11 Ways to Lift Your Mood (or Someone Else's)

December is unofficially the happiest month of the year. "Yet there is a definite conflict between the expectation of joyousness and the stress," says New York City psychotherapist Linda Barbanel, C.S.W., whose waiting room is filled to capacity every year at this time. What her clients, and would-be clients, need to do is start sneaking nanoseconds of joy wherever they can get them: "Intense experiences are not the only route to happiness," she says. "Bliss can come from rewarding yourself with random moments of pleasure." These beauty and health ideas are a good starting point.

Laugh
Recent research shows that laughter really is an antidote to all kinds of mental and physical ailments. "Laughter instantly lessens the flow of stress hormones, lowers blood pressure, relaxes muscles and triggers a flood of endorphins," says Lee Berk, Dr.P.H., assistant research professor at Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California. It may be time to take that hilarious co-worker out to lunch.