Who Told You That You Were The Center Of The Universe?

Astronomer-mathematician Ptolemy (85-165) devised a theory of planetary motions which holds that the earth is at the center of the universe. The sun, moon, and planets revolve around the earth in the Ptolemaic universe. This notion was accepted for approximately 1,500 years. More on this in a moment...

I see more and more people each day who suffer from unhealthy levels of stress. Whether suffering from sleeplessness, weight gain, mood changes, hair loss, worry, agitation, or any other of the myriad symptoms commonly associated with stress, stress-related illness and suffering is at an all-time high in America and growing every year. Luckily for you, my work with the powerful natural medicine of humor has uncovered the culprit behind your unhealthy stress symptoms, as well as the solution to simple stress management.

My medical practice, involving decades of work with chronically and fatally ill patients, has clearly identified the cause of our painful stress symptoms - seriousness. Seriousness means taking yourself too seriously; seriousness means you are taking responsibility for the things for which you're not responsible (the results, or outcome, of your footwork) and, consequently, you're positioning yourself incorrectly as the "center of the universe." Seriousness causes so much pressure that stress management, which I will show you how to perform in this article, becomes impossible.

The antidote for your seriousness, and your foundation for healthy stress management, is the natural medicine of humor. Humor's incredible power is harnessed to maximum impact through my unique Fun Factor prescription. Based upon my Fun Commandments, which were forged in unison with some incredible patients of mine, my Fun Factor prescription is capable of producing such profound positive change to your health and personal success that you will soon have people whispering, "Is she always happy?"

• Step One: Laugh with Yourself
  
  My first stress management Fun Commandment is: Laugh with Yourself. This Commandment is not about humiliation or self-denigration, it is the ultimate in self-respect because it teaches you to appreciate your "perfect imperfection" and find gentle amusement in your foibles. And, when it comes to stress, there is plenty of amusement to be found which will greatly aid your stress management.
  
  Here's the first amusing thing about your stress: you can't live without it, yet too much is bad for your health. Like many of the essential things in life: we need a certain amount of stress to survive, yet too much can kill us. Like water, for example. We die if we are without water for more than a few days, but submerge us in water and we die a lot sooner.
  
  Without stress, also, we might not eat. Hunger is a form of stress our body needs occasionally to remind us we need food. Stress causes the adrenal glands to work. Athletes would not perform at their best without stress-induced adrenaline. Every activity causes a certain amount of stress. So does inactivity. In fact, to be completely stress-free we would have to be dead - not a highly recommended stress management technique.
  
  As you learn to laugh with yourself you will become like an athlete - who can have fun running the mile or the marathon and still turn in peak performance. In fact, laughing with yourself even enhances performance. Too much seriousness can tighten muscles through negative tension which, of course, counteracts the wonderfully effective stress management power of this Fun Commandment.




• Step Two: Make Sure You Are Motivating Yourself With Fun, Not Fear
  
  Step two in my Fun Factor stress management formula is not based on an actual Fun Commandment, per say. Motivating yourself with fun rather than fear, however, is a crucial step to allowing your commitment to laugh with yourself to fully impact your healthy stress management.
  
  Which brings us to the only true choice you have in life. Will you be inspired by fear or by fun? There is only one choice regarding our health, wellness, and fitness - fear or fun. It all boils down to that. It is your option and responsibility to choose one or the other.
  
  We live our lives as though every day was an emergency; as though a bear is chasing us all the time. This is unfortunate for three reasons:
  
  
  
  1. Of all the stress management techniques I know, this is the absolute worst because it only increases our stress! It reduces the effectiveness of humor's natural medicine to zilch.
  
  
  
  2. We now know that such a constant state of "wariness" or agitation breaks down our coping mechanisms over time. It is impossible to sustain the fear-based behavior without breaking down or burning out.
  
  
  
  3. A more pernicious error occurs. We begin to thing that the avoidance of whatever we fear is the same as having fun. Joy becomes synonymous with the avoidance of fear.
  
  
  
  
• Step Three: Tell the Truth
  
  The final step in your Fun Factor stress management formula is a Fun Commandment, Tell the Truth. This Commandment refers more to self-honesty than it does "cash register" honesty; getting in the habit of telling yourself the truth will cement humor's powerfully positive effect over your stress. Your stress management becomes second nature when you are honest with yourself each day, because you can then immediately, easily, and simply apply steps one and two of my Fun Factor stress managment formula to your life.
  
  Telling yourself the truth, for our purposes, focuses on knowing when your stress levels are rising. As we noted in step two, everyday activities normally produce a baseline level of stress and this stress is usually alleviated by your daily routines (for example, when you experience the stress of hunger, you eat). Step three in my Fun Factor stress management formula teaches you to recognize the signs of unhealthy stress and take corrective action immediately.
  
  Here are some simple stress management techniques to apply when your self-honesty reveals rising stress levels:
  
  
  
  1. Start your day off in the shower singing at the top of your voice a nonsense song you make up that incorporates the idea that this is a glorious day and great things are going to happen to you in it. Can't sing? Good! Can't rhyme? Who cares? The words are for you alone. This is not a contest. Be as off-key as you need to be...unless you are Placido Domingo.
  
  
  
  2. Travel to work alone along the same boring route every day? Make up a game to play as you look out the window of your car, bus or train. For example, how many dogs will you see on the way to work?
  
  
  
  3. Have a routine job? One that you find boring? Does it give you stress symptoms, such as drumming your fingers or tapping your toes? Perhaps you need to introduce fun into your workday.
  
  
  
  4. Smile. You feel stressed? Smile. It is a simple activity, so simple that even infants can do it. Just for kicks, count how many times you smile in an hour. None, you say? Then this stress relief game is even easier for you, and more important than it is for those who smile all the time. (And you wondered how they didn't feel the same degree of stress that you do?)
  
  
  
  5. Recognize that stress is a choice. We can accept it and put up with it, and the damage it can cause our bodies. We can avoid it, but that could be a difficult choice if it means quitting the only job we know in a tough job market. That might easily create worse stresses. Or we can deal with it and defeat it.
  
  
  
  

Just as Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus disproved Ptolemy's earth-centered universe in the 16th century, so the natural medicine of humor disproves that you must suffer from being the center of your universe. Remove yourself from the pressure and stress a life where everything revolves around you...start using my Fun Factor stress management formula, and the rest of my Fun Commandments, today!

Cliff Kuhn, M.D.
The Laugh Doctor

The Natural Medicine of Humor
"Discover a unique, FREE, and incredibly powerful prescription created out of desperation by a (formerly) stressed-out Kentucky psychiatrist"

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