Children

“Leroy, your article is late. Why?”

I can make all sorts of excuses for why this is late. But I’d like to spare you all the excuses. I don’t like making excuses for my shortcomings. Any sort of rationale I offer will sound like an excuse

“I was busy last night. I couldn’t write. I didn’t have a topic. I wasn’t thinking about it. It slipped my mind.”

All those can be reasonable excuses, but instead I offer an apology. Sorry.

Now that the unpleasant moment is out of the way, I’d like to offer you three ways to optimize your life today.

1) Avoid time travelling

The past problems are behind you. While they may influence who you are and what you stand for, they do not matter. No amount of energy spent can change the past, the relationships, struggles, turmoil and anguish.

Time travelling only has negative effects.

“But Leroy, what if I only think about positive moments?”

Speaking for myself – and I’d like to think it’s the same for the general population – my brain usually focuses on my mistakes/problems. Unless, I focus on the positive in my past, it usually centered on the negative.

Instead, live now. I had a lot of problems in my past, but at this current time, in this current moment, nothing is wrong. That’s a good feeling to have. I have energy, focus and happiness with that thought.

I implore you focus on now.

2) Avoid the news

The news is filled with so much negativity, gossip and drama. Personally, I do not need any extra fuel to my fire. Most news is reported by very bad reporters who are encouraged to use scare tactics to keep you in submission and slavery.

While it is incredibly important to stay informed of current issues, in my opinion, mainstream media is not a suitable outlet. It’s biased and often depicting a one-sided story.

The majority of news is a downer. I propose looking at news from different categories (science, (green) technology, business, etc.) Focus on positive aspects of the news such as breakthroughs.

3) Ask questions

Children have a crap-load of questions. You can assume one of two things: Children are stupid or children are smart.

If you assume children ask a lot of questions because they are stupid and know nothing, I’d like to humbly disagree with you.

I think children ask multiple questions because they know nothing, but want to know more. Questions are the foundation of learning. Questions are how children learn.

As adults, we don’t ask enough questions. As self-entitled adults we think we know it all. We think that help isn’t necessary.

“Everyone you will ever meet, knows something you don’t.” –Bill Nye

Question everyone and listen avidly. Everyone goes through different experiences in their lives and can offer varied responses. I will ask more questions everyday.

There are many other ways to optimize your life. If you want more of this, please leave a comment below and I’ll definitely write another article on it. Additionally, I’d like to invite you to leave specific topics that you would like me to cover for future posts.

Be bold, be free, and love on.

I recently began a practice where I watched stand-up comedy every single day. It wasn’t something I really considered important or practical, but it was something I enjoyed.

I constantly searched for new standup specials: Louis C.K. Gabriel Iglesias, Kevin Hart, Dave Chappelle, John Pinette, Katt Williams, etc.

I laughed very hard. Every single day I inserted a reason to laugh without even realizing it. As children we laugh about 300 times a day. As an adult, that number is reduced to a meager 7 times.

How did we go from 300 to 7? Did we cross some bridge of tears and now here we are: Mindless drones that wake up, go to work, participate in office politics, watch Breaking Bad, and then go to sleep and die?

Laughter is really hard as an adult. It must be, right? Going from 300 to 7? There must have been some sort of life-changing traumatic event that occurred between childhood and adulthood.

We need to get back to our childhood roots. We need to laugh more. Here are some the reasons why we don’t laugh and the activities that will help:

A) Play

As children we spend all day playing. We go to school and have about 2 hours of playtime between recesses and lunches. Then after 3PM it was all systems go and my friends and I would play until dark.

All the play was squeezed out of everyday till there wasn’t anymore time. That cycle continued every single day.

Every day, from now on, I will play.

B) We drink alcohol

Drinking alcohol can be a fun time. I don’t want to be a downer or a hypocrite. I drink alcohol sometimes. It’s a part of being social.

For a short time, it helps loosen inhibitions and there are a variety of reasons (sex) why someone would want to participate. But the truth is that alcohol is a depressant.

When you wake up from a night of drinking, you feel slightly more depressed than your baseline of depression. Then, you go to a shitty job (because work sucks), filled with other depressed medicated people.

Then we feel like we’re in a loop, trapped and struggling to reinvent ourselves. Reduce your drinking to a few times a MONTH (if that) and see how you feel.

C) We are afraid to look stupid

It’s interesting that children get embarrassed about some things. But as adults we monitor ourselves constantly. The feeling is multiplied ten-fold when we reach adulthood.

You’re judged by your looks, opinions, and what we do moment-by-moment. We wear the right uniform to work. We say the right things. We categorize ourselves in the correct groups, never falling out of the line for fear of scrutiny from our peers.

Kids don’t worry about these things on a daily basis. They jump for joy, dance in public and CRY. As adults, we can’t cry when we don’t get our raise or promotion.

At night, speaking for myself, I ponder what I did wrong, what people thought of me, what I wrote, and what I said. I replay my day, totally squandering the opportunities to have fun and laugh.

“Be who you are and say what you think because those that mind don’t matter and those that matter, don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss

D) Adults have to clean their washrooms

We have responsibilities and priorities. We have to worry about money and life and sex and taking out the garbage. It isn’t fun not being able to handle our responsibilities, which inevitably happens at least once or twice in life.

You feel like killing yourself and crying and then medicating yourself to feel better, which makes it incredibly hard to laugh.

Although laughter is more of a cure for endless responsibilities.

E) Fresh Prince became Walter White

When I was a kid the best show on TV was watching Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It was filled with wholesome laughs and pressing family matters demonstrated by Will Smith.

Then TV shows became about “friends” living in lavish apartments with no ‘real’ problems except for who is sleeping with whom.

Now the ‘best’ TV shows are about meth dealers who kill people and medieval beheadings (spoiler alert).

These shows make it hard to insert laughs in your day. There are a lot of funny shows on TV such as: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Family Guy, Arrested Development, Seinfeld, Brooklyn 99, and Simpsons.

Some of those are no longer on air, but you’re already on the Internet (reading this) so start streaming. Start with those and if you want to add to the list in the comments, I’d be eternally grateful.

F) Get some funny people

Spending time with good people is always a surefire way for more laughs. Recently, I’ve been hanging out with my neighbor (I know, I’ve mentioned her a lot, but bare with me).

She’s incredibly funny and easy to talk to. There hasn’t been a moment with her that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed. She provides some quality side-splitting laughs and one of the few that remains consistent.

Spend some more time with your friends. Set aside some time each day to hang out with someone that makes you laugh.

G) Get some fast laughs

With YouTube and High Speed Internet, quick laughs are only about 15 seconds away. Here’s what I’ve watched over the past couple days:

Speaking for the current moment in time, I still feel like I am not quite up to 300 laughs a day. I think about too many things a day. Ideas, what I’m going to write next, my goals and aspirations, which leaves very little time for laughter.

I have to learn how to take my 50,000 thoughts a day to 15,000 so I have more time for funny thoughts and laughter. Slowly I will work on it. How many times do you laugh per day? Insert more laughs into your day and grow happier.

Be bold, be free, and love on.

3 Ways to Optimize Your Life

Where Did All The Laughter Go?