Our world we live in is so serious. It’s so busy and repetitive. Respect is something that fades more and more each year and words such a bullying, cyber trolls, depression, anxiety and the like are frequently thrown round like a rag doll. How did we get to this point?

In my opinion, good old-fashioned laughter isn’t used enough anymore. Life is so busy now (which is hard to avoid) but due to all the hustle and bustle we all live each day, people forget to stop breathe, smile and LOL! Shop assistants aren’t as friendly or helpful as they use to be and when I go for a run in the morning I always lift my head to say good morning to people just to be faced with them eyeballing the ground. If you ask my mother, she would say – “but you’re to the other extreme love….you’d talk to anyone and laugh at anything!

All I know is for me, laughter is a good dose of medicine. It’s great for the soul. It can turn a mood right around. It can turn a bad day into a good one. It can get your mind in gear to tackle the harder obstacles in life. I still remember the week we painfully sat with my precious nana, while she was slowly drifting away, we still had moments of laughter in the room. It wasn’t disrespecting the moment at all. We knew that nana could hear us and she would have wanted that as nana loved to laugh. She battled Parkinson’s for many years before she passed away and I think her ability to laugh right to the end contributed to her long jevity.

I’m so lucky that I am surrounded by many people who I can have a good laugh with. My husband and I after 17 years still laugh together every day. When we have get togethers with my family, there is always fun and laughter echoing through the house. I particularly laugh with my mum and sisters and I have many friends who I share laughter with as well. I love that my kids make me laugh every day. They all have such funny little characters and a child’s laughter is like music to my ears.

I find myself laughing wherever I go….I laugh at work, in the school yard, at the grocery store, at the television, at things on Facebook and Instagram, with my specialists and doctors – most importantly I can laugh at myself! My life is far from perfect and I face some hard days, this is when I draw on laughter the most and watch an episode of Friends or look at photos that make me laugh. I always say if I didn’t laugh I’d cry!

Today’s catch up with my two oldest dear school friends was a classic example of how laughter is good for the soul. A common denominator of our friendship is laughter. We use to laugh so loud and hard at school people would think we were nutters. I still vividly remember a trip we took to Sydney we spent the week laughing so much our stomach muscles were sore. But whenever I walk away from my gals, I always feel happy and uplifted. We don’t get to catch up as often as we’d like, but when we do we have a lot of laughing to catch up on and that we do!

I’ve been through and watched a lot of people in my life go through heartache. Life is too short not to laugh. Life is too precious not to enjoy it. If people would relax just a little, not be so serious and laugh more often, maybe just maybe our world wouldn’t be filled with so much crime and hatred, instead more love and happiness!

Really – laugh….it’s good for the soul!