A silent giggle is incredibly effective. Its my favorite tool to pull out of my arsenal when Im having a bad day or when I just want to really plant a positive seed, and I like to use it as much as possible.

So what is the mysterious silent giggle? Exactly what it sounds like. I teach it regularly in my workshops. While it’s very easy, itdoes require a bit of practice so you dont come off as a raving lunatic.

Simply put, the silent giggle is that tickle of joy, that funny joke or silly song that you keep in the back of your mind. You just dont outwardly laugh. Keep your laughter inside, but allow the joy to flow through your eyes and voice without breaking into a laugh.

Sometimes when we practice this in my classes, I do admit some of my students come off a looking a bit odd, which is hysterical and really great for a Laughter Yoga class, but to truly hone in on the benefits of this technique you really need to be able to use it publicly.

You can always hear a smile through the phone. Go on, practice it. You can literally hear the smile in someone’s voice. Now just remember the silent giggle of joy. That really amps up your phone calls and messages. It’s amazing how people will respond to the sound of your voice when you use this technique.

Photo courtesy www.framboisekids.com.au

Feel free to try this out by recording yourself saying the same message once normally, once with a smile and then again with the silent giggle. You can notice an immediate difference! It has made many opportunities available for me that I never knew existed. It’s because the joy spills out and people are just drawn to you.

Another great way to use the silent giggle in a public or one on one meeting is to just remember to hold on to your thought that make s you giggle. Dont let it go. You will express absolute joy with your eyes and yet again people are drawn to you. This has opened doors for me as well. Its as if the whole world is in on your secret. People open doors, give you parking spaces, offer you free coffee and the list goes on to even further things to such as offering of jobs and the like.

The trick to it is to be sincere with your level of joy from the silent giggle. Dont force it and dont come off as if you are laughing at anyone. Just be in that place of joy that comes from the giggle and know that you are planting a positive seed.

So what are the Laughter Yoga benefits from this if you are not outwardly laughing? I still believe this technique can reap numerous benefits, a boost in your self-esteem and ease from stress for starters. Also, you may cause overflowing joy in another and there may at some point be some genuine outward laughter as well. At the very least you will just feel good, but more than likely it will spread out to those around you as well.

The Silent Giggle by Rhonda Lee.

Rhonda is a Laughter Yoga Leader (www.laughyourlife.com), an artist (www.barefootartist.etsy.com), a Reiki Master/Teacher and a raw foodist. She can often be found teaching stress management workshops, leading creative groups, and promoting her passion for raw foods and Laughter Yoga through workshops, retreats and raw chocolate parties! Her newly created blog, www.infusionoflife.blogspot.com, covers information on all of her interests and research as well as her current schedule. As a lover of life and a promoter of personal power she takes every opportunity to plant a positive seed to encourage others to feel good and live their dreams. Rhonda is a self professed goddess of gratitude and seeks to share the power of gratitude with all that she encounters.

We all make excuses. But the successful ones are those who can kill them and move on toward their goals.

“Im too tired. I dont have the time. I dont feel motivated. Id rather do nothing. I dont have the money, equipment, space. I cant because” …

Weve all made the excuses. Heres how to kill them…

1. See the positive. Excuses are usually made because we dont feel like doing something – were accentuating the negative. Instead, see the fun in something, the joy in it. And maintain a positive attitude, or youll never beat the excuses.
2. Take responsibility. Excuses are ways to get out of owning up to something. If we dont have the time, money, equipment, etc., then its not our fault, right? Wrong. Take responsibility, and own the solution.
3. Find a solution. Just about every problem has a solution. Dont have time? Start with just 5-10 minutes. Make the time. Wake earlier. Do it during lunch. Dont have a gym membership? Workout at home or in the office. Dont have the energy? Do it when you have higher levels of energy. Youre smart. Figure out the solution.
4. See your goal. This is your motivation – your reason for doing it. Sure, you could just lay on the couch, but if you think about why you really want to pursue a goal, youll be motivated. Visualize that goal and just get started.
5. Be accountable. Have a workout partner, a project partner, a team, someone to report to. If you have to meet a coach or partner, youre more likely to do something.
6. Go ahead and make your excuses. Then do it anyway.
7. Watch this. Then go an do it.

Photo: Focus on the enjoyable and the positive

7 Ways to Kill Your Excuses by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. Follow him on Twitter.

As children we’re raised on Utopian ideals of community based on cross religious and cultural variations of ‘love thy neighbor’. But where exactly do you draw the line when it comes to negative, energy-draining, drama-inducing people who seems to thrive on negativity? Negative people are black holes, the “Blue Meanies” of our world.

Walking vacuums, they drain the life and energy out of anything they come in contact with, and they’re seemingly incapable of offering anything positive in return. When cornered in conversation, creative (borderline desperate) measures pop into your head – the heights of imagination reached to avoid contact saving you from further torment. The mere mention of their name spreads a grimace across faces, followed by pained and feigned smiles whenever they enter a room.

