“One method for tricking the brain is laughter training. It’s not laughing because we have something to laugh about. This training is just about letting out bursts of laughter. Anyone can laugh when they have something to laugh about. But that isn’t making active use of the brain. Laughing even when we have no reason to laugh, that is a way to trick and make use of the brain. It reacts the same whether we laugh because something is funny or just laugh. If we just laugh, we’ll find that we feel better, our health improves, and things genuinely worth laughing about come our way.”

- Ilchi Lee, Know Your Brain, Know Happiness

Once in college, a friend said to me, “I like being friends with you because you laugh so heartily at all my lame jokes.” For a long time, I’ve had a habit of laughing for and smiling at people, not necessarily because I’m so amused or happy but just for the sake of doing so. For some time, I tried to correct this because I thought I was being “fake,” but I finally came to realize that once I start creating the action of smiling and acting, it draws out happiness from within me to change my mood. From continuing to watch this type of change within myself and also doing laughing exercise for training my brain, I’ve learned now to have more complete ownership of my emotions, so that I can actually choose happiness and bring out heartfelt laughter, regardless of what negative emotions may first surface.