Please can I have your top tips for not taking life too seriously? What do you do that stops you getting serious and helps with happiness?

[WideWebWitch]

I am aware that one of my faults is that I can take life a bit too seriously. I do have a sense of humour, definitely, and I can say "fk it" and have blow outs involving skiiving off work/staying up late and stuff like that but I am aware that sometimes I need to lighten up and remind myself that life is supposed to be fun too.

What do you do to have fun and if you are similar, how do you stop yourself taking it all too seriously?

(I have mega stressful commute atm, which isn't helping, but even without that I know I sometimes can feel humourless.)

Any and all suggestions welcomed, thanks.

Get an ipod - fill it with favourite, upbeat (must be upbeat, no Smiths, Air or Leonard Cohen) and listen to it LOUD when you need to feel perky. I have been saved on serious days by a combination of Take That, Mika, Dolly Parton and the finale from Hairspray.

I try to see the funny side in things. It means reflecting on things rather than reacting. eg, You're stuck in a traffic jam, pissed off. Then you see the person in the car next to you picking their nose hairs or singing really OTT and it makes you realise stressing solves absolutely nothing.

Internalise your thoughts, smile to yourself. You can't stress with a smile on your face. Fake it at first, then it will come naturally.

Come to the realisation that life is SHORT!!

If we are very lucky we might have 80 or 90 years in this world. I don't imagine anyone on their deathbed says "I wish I had been more serious...worked harder....hoovered more blah blah".

I imagine most regrets are about having more fun, spending time with family and so on.

Hope that doesn't sound too morbid.

I always try to think of all the good things I have in life...because let's be real..there's always someone in a worse situation than yourself...remind yourself often how lucky you truly are ...

my dh always says - in 100 billion years (or something, I forget how long), the sun will explode and all this will be gone.

he is very lighthearted my dh

music
trashy fiction
getting enthusiastic about unimportant things that just interest you

Monty Python, having fits of laughter over nothing with friends... in fact, a girls' night out is soooo much fun!

a bit more pre-planned but every so often I flick through my address book and drop a line to someone in there - for some reason this cheers me up.

I am too serious, though like you I do have a sense of humour, I just sometimes forget it!

I do like to take my mind off everything with a trashy mag or telly. Another tip is if I'm worrying about whether I've been rude to someone or if I'm good enough at my job or my house is too much of a tip etc, I turn it around and think, "well it's nice for people if I let myself go a bit, I'm probably too uptight normally". My default is to think I have to be 100% on top of everything all the time, but I remind myself, no one is.

Larking about with DP and DS - silly games and chasing each other around etc, is also a great way to let go.

Listen to comedy on Radio 4/radio 7, watch comedy DVDs, listen to loud music, play with dd, baking...

Hmmm.

I think lots of things can act as distractions or mufflers against seriuosness and stress - but I like friends who provoke my sense of play. The friend I miss most (moved away, I became a pre-occupied parent, he started a new business...) is a gay man who just made me play. MN does that for me sometimes - women playing and being cheeky and funny - but don't forget to play in funny little situations. Today i was in a long consultation conference at a v posh institution, and alongside the Very Important Notes I was making, I had a little column for 'askance' observations and naughty questions.

Perversely, I think being a parent can derail your sense of play because once you have been obliged to be in role as the voice of effing Miffy for 117 hours, the very idea of play becomes a chore.

i agree with blu.

After several thousands of years of philosophising, no one has yet found the meaning of life.

So, since it currently has no meaningful status, we may as well treat it with the flippancy it deserves.

Oh! And never forget that you're a long time dead

These are all really interesting and great suggestions. What made me realise is that dh said to me "so what?" abut something and I realised, really, so what. Who will care in 100 years? 20 years? 1 year? no one. I think I spend an awful lot of time being serious atm at work and it doesn't help.

but when I was 20 someone said to me "you're really deep down VERY serious aren't you?" and he was right.

"sense of play" - I don't have that atm.

I don't think there's anything wrong in being serious, as long as you can still laugh at yourself (and I am VERY serious )

WWW, I think it is hard to be 'fun' when you are knackered; tiredness just seems to suck the humour out of you, I find.

I found that I actually had to be serious about making time for fun I renegotiated working hours etc to give me more time for me, more time for the children and more time for fun! For the first time in ages I feel like 'me'!

Sometimes fun comes from friends - we surprised my friend last night by turning up to a surprise birthday dinner for her - and had a ball!

I've only met you once in RL, but there is no doubt whatsoever, that you are a humungously fun person to be around - it would be awful for that wonderful warm personality not to be able to shine

Soapbox, you just made me cry, thank you for your kind words. I am so knackered and it's sucking the lifeblood out of me. And if I do see the children at night I find even reading a story a chore because I'm tired and I want to talk to dh/come here/have a wee/blah blah. We went away to a friend's house recently and laughed a lot and it was FAB and made me very happy. I don't have much time for friends atm. (4 hours commute + 9 hours at work)

I try to find the good in things, the little joys.

Like the kids are carrying on, I am getting stressed and want to tell them to quit it, but they are getting on and having a laugh, so I smile and think of the positive.

I just try to smile as much as I can and think of things that make me smile. I like to get absorbed in things that OK may have no purpose or "improve" my life. It just keeps me amused for a while like watch DD playing nintendogs, doing a puzzle, watch crap tv or chatting on here, anything that accupys the mind.

Sometimes you need to think about the big picture, sometimes you need to be absorbed in just the moment.

Oh www

It's too much to work those kind of hours with no end in sight. I've done it over the years - and people I work with continue to do so too. But there just comes a point where you have to stand back from it all and ask 'what the hell is all this about? Why am I doing this?'

Is there any scope at all for pulling back the working hours or the commute. Change of job - working from home? Your skills are very transferable - is there anything going nearer to home?

I use sarcasm and laugh at all the problems it works, well it saw me through some real shite times

You need some good tunes for the commute, get all the stress out of you system and amuse your fellow commuters by getting into the groove and singing along.

If in crawling traffic I like to see who is around me and name them all, last week I had beardy man, polish boys, oh god I am with the boss, lovers tiff, slobo and too gorgeous [but then I wonder what I am]

Thanks, I've got a proposal in for reduced hours (still 40 a week but adding in 1 day from hmoe + some working on commute) and if she doesn't accept it I'll leave, I'm only a contractor, but I don't like leaving without even another contract to go to.

Dancing is good, too. Singing your head off helps, especially if you have a crap voice.

Scramble, I don't like music much but I do like people watching, and reading, must make the most of standing on tube to read