nice, easy, you want to be happier, just start keeping that
gratitude journal. Helps cope with illness. A group with neuromuscular disease did a 21-day gratitude
intervention and their symptoms greatly reduced and they showed improvement. So some of the things you have
to go do can be hard but this is on your homework list. Try that gratitude journal and you'll be in that group with the
moods just go up. And hopefully you're already all in a good mood but even there, you're in a good mood, you'll be
in that much better mood. And one of the things, and this can be a little bit of challenge that they'll really encourage
but I encourage you to do this, so just keeping a journal thinking, okay, who do I really feel like I want to thank for
something and writing a thank you, a gratitude letter. We all write or are great with writing thank you notes, thanks
for the present, thanks for this or that, but actually what they encourage is write out, keep it less than a page but really a
thorough thank you to somebody and then go laminate it and go say to that person you want to get together and go and read it
to them. And it's like what? And the students are very hesitant.
Tell them what? Sending them things is nice enough or just saying thanks. But there is research really
promotes this that it makes everyone very thankful and happy that they've done it. So I encourage you to think
about that. I won't make it official homework here but think about writing a more elaborate thank
you note to someone that's been important in your life.
Okay, so it's funny that even in the positive side of things they have a little contest between which is a more important.
The authentic happiness folks, they encourage just keeping a journal at night on what's made you happy during the day and
what was behind what made you happy. So is it better to keep a happiness journal or a gratitude
journal? So I encourage you don't worry about which one is slightly better.
Do either one. Do them both. And, again, in terms of how much research, do you need to do it
seven days a week? They start calculating three, four, five times a week is okay. Although it makes a lot of
sense. It's a nice habit. When I work with students that have sleep difficulties one of
the things I'll encourage it's a nice way to start your down time before sleeping, spend five minutes thinking about the
things you appreciate. Just a few things before we start wrapping up here. Exercise, music, meditation, we
can go on, there's so many different things, eating right, sleeping right, and I'm sure hopefully you've had people talk
about those kind of areas. And it's like, hmm, hopefully you have. Eating right can be so easy and
yet most of us would say but I don't quite do that or I do too much sugar, I do too much processed foods and so on.
But I won't give a lecture on that. So exercise, and it's a challenge but there's been more
focus on exercising just in the last, again there's been exercising around forever but as you probably notice just going
down the street you see a lot more people running these days or on bikes or just moving in some way.
So exercise has really picked up. One of the nice things, there's actually some research,
exercising is a great antidepressant. So someone that's just down and sort of sluggish and just not
really majorly depressed but probably down, they've even done research with things where there's been significant
depression and so on. And compared to with antidepressants. And where some of the research
in general shows the antidepressants have this quicker spike but that the people that keep running or
exercising aerobically end up in the longer run feeling more positive and reducing their depression.
And why would exercise, where does it fit in? Exercise encourages the growth of new brain cells.
It's like, what? Going out for a run is going to work on your brain? And the answer is yes.
And one of the things I like in my little class, it boosts your BDNF. How are your BDNF levels?
Anyone out there? The BDNF is your brain derived neurotropic factor, which plays a role in the growth of new
brain cells. It's like at whatever age, you want your brain to keep growing. And one way is exercise is going
to make my brain grow? But it apparently has a nice positive affect in that direction.
It improves mood. As I said, one of the best antidepressants. Also reduces anxiety.
Improves sleep. Helps your immune system. Reduces weight. Increases the duration of one's
life. And also increases your resistance to fatigue. It's like, wait a minute,
shouldn't this make me more tired? If I go out doing whatever for a half hour a day, is that going
to make me more tired? And the answer in the long run, no it boosts your resistance to fatigue and gives you more
energy. So it's like, and it's just funny to read the different recommendations about what
exercise, anyone out here have recommendations? Aerobic seems to be the slight leader.
So whether that's running, walking, swimming, biking. And the walking it's like you don't have to run but they
really encourage 20 to 30 minutes of movement a day becomes very valuable. And this one guy writes
badminton. It's like do you have some friends that want to play badminton.
So think of all the possibilities but do the ones, and again doing like the walking, running, swimming it's
hard to have conversations but the other things, biking or running or walking, you can do with people and to help break
things up it becomes very nice to have lots of conversation and try and throw in a few humor. A lot of those conversations
have a humorous background to them. So you're laughing and walking at the same time.
You're getting two credits for the price of one there. And one of the actually great things and I really discourage
people spending too much time spinning indoors or whatever. It's like get outdoors. On the list of, I've got another
list I was going to copy, but the list of things that promote thriving and one of them is being outdoors.
So to do that exercise, and whether it's exercise or just an easy walk or just going and sitting on a bench and looking
around appreciating that outdoors, appreciating nature and being thankful for that good nature, it just boosts your mood
and just everything about your body starts feeling better. So I really encourage that. Things like music, exercise
and music, and one of the things I encourage not connecting but if you are walking and you see people running by, how many have
that little thing that's in their ear? And it's not bad, it's better that you're out, but I really
discourage it. It's like get out and enjoy the nature, not like carrying some music along.
