One essential characteristic that helps us to laugh is to not take ourselves too seriously. We all know the classic tight-jawed, sour-puss who takes everything with deathly seriousness and never laughs at anything. It's no fun there!

Some sad events are clearly not the right occasions for laughter, but most events in our lives don’t carry an huge sense of either sadness or joy. They usually fall into the gray zone of ordinary life. Here is where we have the choice to laugh or not.

To see the lighter side of life, try some or all of the following:

• Laugh at yourself. Share some of your embarrassing moments. One of the best ways to take ourselves less seriously is to talk about the times when we took ourselves too seriously.
• Try to laugh at situations rather than bemoan them. Look for the humor in a bad situation, the irony and absurdity of life. This helps lift your the mood, and also the mood of people around you.
• Surround yourself with reminders to lighten up. Keep a toy in your car, or on your desk. Put poster that makes you laugh or smile up in your office. Pick a screensaver that lifts your mood. Frame photos of family and friends having fun or making funny faces.
• Keep things in perspective. While you might think that taking the weight of the world on your shoulders is admirable, in the end it's unrealistic, unhealthy, and even egotistical.
• Deal with your stress. We cannot control everything that happens to us, particularly how we are treated by others. But we can control how we react to it.
• Pay attention to children and copy them. They are the experts on playing, taking life lightly, and laughing.