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"

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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"

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Follow Shakespeare's Lead - Although Not Always Funny, He Was Fun

You're familiar with the phrase, "there's the rub," meaning "there lies the difficulty"? It's usually used to describe a stumbling block in your path or the central dilemma. But while it's associated with Hamlet, did you know that this phrase was not coined by Shakespeare? I'll finish this thought in a moment...

Things that are funny are almost always fun. But things that are fun are not always funny. There's the rub. Most of us, I've found, confuse fun and funny...to our unfortunate detriment.

It's easy, and dangerous, to forget the distinction between fun and funny; when we focus on funny instead of fun we can quickly get discouraged because trying to be funny puts a lot of pressure on us. Especially when some of us are not naturally funny. Even if we are naturally funny, placing funny before fun is still a mistake because it causes us to prematurely focus on the outcome rather than the process of humor.

You see, funny is a result while fun is a process. Funny is an action, while fun is an attitude. Fun is virtually unrestricted and can be had almost anywhere at anytime, while funny has some very definite limitations. Since you can take an attitude of fun into any situation or circumstance, while being funny is sometimes inappropriate and unwelcome, is there any wonder that I am advocating fun over funny?

Here are three steps you can take right now to forget about being funny and start having fun:

1. Remember Your Fun. What games did you enjoy when you were 5 to 10 years old, when you were having fun naturally. Think of 10 specific examples of games you enjoyed and then ask yourself, "How many of them involved active imagination and physical movement?" I'll bet most of the games on your list involved both.



2. Plan Your Fun. Take the list you made in Step One and update each game to a version you might be able to play currently. Can you think of an adult version of hide and seek, tag, or playing with dolls? How about trying to avoid direct eye contact with your boss when she's looking for someone to work overtime this weekend, playing "phone tag," or trying on clothes at the mall? But those are my ideas -- see what you come up with.



3. Have Your Fun. Give yourself permission to have more fun and back it up with a commitment to have 15 minutes of fun each day. Why do you need a commitment to have fun? Because you are bucking years of incorrect indoctrination that fun should be reserved for recreation. You want the excellence which, research shows, fun creates so well.

The lesson is simple: you want the full benefit of humor's powerful natural medicine, so don't confuse fun with funny. They are definitely not the same thing. While it might be funny to give an elephant an enema, for example, I'm sure it's not fun! And now you know exactly how to lose your focus on being funny and get started having fun.

Shakespeare, by the way, didn't originate the phrase "there's the rub," he only made it famous. In Hamlet, Hamlet considers death as a way to end life's struggles and finally rest easily. But then he also realizes there would be a catch.

"To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause."

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1


Don't fall for the trap of trying to be funny instead of having fun. You'll put less pressure on yourself and you'll also feel the full measure of humor's incredibly powerful natural medicine.

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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