But music, is the music a health thing? And it can be and part of, one of the things we'll wrap up with
in a little bit about meditation and so on, but music, and most people, unfortunately, it's background.
You're cooking or eating dinner and you've got music playing in the other room and so on and it's great, but I encourage you,
how many you have just sat for 20 minutes with you and music. A lot of times in a live performance you're paying
attention, and that's one thing that makes it great. But a lot of times otherwise music is just in the background.
And so I encourage you all to take a moment, 20 moments, 20 minutes or so or even five minutes, 10 minutes, and put on
some music and just sit and absorb the music. Really attend to it, to the words, just to the sound,
the rhythm, and so on. It has a great meditative quality and quieting effect for you.
So that's the next thing, meditation. I think that Richard Davidson gave a talk here in the fairly
recent past, and it's like he's a local psychologist that has done research internationally on the benefits of meditation.
And I noticed there's a meditation room here, and it's like meditation, meditation, it's like hmm.
It also has been around forever. But one of the things that's become real clear is the benefit of meditation is striking how it
opens a whole, or it doesn't open up a whole other section of the brain but it really invigorates different sections
of the brain than our usual. How many, most of us, unfortunately, that verbal side of the brain, that chatter,
chatter, chatter, chatter, that side of the brain is so well developed. It's that other side that needs
a little growth. And I know among students, and probably among you all too, it's like I don't have time to sit
for 15 minutes quietly. Some people do meditation for not 15 minutes, they do it hour, two hours, three hours, some
people do it for months. It's like hmm. But there's something to it so I encourage people to start with
just that 15 minutes. Just quietly. How many different forms of meditation are there?
I actually discourage people getting on the Internet but I say get on the Internet and Google meditation, and you'll
come up with thousands and thousands and thousands of different variations of meditation.
But there's like a hundred different forms of meditation and one that, well there's lots of different forms but
essentially what they core down to is just slow, deep breathing focusing your breathing. So I encourage people just for a
minute while I'm up here distracting you but just to take four or five slow deeper breaths.
And just to focus. And one of the things they do is really focus on the sensation like just as you breathe in
focusing sensation within your nose. We're breathing all day and yet most of us don't think about and
notice, unless your nose is sort of stuffed up or something, you don't notice the sensation of breathing in and then the
slightly different sensation as you breath out. And to do that, I'll encourage you to taking three or four
deeper breaths just to get you started and then get into a relaxed position. Back to the smiling, one of the
things that's a real strong meditation thing is smiling meditation. It's like hmm.
So even while you're just sitting there, just put that smile as you're focusing on your breathing and just have a slight
smile. And some of them will actually say and then think about your third eye up here and have that
smile. And that gets a little bit extreme. Just focus on your personal,
slight smile. Then they'll point out that various historic figures, if you look at them, they've got just a
little smile. So it doesn't have to be a big, whole laughing smile. Just a little smile.
One of the other forms is when people, once they do it they sort of enjoy it. I don't know if everyone here
would but humming meditation. So that on your exhale you just do a little hum. So it's...
[HUMMING] Let's have one big hum here. [HUMMING]
And there's something that's just relaxing. You feel more vibration through your body and so on.
So it has a nice feel to it. And so I encourage you to do some humming meditation after you focus on your breathing with
a smile. And you can see all this data, but do it for a couple weeks and keep your own data.
Does this work for me? So, again, I'm giving you lots of homework here. And maybe one more homework,
or one more thing. Singing, sort of like if you're doing that good humming you want to take it any step further and
do a singing. But actually, again, there's people that really encourage this.
And it doesn't have to be when anyone's around because they might not put that in their gratitude book.
It's like I had to hear so and so singing the other day. [LAUGHTER] But it livens your body again.
So you got a favorite song that you're walking on the street, belt it out a little bit. And it has just positive, again,
sort of relaxing, gets your whole body involved, engages you, meditative, boom. All right, so again I keep
apologizing for giving you homework. But here are your homework assignments now.
Five daily random acts of kindness. The gratitude journal, listing three good things that happened
and why. Savoring, and this sort of, in terms of the gratitude journal, but at least once a day enter
flow which is sort of a moment you're just savoring and you're in the moment. And, again, it's like when are
those? They can be as minor as you want but whether that's taking a shower.
And whenever I think about that it's like showers can be so nice but most of you often hurry through that shower.
So have a meditative, mindful, flowing shower. You hope it's flowing. [LAUGHTER]
And just enjoy that shower. Or, again, having an apple or whatever and enjoying that. How many of us get into the
habit where we eat and we're talking and we're zipping along, but to pay attention to the food that you're eating.
And so to eat healthy food, that's the other assignment. Eat some good healthy food. 30 minutes of continuous
movement five times a week. Enhancing your bioenergy by being in nature with the sun. Meditating and having a good
laugh. Engaging in humor with friends and family. And so take on the motto
live, love, and laugh. So go do all those things. Did you take those down? And we'll have that report card
coming up. Hopefully you get your own report card. Try all the things.
I really do encourage and you'll find your mood and your energy and your everything picking up. So I've tossed many, many things
out here.