How To Avoid Asking The "Wrong Question"

Have you heard someone say that whether your bellybutton is an "innie" or an "outie" is determined by how a doctor ties off your umbilical cord? That's a myth started by author Ian Flemming. Flemming's famous spy, James Bond, muses about the special techniques practiced by French doctors which give French women perfect navels. I'll correct this myth momentarily...

Quite often, at a public gathering, someone approaches me with a variation of this query: "Doc, I'm trying to (insert a health or success goal here), but it's not working. What do I need to do differently?" I almost always respond the same way: "Boy, are you asking the WRONG question!" I'll reveal the right question shortly.

Focusing on what you "do" is a normal and common method of self-improvement. Unfortunately, that focus is the reason you are often, at best, not as effective as you'd like and are, at worst, spinning your wheels. If you're not careful, focusing on what to do differently, even with the best directions to guide your new actions, can be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic!

Forget about being funny!

The Fun Factor teaches extensively about Humor Actions, or Humor Activity. Humor Actions are where the rubber hits the road, where you physically manifest your humor skills. My patients have found that The Fun Factor's Humor Actions alleviate physical pain, overcome depression, motivate another round of challenging therapy, and inspire hope to boldly face the day with optimism!

My nonmedical clients find that the Humor Actions they learn from The Fun Factor guide loving family reconciliation, create physical energy that makes coffee unnecessary, lead to self-confidence that elicits admiring whispers and second looks, and inspire creativity and performance that open economic doors of prosperity. This is exciting stuff! Exciting enough to lead people to ask me at parties, "Doc, what should I be doing differently?"

But that is the wrong question!

What is the right question?

As wonderful as it would be to jump right in to building a glorious mansion by installing the cool, fancy, and expensive "extras," you know that you must first build your mansion's foundation. It is just as tempting to jump in and start to practice Humor Actions. After all, you want to experience those benefits NOW! But if you start with Humor Actions, you are working the process backwards.

You must start with Humor Attitude. You must begin your journey toward incredible health, happiness, and success by retraining your brain, by creating new beliefs. Our "get it done yesterday" society trains us to look for shortcuts. All successful people know, however, that your attitude is so much more important than your actions.

That's why Abraham Lincoln famously said, "If you gave me four hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first three sharpening the ax." That's why the right question to ask isn't, "Doc, what do I need to DO differently?", but "Doc, what do I need to BELIEVE differently?" Focus on your Humor Attitudes today, before you try even one Humor Activity!

By the way, it doesn't matter what the doctor does to a baby's umbilical cord. After a week or so, the part of the cord that remains attached to the newborn shrivels up and falls off. Whether the bellybutton will be an "innie" or an "outie" is randomly determined.

It matters greatly, however, whether you choose to focus on your attitude or your actions. There is nothing random about success; create a great Humor Attitude before employing proven Humor Actions. Rely upon The Fun Factor's focus on Humor Attitude to set a foundation upon which you'll build your mansion!


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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How To Be Happy Right Now...By Listening Very Carefully To Me

"One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our window today." Dale Carnegie, the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People and a successful person by any measure, said that. You know how true his words are, but I need to correct one thing he said. I'll explain shortly...

What are you waiting for? What is your excuse for not being happy today? I know the feeling well - you're looking forward to how great you'll feel about yourself, and how happy you'll be, as soon as you have enough time, money, success, possessions, etc. I know the feeling well because I was doomed to this pain on an almost daily basis. I'll explain how I escaped this fate in a moment.

Picture me...living each day with a vague unease that I am missing something. Dwelling on the missing things I "need" to be happy and worrying about how to get them. Worse still, having a general sense of dread that I will never get the things I "need" to be happy.

Does this ring a bell for you?

Yet it gets worse. Empathize with me growing steadily angrier and more resentful with each passing day because I'm not happy yet. I have a wife, a family, a great job, a nice house, cars, vacations, prestige, etc. I acquire each of these things with the "understanding" that my elusive happiness will finally arrive. Where is my happiness, dammit?!

Does that sound at all familiar?

