This past week, I attended two separate workshops. The first one was in my current field. I’ve been a certified business coach for the last seven years. I belong to a wonderful company in which there are approximately 600 of “me” throughout the United States and Internationally. We had our quarterly training and I was honored to be asked to facilitate a session, but that is not what this article is about. I am a member of the Corporate Mastermind group and we had a speaker at our Mastermind Session that was excellent. He used humor in his presentation, and he used it very well to bring home his point. He directed his humor at himself rather than laughing at others and in the process; we all laughed and learned together. His point was: “If you get knocked down, get back up.”
The second workshop was in my previous field. My background is healthcare and I come from the lab. Again, we had one speaker, in particular, that used humor in his presentation. He is also a stand-up comedian and a former hospital administrator. Now that is a combination that obviously goes together. Again, he used humor directed at himself, to drive home his points. One of his points was to be careful because humor can hurt and be very demoralizing to others when directed at others. Remember, both speakers directed their humor at themselves. Both speakers chose to look at the positive rather than the negative and that changed their own lives and the lives of the people and coworkers around them.
Our current situation in life is the result of all that has gone on before. Remember that we control our thoughts, negative or positive. Our thoughts cause our feelings, negative or positive. Our feelings cause our actions which causes a reaction and thus, our results. If we don’t like our results, then we need to change our thoughts. Humor can help us do that.
Most of us are aware that laugher results in a chemical reaction in the brain that makes us feel better. Try it. Just start laughing with a huge belly laugh. Pretty soon we are laughing because we are laughing. Laugh for a few minutes then assess how you feel. I bet you feel better. It is a scientific fact that our immune system functions better when we are in a positive frame of mind. We’re able to fight off disease more effectively and prevent many chronic long term illnesses. Not only will we feel better immediately, we may live longer and enjoy that life more. We might think we’ll die of embarrassment if someone sees us, but aren’t the outcomes worth it?
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I love this post, Lois. And it is so true. I would add one further thought about using humor. I agree that humor at another's expense is never a good idea, especially in a professional setting. I'd take it one step further to warn against self-deprecating humor. Certainly it's great to laugh at ourselves about a mistake we made that resulted in a great learning experience. But it's easy to take it too far, beating ourselves up in the name of getting a laugh, or using humor to cover up a painful shortage of self-esteem. The best laughs are the ones that come from lifting ourselves and each other up, rather than putting anyone, even ourselves, down.
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