Stock up on humour and laugh as often as you can.

Making space for whatever cracks you up will free you from resenting others for not sharing your taste. Laughing is healthy because it stimulates endorphin. Real laughs are what it takes to trigger the chemical. You have more power over your laughter than you may think. Here are three things you can do it give yourself the gift of laughter. 1. Stock up on funny stuff: We stock up on healthy snacks to avoid yielding to junk food, and in the same way, you can stock up on comedy to avoid yielding to gloom. It may seem wrong for laughter to need advance preparation, but once a bad mood strikes, you are not motivated to shop for comedy. And even if you look, everything you find may seem 'not funny'. So take time to gather funny stuff on a good day, so it will be ready on a bad day. Store your humour in an easily accessible place so you'll have it in times of need. Stock your phone with comedy before a medical treatment or a difficult challenge at work. Buy yourself tickets to a comedy performance to have something to look forward to after a trying time.

You will help your brain shift its focus from negative to positive. 2. Prioritise your taste in humour: When I go to my local improve theatre, I laugh very hard, so I want to share it with friends. But I've often found that friends don't like it, and that can ruin it for me. And, truth be told, I don't like many of the humorous movies and performances I've been invited to. So I've learned that humour is individual. If you want to laugh, you have to make time for what you like. You don't need to justify your taste. You don't need to excuse your indulgence in your own sense of humour. We can accept our individuality and give ourselves permission to honour it. If...