Actually, it gets worse. My unease, dread, anger, and resentment only gets worse as my happiness remains forever "just ahead." I am soon experiencing depression, isolation, mood swings, and I am drinking to cover up my pain. I am not the happy, successful, well-known doctor, civic figure, husband, and father you see from the outside. What saves me from my personal hell? I'll tell you in a minute...

You're more fortunate than I. I didn't have The Fun Times newsletter to tell me that there is another way to live. I had to hit rock bottom before I found the answers sitting right in my backyard.

What was in my backyard? My patients, my worst-case, terminally ill patients, taught me how to turn my life around. While I was suffering, in the midst of everything a man could want, they were thriving with chronic illnesses and terminal diagnoses.

What did they teach me? The taught me about the amazing natural medicine of humor. And I, in turn, created a prescription which saved my life - and has changed the lives of hundreds since. The Fun Factor. The Fun Factor works for people in the worst of circumstances. And it also works for people like you and me, who don't have a terminal illness but still want help being more happy and less stressed.

Make sure you don't put off your happiness. Use my Fun Commandment, Listen Very Carefully, to provide yourself the tools, and ample motivation, to be happy today. Why does Listening Very Carefully work? This Fun Commandment makes it nearly impossible to look ahead because careful listening keeps you rooted in the moment. And this moment is where all the fun is!

Dale Carnegie, by the way, is a personal role model, but I must correct one thing he says. He calls your tendency to "put off living", your "human nature." He is wrong. Your human nature, or humor nature as I call it, is to live freely and happily in the moment. You learn to put off living as you grow up and are indoctrinated, by well-intentioned misinformers, into the ways of "serious" adulthood.

Do you ever seen a child put off living? Me neither! Reclaim your birthright. Don't put off a darn thing; remember to use The Fun Factor to be happy right now!


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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Stop Chasing Happiness with Your Hard Work, Work Hard Because You're Happy!

A middle-aged businessman sat dejectedly in my office.

" There's something wrong with me, Doc," he began hesitantly. "I have everything - money, power, a great family, and all the expensive playthings you could imagine. I expected to enjoy myself when I got to this point, but I don't."

"My life is a treadmill," he continued, "and I feel stuck on it. I golf regularly, go to the Bahamas twice a year, but nothing makes me happy like it should. I've worked hard all my life. I deserve some pleasure."

His eyes got misty. Embarrassed, he looked furtively around his chair. I'll finish telling you about his first visit in a moment…

My patient was making the mistake we all make when it comes to fun and recreation. We expect fun and happiness to be the "automatic" rewards of success. We set goals and work hard to achieve them. In the meantime, we accept the notion that our happiness is just around the next bend and will undoubtedly be reached with just a bit more hard work.

Our all-out pursuit of happiness takes its toll on us, especially when we notice that the fun and happiness we're chasing is like the proverbial brass ring - always out of our reach. So, we compensate ourselves with something called recreation. This is, in fact, why the concept of recreation was created in the first place. It's a socially endorsed periodic activity designed to "reward" us for the relatively joyless enterprise we call work. A reward we crave since our work mysteriously never delivers our fun and happiness!

Even the term recreation itself implies something is amiss; you don't need "re-creating," unless some part of the original "creation" is lost! But recreation has, unfortunately, become another "necessity" for busy folks who want to stay healthy, a protection from physical and mental burnout. All work and no play, it turns out, makes Jack and Jill sick people indeed.

Unfortunately, recreation too often represents one more "chore" on an already over-filled to-do list. What's more, the compensation we get from it is usually not sufficient to completely regain a healthy balance. Rarely are vacations long enough, and our weekends aren't free enough from responsibilities, to overcome our reluctance to return to the drudgery of our work.

Sadly, we realize that our efforts at recreation are usually as fruitless as the work from which we're escaping - neither effort is giving us the fun and happiness we really want. But, fortunately, there is a way to break this cycle. It involves correcting our mistaken idea that success "produces" fun. The truth is just the opposite - it is fun that produces success. Fun is what creates your good work, fun is not the result of it!

Guided by this truth, we can change our focus and look for fun in everything we do, especially our work. That is how the gentleman sitting in my office solved his dilemma. I taught him that fun can never really be postponed; we either have it in the moment or lose it forever. Once fun is lost, no amount of effort makes up for the deficit.

