How humor can contribute to wellbeing

Featuring David Granirer, Counselor

Video Title: How humor contributes to wellbeing Duration: 1 minute, 28 seconds

Well, in terms of helping people heal and prolong their lives, the way it works is that when you’re healing from an illness, to have a hopeful attitude.

Erich Fromm says that we’re born with hope, but that we can tend to lose our hope as we go through life, but that when we laugh and play, we feel more hopeful. Think about it. When you’re laughing and playing, you usually feel more hopeful and positive for the future.

So they did this study where they tested 126 men who had had a first-time heart attack, and they tested them all for their levels of hope. They followed them for eight years. What they found was that, in that eight-year time span, the bottom 25, the least hopeful, 21 out of 25 had died, whereas the top 25, the most hopeful, only 6 of those had died.

So there seems to be something about having a hopeful attitude which is stimulated by our sense of humor, that does something really positive for our health. I think what we can also say is that when you’re hopeful for the future, you tend to take better care of yourself, you eat right, you go to the gym, you do all those things that you’re supposed to do.

So we really need our sense of hope and our sense of humor when we’re recovering from any sort of illness. In order to explore this further, if you’re seeing a counselor or a psychologist, ask that person for advice and what they think of humor, and for some ideas of how you can get more humor in your life to create some positive outcomes.

Presenter: Mr. David Granirer, Counselor, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Counselor