Last update: February 08, 2016
If there are two basic ingredients for keeping the mind healthy, improving relationships with others and being happier in general, well, it is love and a sense of humor.
It often happens that you find yourself having heated discussions with other people, to get defensive, to get too stressed out by timely and transient events, and so on.
In the end, we realize that our attitude may not have been the best, and that after all we are the first to have lost us.
Let's take an example: there are couples who do nothing but reproach each other with negative things, without ever reaching a point of agreement; this happens because when they attack us, or rather, when we feel attacked, we tend to raise a barrier around us, in order to defend our ego from any threat.
This is actually a serious mistake. Defending oneself with the same weapon with which one was offended, in fact, will only serve to raise a war certainly not necessary, and that will lead us to live in a completely negative and suffocating state of mind.
Another clear example of the use of love as a powerful weapon to disarm opponents is thanks to Gandhi. In fact, he won the independence of India from Great Britain without a single shot being fired, without aggression, simply thanks to the "Ahimsa".
What does Ahimsa mean?
Ahimsa is a strategy that consists of discovery of the fund of love and wonder that is in each of us in contrast with aggression.
In other words, this concept determines the importance of loving our neighbor regardless of how he behaves towards us; reminding him / her that he / she is a great person, that there is good in him / her and that we love him / her unconditionally, despite the fact that at this very moment he / she is not behaving with us in the best way, or worse is acting in an aggressive way.
"Love is the most powerful force the world possesses and yet the humblest one can imagine."
-Gandhi-
Ahimsa is a weapon that it acts in a slow but extremely powerful way. It is based on giving love persistently, until the other person begins to reflect on their behavior and allow a transformation to take place in them.
We can practice this technique in our everyday life, discovering its incredible effects day by day. By doing so, we will realize that breaking the patterns of others, we will finally be able to be treated in the correct way, helping him to let his inner child out.
If our partner, friend or family member is very angry with us and yells at us, scolds us and so on, the wisest thing to do is to avoid unnecessary conflict; rather we will have to approach him to give him a hug, a kiss or a caress.
The person in question may at first shrink from our reaction, but if we persist without being scratched by his words or behavior, we will eventually be able to radically disarm him.
Why is humor important?
On the other side, the use of humor can be a powerful shock absorber against any failure in life. Like love, it serves to improve interpersonal relationships by allowing the more twisted aspects of life to be much easier to bear.
"If the man had more sense of humor, things could have turned out differently."
-Stanislaw Lem-
A sense of humor makes us aware that basically, nothing is that important, and that too many times we tend to give too much weight to things and dramatize the facts of life, coming to feel bad.
Of course there are situations where there is no room for laughter, but the cases in question are relatively few; It is important to open our minds as often as we can, as well as being more flexible and laughing at adversity.
First, it is good to be aware of the fact that life's difficulties are often inevitable, and that each of us can be subject to them. Later, it is appropriate to understand that often things are not as bad as we think, and that we are the first to magnify situations by dint of thinking about it.
Humor stimulates creativity and the search for alternative solutions, allowing us to let off steam and free ourselves from stress; therefore it becomes a powerful weapon to try to solve problematic situations, allowing us to unblock ourselves.
At first glance it may seem simple, yet practicing humor and love in our life often proves to be a daunting task. The key is to wait, with perseverance, until they become part of us. This is how we will turn into loving and smiling people, and life will be much easier to cope with.
