Step 1: Refill Your Half-Empty Glass

Now that you know how important sense of humour is, you may realize or find out from others that you lack it for some reason. Or you maybe you just need to brush it up for better practice (which as we all know makes perfect). Here are some useful tips for you to develop and then not to lose touch with your joking skills.

First and foremost, make sure you look at the brightest side of life. This doesn't mean that you should overlook all the hardships of your life without taking off your pink glasses – the ones you once put on at the age of sweet seventeen. If you do it, you may get seriously shocked by a great deal of problems piling up to your cloud number nine in the long run. Instead, try to evaluate each difficulty keeping a half-FULL glass in mind (as opposed to half-empty one). What does it mean? It means that you should look for good things even in the worst ones. Not always possible? It sure is, stop pessimizing the situation! Remember that people who have good sense of humour are confirmed optimists, that's why start half-fulling your glass called My Attitude to Life with pleasant things only. How? It's all simple. For instance, you've been fired. Do not dare make tragedy out of the situation! Think of it as if you're finally going to rest and get rid of constant stress or awful nightmares where your boss sees you completely naked in the office (out of sight – out of mind as they say!). Tell yourself that you'll easily find another much better job, our thoughts are highly materializable after all!

Or if you were abandoned by a person you love, for instance. Think the situation over, maybe there has been something wrong with you as 'us' for some time already. And if he/she hurt you, why would you ever need such relationship? Now that you're on your own you have a splendid opportunity to start over with somebody else.

Even though sometimes you feel that you're caught in the hardest moment ever and – naturally – can't get out of it, you should realize that there is always a way out of any situation. How to do it when your world seems to be crashing over what's left of your drained brain?

Find some time to be alone, take a day off your work, switch off your phones and organize a fine getaway in order to put your thoughts to rights. You'll see, little time will pass and your difficulty will no longer seem so fatal. If you don't have possibility to escape and be alone, and have nobody around to share your worries with (we told ya!), start a diary. Entrust your feelings and emotions to paper or your PC, you'll feel much better very soon. And when you read what you've wrote several times, you'll certainly come to conclusion that your personal disaster is no doubt serious but not yet the end of the world.

Another recommendation implies the so-called drawing therapy. Just start drawing. You can't draw? You don't have to! Just scribble something on a piece of paper – anything which may express your feelings at the moment (people, objects, flowers, houses, any images you may come up with), you draw for yourself, not for someone else after all. One condition here – you should draw in colour. Having finished, take a look at your 'masterpiece'. Feeling better already?

Our last useful tip on becoming an optimist is the following. Try to think of things you haven't lost, the ones that are still with you safe, sound and deeply cherished. Your possessions, your closest people, profession, skills, education, anything... Reflect on how you can make the most of your 'outfit'. Most likely what you still have is much more precious if compared to what you have lost.

Now that you know how to treat your glass of water and i.e. you're one step closer to perfect sense of humour – get ready to take another step forward.