Find the silly and embrace it.

This morning, I showed Pace my new morning ritual. It involves me taking my liquid vitamins, which would otherwise be tedious and repetitive. But each bottle needs a good shake before I administer my dose, so I grab a bottle in each hand and do a little dance and sing “Shake it, shake it, shake it!”

This makes every single morning a little brighter, and starts me off on a silly foot and in a good mood.

It’s even turned a bad morning around for me before. Just a few minutes of shaking and dancing and singing to my vitamin bottles, and I’m cheered up and giggling. Making it a part of my morning routine is important, because when I’m feeling down, I’ll probably do it anyway – and then I cheer myself up without even trying!

We tend to underestimate silly. We grow up and get serious – and a lot of us lose our joy. But being grown up doesn’t mean you can’t sing to your vitamins. It doesn’t mean you have to be serious or stoic. It means you’re taller, potty trained (I hope), and you have more responsibilities – but that means you can reach more things, go places without your parents, and that you can find your own joy.

Being a public figure can make us shy away from joy, too. We think about all the people reading (or watching) all the things we do or say, and we clam up or put ourselves in boxes or spend too much time being serious.

If you follow me on Twitter, you have a sense of my every day life – and it’s a life full of silliness and joy. Twitter is my public place of choosing to really be myself, uncensored – and you’ll note that I am a giant goofball.

Give yourself some space to be silly. Dance around the house in your socks, sing at the top of your lungs when your favorite song comes on, laugh full and loud and long. In this ever-increasingly troubled world, our hearts need all the silly they can get. Find something silly and simple and incorporate it into your daily routine, so it can cheer you up every day!

Related posts:
• You are what you want to be.
• Speech bubbles in the RSS feed
• Follow your heart, even if it farts in public.

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