Here are the three steps my patient took that allowed him to finally find the fun and happiness he was always chasing:

1. He adjusted his attitude about fun
   
   He learned to recognize the fundamental difference between fun and funny. Funny is a behavior that evokes laughter. Fun is simply the willingness to find something positive in every moment, regardless of the circumstances. At times, funny can be out of place; fun never is.



2. He rediscovered his aptitude for fun
   
   We're all born with a natural affinity towards playfulness. He learned to "resurrect" his humor nature with certain self-disciplines, such as smiling more often, embracing the unexpected, and looking for the pony in every pile of manure.



3. He practiced effective fun tactics
   
   This step wasn't about telling jokes. It involved learning such tactics as
   accepting surprises as opportunities, not setbacks, and responding to others' ideas with "Yes, and…", instead of "Yes, but…"

By the way, during that first visit, my patient continued, "Where the hell's your Kleenex? You're a shrink, for God's sake. You ought to have a damn tissue around here."

"Do you want a new one or a used one?" I asked.

He looked at me sharply.

"The new ones cost extra," I added, keeping a straight face.

He was momentarily confused. Then he burst into a laugh, which lasted longer than my silly joke deserved.

"My God, that's the first good laugh I've had in a week," he said. "I used to laugh all the time."

That was just the beginning of his journey, of course, but once he began having more fun all the time, this man's recreation became a natural byproduct that added to his enjoyment, rather than a desperate effort to justify his hard work. And his hard work morphed into the natural outgrowth of his fun and happiness. Find your own fun and happiness by duplicating my patient's efforts and visit my website if you'd like a running start!


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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Get A "Thank You" Telegram From Your Heart (After Fifteen Minutes Of Humor)

Do you remember telegrams? (Am I dating myself?) Before email, when we wanted a message sent quickly we used a telegram. Did you ever wonder why Western Union wouldn't transmit exclamation marks in a telegram? The original Morse code alphabet provided for the exclamation mark, so Western Union could've included them in telegrams. I'll tell you the reason they didn't in a moment...

Dr. Michael Miller, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, announced some amazing research findings this week which you should know about. Of course, you are already devoted to the natural medicine of humor and my unique Fun Factor prescription. But Dr. Miller's research provides yet more concrete data to back up the amazing natural medicine of humor - as well as more data to persuade you to utilize my HA HA HA Prescription today for your greatest health. And I'll tell you about Dr. Miller's research after I do a quick review of my HA HA HA Prescription.

Those already intimately familiar with The Fun Factor know my HA HA HA Prescription well, but it bears a quick reiteration here. The third HA is an acronym for Humor Activity, the action you take to employ humor as your ultimate medicinal agent. Let me stress for those not as familiar with this prescription, the most important part of the natural medicine of humor is your attitude, not your actions. But Humor Activities are, indeed, essential as the final piece of the puzzle for your ultimate health and success.

You will recall that I advocate a minumum of fifteen minutes of laughter/humor/fun each day - although I have my patients perform thirty minutes a day (and recommend the same to you). Fifteen minutes of Humor Activity requires you to make a commitment to humor, to move it up in your hierarchy of daily activities and no longer relegate it to your "recreation" time. To help you do this, in The Fun Factor, I provide you with a lengthy list of simple, easy to implement, Humor Activity exercises. For that matter, you'll find lots of recommended comedy resources on my website so that you can easily surround yourself with all the Humor Activity necessary to get your fifteen (or thirty) minutes each day.

Dr. Miller's research team recruited 20 healthy volunteers to watch a segment of a very funny movie ("King Pin") and a very stressful movie ("Saving Private Ryan"). I'll skip the medical terminology and simply tell you that they found 19 of the 20 subjects watching a movie that caused laughter, recieved increased beneficial blood vessel relaxation. In contrast, Brachial artery flow was reduced in 14 of the 20 volunteers following the movie clips that caused mental stress. Dr. Miller's team said overall blood flow increased by 22 percent during laughter and decreased by 35 percent after mental stress.

The research findings led Dr. Miller to advise, as he presented his data to the Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology last week in Orlando, Florida, a combination of daily exercises with fifteen minutes of laughter each day for optimal cardiovascular health. Sound familiar? I'm glad to have the University of Maryland School of Medicine join our team; the data from Dr. Miller's study reinforces what we have long known. Daily Humor Activity makes us more healthy, happy, and resilient - all the ingredients necessary for success, by anybody's definition.

