How Humour can Help you Stay Healthy

Helen Keller, the deafblind American author, once said: “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

And it is often said all healing is first the healing of the heart. And what better way to heal the heart than humour. Not only can humour help in alleviating of diseases, it can also work as a potent age eraser for you. Laughing like a little kid every now and then can be a great way to keep yourself young. Humour has been found capable of relaxing the body, easing the mind, relieving stress and boosting creativity and problem-solving capabilities.

While humour may not be a cure-all for all your health related problems, it is a tool which you must keep in your toolbox. It is a great way to beat the stress and make you feel better about the life. When something strikes your brain as funny, your body responds with a laugh.

That simple, involuntary action can help you reap some brilliant short-term benefits, say the experts. When you have a hearty laugh, you flex, then relax, 15 facial muscles plus scores of others all over your body. Your pulse and respiration increase briefly and this oxygenates your blood. The brain, in turn, experiences a decrease in the perception of pain, possibly associated with the production of pain-killing, pleasure-giving chemicals called endorphins.

Evidence related to laughter boosting your immunity also exists. By the time you're done with laughing, your body is calmer and your brain clearer. You may even surprised to discover that headache has vanished.

While measuring of long-term effects of laughter is difficult, many doctors have started working humour into treatments. They feel that if used judiciously, laughter help patients with recovery. If nothing else, it can at least make the patient feel better for shorter durations of time. Even if you enjoy a sound health, a good sense of humour can help you deal with the stress and unpleasant circumstances in life in a better way.

Let's look at what you can do for incorporating humour in your daily life:

Look for humour in everyday life. Look for people doing funny things, or animals or children or anything that makes you laugh.

You think you are always buried under a mountain of work. But view it from a child's perspective. Do you think he would be petrified by the burdens in life? Nah!

Check your humour pulse. See what is which makes you laugh. Santa-Banta jokes, PJs, slapstick comedies or witty humour.

Make sure that you learn to you draw the line. I mean, you won't want to laugh during the funeral or a court proceeding, would you?

Source: Yahoo News (Dated: 31/05/11)

B-school graduates prefer pay over profit

Anahita Mukherji | TNN

Posted On: Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Mumbai: Entrepreneurship may be the buzzword on B-school campuses but at the end of the day management students find the sky-high salaries on offer rather hard to refuse, with the vast majority opting for a regular job. A 2011 global study by the Graduate Management Admission Council, which conducts GMAT, found only 5% of final-year management students opted for self-employment.

The figures were highest in Europe and Canada, with 8% and 7.3% of students respectively opting for entrepreneurship. The Asia-Pacific region came third, with 5% of students choosing to turn entrepreneurs, while the US was last with only 3.8%. That the US fares low on the entrepreneurship scale this year is cause for much surprise. David Wilson, president and CEO of GMAC, feels there are a number of factors at play in the US, which drive young people towards steady jobs instead of entrepreneurship. “The recession that hit the US was so deep that students aren’t ready to give up everything and turn entrepreneurs right away. They’d rather get a job first,” says Wilson. He also points to the fact that America’s baby boomers are now reaching retirement, with a lot of opportunities for newcomers in industry. He adds that after the dotcom bubble burst, a lot of youngsters who had jumped straight from high school to entrepreneurship were looking towards management education and a steady job.

Tapan Parekh, a Mumbai-based entrepreneur who graduated from the University of San Francisco with an MBA focused on entrepreneurship, points out that while the meltdown in the US economy has seen more people opt for steady jobs, there’s also a credit crisis in that country with banks unwilling to lend money to those starting their own business. As for India, Parekh feels that entrepreneurship isn’t looked at too favourably. “It isn’t an option for most people after graduation,” says Parekh, pointing to the risk aversion amongst most Indians, who “pull out their money the moment the stock markets crash”.

T Prasad, who began the Centre for Student Enterprise at the National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Powai, blames a mediocre system of education across the world for not making students ready for entrepreneurship. “If the system was enterprising, you would automatically have more entrepreneurs,” he says, adding that the environment in Western countries was more conducive for entrepreneurship than the East. “It isn’t just academics but family upbringing itself that encourages independence in places like Europe, Canada and the US,” he added.

Madhukar Kamat, group CEO and managing director, Mudra, feels a B-school education has nothing to do with entrepreneurship, adding entrepreneurs don’t necessarily have to be management graduates. “Most successful entrepreneurs are B-school drop-outs,” says Milind Sarwate, CFO and group HR officer at Marico.

                                                                   source: Yahoo News (Dated:31/05/11)

Thoughts: This is an Interesting Article. Most of us think that the easiest way out is to get a decent job and settle down first, buy a house buy a car, and what not! This is one of the main reasons why most students who want to join a B-school ask for a placement guarantee.

I say if we here in a B-school can give you an Education that can help you stand on your own with your own ideas and rise up to the occasion, the why look for a placement? why ask to be spoon fed? we don't feed you with a fish to satisfy your hunger for the day, but instead teach you to fish, so that you wont ever be in need again! - Franklin John