Ohhhh… the dramatic music, the suspense, the cold death stares of “How dare your mother elope with my ex-boyfriend?”

Preview of Next episode screens on your TV: Jerry is driving on a rainy night, checked his phone, a text message from his mistress, you hear wheels screeching… The screen turns black and you hear a crash. You begin to think, will Jerry survive? Will this accident finally expose Jerry’s scandalous ways? He’s surely dead, but geez did he deserve this end? Yes, the cheating jerk? No, perhaps he is only human, and his mistress was the love of his life? People make mistakes all the time – they should be forgiven, no? Is this your favourite character? You begin to tear up at the thought of losing your friend, the one you had a soft spot for, and followed for 10 years. Your thoughts have consumed you… you start to feel annoyed, irritable, depressed perhaps?

Our mind, our perception of our reality, our very own narrator of our personal story, will give us different emotions depending on the narration of what we have experienced and observed. How we choose to narrate our life story and experiences can give us joy, grief, sadness, gratitude, love, increased resilience, acceptance and or absolute misery. Just for fun, Youtube “Sleepless in Seattle recut as a Horror Movie” for a hilarious example of this.

Rather ironically, we often view the days of our own lives through the same camera lens as “Days of Our Lives”. Sad events are made sadder by the way we cut them together in our mind’s film studio. The director blurs out the beautiful and inspiring backdrop of the frame. We green-screen in emotionally stirring memories that don’t even fit with the story like a bizarre product-placement of Pepsi-Cola-sadness.

Life will have sad events, but you pay the salaries of those that work at the film-studio. You get to choose the shows they make and how they are narrated. The next time you are pondering the unavoidably unfortunate, why not consider changing it up and looking at it through a different camera lens. Crying is stress relieving, but so is laughter and perhaps it’s time to tune into a good comedy. Laughter, brings joy and is contagious. When you choose to use humour and laugh, you begin letting go of the impossible expectation that life must somehow always be fair.

I suggest you get creative with your film-studio, it won’t be easy, but with practice it does get easier. When difficulty strikes, I often ask myself “where is the funny?”. Your story may sometimes feel like a television soap drama, but at least you can cast a new character for comedic relief.

In all seriousness, there’s some common sense behind the hilarity. We all know how good it feels to laugh; an alternative way to reduce stress; a fun, rewarding self-soothing mechanism we have all been born with. The problem is simply that people don’t reach for it when it is most needed. The next time you spill coffee on your shirt, your bank balance is running low, you fall over in public, you are sitting bumper to bumper in traffic, the train is running late; in those moments, I challenge, you to ask yourself, “where is the funny?”. Turn that moment into a cartoon, and if all else fails, plonk yourself in front of an actual screen and throw on an actual cartoon (they should never be reserved only for children).

I promise you, there’s always something new to laugh at, otherwise stand-up comedians would have been out of a job years ago.

A psychologist is a highly trained health professional and can assist with mental health conditions and general well-being and self-improvement. Make an Appointment Today