No matter how much we may insulate ourselves, we can’t isolate ourselves from negative people. Yet, what we can do is learn how to deal with them, and here’s how:

1. Empathy and understanding – Negative people are unhappy people. People with cemented negativity are classic disappointment cases. They’re disappointed in some aspect about their lives. They usually feel inadequate about themselves and so rather than address that, they project this inadequacy onto everything around them – this allows them to deflect attention away from themselves and onto what they consider as outside or separate from themselves.

Negative people are faced with one to two dilemmas. First, they don’t want to recognize their own perceived shortcomings. I say “perceived” because there may not be anything necessarily wrong with them, but in their own mind they have or are failing somehow – and that is a very harsh reality to deal with. While we may see absolutely no shortcomings, one’s own reality is a powerful force and it takes an immeasurable amount of discipline to master it.

The second dilemma involves a great deal of insecurity. With the premise being that negative people are unhappy because of their own perceived inadequacies, it follows that because they’re unhappy, they will project negativity onto others in order to deflect attention away from themselves. This is a classic bully scenario in that bullies typically attack others because they themselves somehow feel attacked by the outside world.

There is a two-fold importance of understanding negative people. First, it takes power away from them and they no longer have a control or influence over us (particularly true if your negative person is a ‘loved’ one). Second, understanding them fosters empathy – a key ingredient for our own spiritual development.

2. Assert Yourself – Being emphatic doesn’t mean you have to be a fool. Just because you understand someone doesn’t mean you have to tolerate being a victim of their negativity. Negative people come in all forms. If it’s someone you’ve randomly met, or if it’s a brief encounter, there isn’t necessarily cause to assert yourself. However, if you’re working with this person or if this person is in your family or circle of friends and associates, it’s critical you assert yourself.

End of the day, despite human evolution and advancements in civilization, we’re still in a figurative jungle. If you’ve ever observed animals, even domestic animals, you’ll notice there’s a hierarchy in which daily exchange plays a big role in. How you let someone treat you determines how they will treat you in the future. Simplified, if you let negative people project venomous thoughts toward you repeatedly, you’ve granted them the permission to continue doing so.

Asserting yourself doesn’t mean being violent or being aggressive. It means being calm yet having a firm conviction. It means letting someone know their behavior is unacceptable; letting them know where they stand with you. It’s basically a warning light and it will either solve the problem or show you an important truth about this person if your asserted stance fails.

3. When Assertion Fails - If being assertive failed, then you’ve just learned a very important piece of information about your negative person: they don’t care what you think. This is particularly important to know if your negative person is someone close to you to whom you feel some sort of obligation to.

If your cool and collected dialogue letting them know how you feel ended up falling on deaf ears, then you may want to seriously reconsider your relationship with this person. They clearly don’t have your best interest at heart at this point and you have to consider how much of yourself are you willing to let compromise. Thoughts and words being a powerful thing, how much of this continued viral negativity are you really willing to let into your mind?

4. Open Door Policy - If keeping your distance from this person isn’t an option, then you have the option of redefining your relationship. Relationships are often a swinging door in that things can go both ways. The point being that if you discuss your personal life, the details of your day, daily problems, etc, you’re opening the door and giving the green light for their negative interjections. No matter how much you may be itching to vent or make small talk, make sure you keep YOU out of the conversation.

If you don’t want their negativity, then don’t give them the opportunity to comment. It’s as simple as that.

5. Shifting Perspective - Going back to why negative people are negative, if you’re feeling especially heroic, you do have the option of trying to get them be more objective about how they see things. However, this is no fool’s errand. While some people just need a positive force in their life, something encouraging and different from the negativity they themselves were indoctrinated in at a young age, the fact is that some people genuinely enjoy being miserable. It’s become so much their security blanket that they feel more comfortable in this frame of mind.

This degree of negativity requires a profound level of self-realization to shake, and if it is in their path then it’ll come to them when the time is right – usually sparked by some small yet cataclysmically defining moment in their lives.
While you may want to help ‘reform’ your negative person, remember that at some point you may have to simply throw in the towel for the sake of your own sanity.

6. Grace – Grace is more than just an admirable quality; it is a lost art and an incredibly powerful tool. Grace is about calm, integrity and a resounding sense of self – and with negative people, having grace means never indulging in their gossip, never showing interest in anything negative they have to say (no matter how much you may be itching to get the scoop).

7. Ignore them – Negative people are attention seekers. Nothing will bother them as much as if you just simply ignore them.

7 Ways to Deal with Negative People written by Shireen Qudosi.

Photo by: Made Underground

1. Identify it for what it really is: False Evidence Appearing Real.

As human beings, we are essentially controlled by two emotions: love and fear. We act out of one or the other. The beautiful thing? We have the ability to choose the thoughts we think and the emotion we attach to them. While fear is pre-programmed into us as an instinctual response to potential danger, much of the every day stuff we fear isnt dangerous at all. We have simply convinced ourselves what were fearing is real.

2.