Happy Weekend, WG2E-Land!
Every once in awhile during your Indie Epub Journey, you gotta take a step back and check-in with your Happiness Quotient…in other words, when you divide out everything you’re doing to build your Indie Epub Empire, are those pieces making you one Happy Happy Camper? And why is that even important?
Here’s the fabulous scoop from one of our A-mazing WG2E Spring Hop Anthology Authors
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HAPPINESS IS CONTAGIOUS, YOU CAN CATCH IT FROM YOURSELF…
By Barbara Silkstone
Happiness is contagious and being able to laugh at yourself may be the best medicine of all. According to a recent study by Nicholas Christakis, a professor in Harvard University’s sociology department and co-author of a study of 4700 people in Framingham, MA, an extra chunk of money increases your odds of being happy only a little bit – notably less than the odds of being happier if you have a happy friend. And aren’t you your own best friend? If not, you should be.
Friends and even total strangers can affect your outlook. Studies have proven that your happiness can be colored by people you don’t even know, but even more so by how you perceive the world. How many times a day do you stop to laugh at yourself?
According to a recent article by Maria Cheng, AP Medical Writer: people pass on good cheer even to total strangers. The Framingham study found that transferred happiness is good for up to a year. I’m not sure how they tracked transferred happiness, but do keep a smile handy for yourself, at all times.
According to Ms. Cheng, happy friends were more important than happy spouses. Experts think people take their emotional cues from people who look like them. This is especially true of women. Happy friends of the same gender help your mood more than a happy spouse. Using that scenario, if you look in the mirror and see someone who looks like you, smiling back at you…you’ll feel happier!
The Farmingham study revealed that each happy friend boosts your chance of being happy by 9 percent. Having a grumpy friend decreases it by about 7 percent. This jells with what I learned in listening to the 527 men I interviewed for my book. When the interviewees talked about what attracted them to a women it was: Her smile, her laugh, her joyous nature. So…there we go!
A University of Maryland Medical Center study revealed the average blood flow typically increases 22% during and after bursts of laughter compared to a decrease in blood flow by 35% during mental stress. Laughter promotes increased immune system response, lowers blood sugar levels in diabetics, increases oxygen flow throughout the entire body and helps induce a state of relaxation promoting better sleep.
In my travels interviewing people of all ages, I have found that the happiest folks are those people who don’t take themselves too seriously. Being able to laugh at yourself is the best survival skill and a secret to a long life. That’s the reason I write, to laugh at the screwball challenges life as thrown at me. Learn to laugh at yourself and you will never cease to be amused.
The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland
There have been many times when my personal flubs have been so silly, I would step back and wonder if I might be channeling Lucy Ricardo. Silly things that made no sense, things that made me wonder how I got to be as old (oops – young) as I am. Silly things that helped me laugh at me. For example: Every Thanksgiving for twenty-plus years, I made “Chess Tarts” for family and friends. The basic recipe was simple, I just managed to complicate it to the extreme. The filling was a blend of nuts, raisins, sugar and butter. The pastry was the challenge. I made these tarts without the benefit of a tart pan. I had only an ancient cupcake tin. For the uninitiated, cupcake tins are twice as deep as shallow tart tins and really shouldn’t be used to bake tarts.
It would take me the better part of a day to suspend the pastry dough in the top half of every cup of the cupcake pan. I had used this arduous method for almost a quarter of a century. Why didn’t I just buy a tart tin? I would only think about purchasing the shallow tart tins once I was elbow-deep in the annual Thanksgiving baking process. I would make a mental note to myself: Buy a tart pan for next year. The day after Thanksgiving I would promptly forget the tart pan purchase.
The embarrassing part was that each year as I labored with the cupcake pan, it never occurred to me to take the easy way and lay the dough in the bottom half of the cups. I would engineer a suspended circle of dough into the top half of each and every cup. It took me hours of work aligning and securing the pastry for each dozen tarts. After twenty odd years of this frustrating process, I declared this would be my last tart baking session, the tradition was over. It was too much work. At that moment a circle of dough fell into the bottom of a cup and a light bulb went on somewhere in the back of my brain. I had been setting up the pastry the wrong half of the cupcake cups for almost a quarter of a century. I laughed long and hard thinking of all the hours I had wasted as I settled the dough in the bottom of the tins.
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Now that’s some LOL superfab advice, right?
And it’s exactly this kind of humor that Barbara brings to our WG2E Spring Hop Anthology
On Amazon
It’s Your Turn, WG2E-Land Peeps: Have you laughed at yourself today? And are you carrying that sense of humor and happiness into your Indie Epub Journeys?
The Best of The WG2E Indie Epub Journey Wishes — Barbara Silkstone
Connect with Barbara on Facebook and Twitter too!
Yes, I’ve laughed at myself today. I misread a sticker on a concertina file I bought. I thought it said £5 but it said save £5. I took it back to the shop, who kindly pointed it out to me. Duh. Should ‘ve read it properly. I do add a touch of humour to my books. Either with silly character names or funny events the characters do. Gentle warm humour, I call it.
I like that “gentle warm humour” approach, Julie!
It might well be part of my brand, DD.
Atta Girl, Julie!!!
I’ve always had a self-deprecating style of humor and in turn use that in my characters too! If you can’t laugh at yourself, you probably shouldn’t be laughing at others, right?
I actually use that laugh factor to help me determine when it’s time to move on from different aspects of our Indie Epub World too. In other words, if I’m not enjoying a certain piece of my journey anymore, then it’s time I seriously consider moving on.
That approach has always served me well and made life a series of LOLs.
Welcome Back to The WG2E, Barbara, and thanks for a great post!!!
Thank you, Barbara! Whenever I screw up, I remind myself that “If you can’t laugh at it, what good is it?”
Like yesterday, when I misread “promo” as “porno.”
Still LOLing.
LOL…it’s all about workin’ every corner you can, my friend! I call it Promo Ho-ing! So you were on the right track!!!
Yep. Great minds!!!! We ho’s have to stick together…
Hi, Barbara! Great post! I definitely believe in laughter. In fact, a while back there was a famous guy named Norman Cousins who supposedly included a daily regimen of the Marx Brothers movies in his treatment of a painful illness.
I laugh at myself and life’s silly situations all the time – it’s my default response!
Sometimes you just can’t help but shake your head and giggle.
Thanks for the great post, Barbara!
LOL, Barbara. I love your humor. Wendy and the Lost Boys is one of my fav chick lit books ever!
Thanks for the great post. And while I haven’t exactly laughed at myself today, I have groaned and rolled my eyes at myself when I told my boys not to break the spool when I meant they ought not to break the scale!
Thank you all. Now I really have to laugh at myself. I forgot I’d posted here yesterday. I was so excited about seeing Johnny Depp… not in person. I went to see Dark Shadows. I was deep in Depp and forgot what day it was. If I ever met him in person, I’d probably break down in tears.
Thank you for your kind comments. I keep a few comedy video favorites handy. I whip them out and crack up. It beats tickling myself. Have a fun day… laugh at yourself. You will do at least one silly thing today. I promise.