By the way, Western Union abolished exclamation points to prevent lawsuits, because it was very easy to cause an error during the transmission of a message with a lot of punctuation in it. But even if there were no technological problem behind it, exclamation marks would've been still been shunned. Western Union charged for punctuation marks as if they were words!

Put an exclamation mark on the amazing natural medicine of humor. Make sure you are incorporating a minimum of fifteen minutes of Humor Activity today. Play with your preexisting humor props and utilize my website to find some recommended comedy resources, your body will thank you for it!

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"

The Blog Directory

How To Change Your Life By Getting Rid Of Your "In Spite Of's"

Are you familiar with Rube Goldberg (1883-1970)? Rube was a cartoonist known for his crazy, complicated contraptions that performed the simplest tasks in the most ludicrously complex ways. His name has become an adjective describing the accomplishment of something simple through very complex means. More on Rube Goldberg in a moment...


Seriousness is a Rube Goldberg, by the way. Seriousness is an obtuse, time consuming, and supremely complex way to achieve things in your professional and personal life that would be done with less effort, greater effectiveness, and more aplomb using the natural medicine of humor. Allow me to elaborate


Using the natural medicine of humor to be healthier and more successful involves tapping into a ready and preexisting reservoir which is already abundantly present in your personal chemistry. That is the good news. But we must not underestimate the fact that using the natural medicine of humor also involves unlearning and divorcing ourselves from some deeply ingrained societal norms and teachings. Don't ever take for granted, no matter how well my Fun Factor prescription is working for you, that your commitment to fun will always be your innate, first choice when push comes to shove.


From your youngest days you have been taught that responsible and productive activity must be accompanied by seriousness. "Wipe that smile off your face," you were told - along with that old standby, "You think that's funny? I'll show you what's funny!" We have been indoctrinated, by well-intentioned people, that lightness, fun, and humor need to be relegated to our recreational time. The result of these incorrect teachings? An epidemic of seriousness in our nation, resulting in the largest number of stress symptoms and stress-related illnesses our medical community has ever seen.


Marshall Goldsmith, a preeminent executive coach and the founding director of the Alliance for Strategic Leadership, made some very cogent points recently that have great ramifications for you in this regard. Successful people like you, he said, are successful because you are doing a lot of things right (like using the natural medicine of humor). But successful people, he continued, are also successful in spite of some incorrect behavior that they hang on to (like getting serious).


You've undoubtedly adopted many behaviors from my Fun Factor prescription which have helped you create a personal and professional life more in line with your dreams and aspirations. But, because you have been as indoctrinated with societal beliefs mandating seriousness as the rest of us, you also carry some incorrect habits that you're succeeding in spite of. Identifying your "in spite of" habits can provide an incredible boost to your efforts to change your life with the natural medicine of humor.


Take a moment to think about how you're employing (and not employing) humor and fun in your life. Take time, right now, to create two lists:

1. How do you use humor to help you achieve successful personal and professional
   results?



2. In what ways, and when, are you still superstitiously clinging to getting serious?

The first list you created is a list of behaviors you're succeeding because of. The second list shows you behaviors you're succeeding in spite of. Do you want a simple and powerful way to make quick and impactful changes in your personal and professional life? All you have to do is increase the behaviors on your first list and decrease the behaviors on your second!


And do you want a simple and powerful way to fill your first list to bursting and shrink your second list to almost nonexistent? Just make sure you use my Fun Factor prescription to supercharge your work, family, and personal life today!


Rube Goldberg published nearly 50,000 cartoons in his 72 years of work and he had a profound effect on American comedy. As biographer Peter Marzio wrote, "For Americans, complex machinery has been ever present and ever growing, but few Americans until the arrival of Rube Goldberg saw it as a subject for comedy." Do yourself a favor and check out Rube Goldberg!


But, while you're enjoying the cartoons of Rube Goldberg, make sure you get rid of the "Rube Goldberg" in your life - seriousness. Use my Fun Factor prescription and the information on my website to make your personal and professional efforts simpler and more effective.


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"

The Blog Directory