The most important thing you can do is decide right now that you want to
improve your sense of humor. Learning more
about how humor reduces stress, contributes to health, and even boosts job
performance will give you the motivation you need to start improving your
humor skills.
The first thing I have people do is evaluate their present sense of humor.
Try describing yours in any terms that make sense
to you. What makes you laugh? What are the strong and weak points of your
sense of humor? Ask friends, colleagues, and
family members to describe your sense of humor. Under what conditions does
it show up the most, and the least? Tell
others that you want to lighten up, and ask for their support. Encourage
them to exercise their own sense of humor around
you, and to help you see the light side of things when you're down.
Be determined to let the playful side of yourself come out at least once
every day. If you have forgotten how, think about
what you were like as a child, or watch young children playing. Remember
what it felt like to play then. The reason this is
important is that a playful attitude provides the basic foundation for your
sense of humor. Humor is really intellectual
play--play with ideas. Of course, you need to always be sensitive to when it
is and is not appropriate to let your playful side
out.
Observe friends and co-workers who have a good sense of humor. Spend more
time with them, and less time with people
who are negative, irritable, or complaining.
Put up reminders--your favorite cartoon, a funny prop, or the words
"Lighten Up!"--at work, at home, and in your car. A
woman who had had a laryngectomy came up to me after a program, and showed
me her button which read, "Read my
lips!" She picked it up during a prior presidential election campaign
(remember George Bush's statement about raising
taxes?), and used it to put others at ease with her condition.
There's much more power in simple props than you would guess. I have about
30 different animal noses (along with the
traditional Groucho Marx glasses), and often put one on in traffic. The
reactions I get from other people make me laugh, and
help me avoid the upset I usually experience in traffic. Go to any novelty
store and find a fun prop that will help you take
control over your own mood, and serve as a good reminder to always look for
a lighter side to the situation.
Actively look for humor every day. Share it with other people, and ask them
to tell you about funny incidents of their own.
Be sure to do this in a way that does not detract from the time spent on your
job. It's easy to share a funny experience or
remark while waiting for a meeting to start, walking down the hall, at lunch,
etc. You want to make a special effort to do this
with other cancer survivors and their loved ones. Maybe you've had a funny
experience in connection with your wig, or the
side effects of your treatments.
Irma Bombeck once talked about a teenager with cancer who got tired of people
always staring at her wig. One day when
some preschool children were staring at it, she suddenly ripped it off and
said, "You see what happens when you don't eat
your veggies!" The kids ran off, and the teenager had a good laugh.
Spend more time learning to play with language. Memorizing and telling jokes
is less important than generating your own
verbal humor, but jokes can certainly get you started in the right direction.
In one cancer support group, I asked if anyone
knew any jokes specifically related to cancer. A man in the group told the
following joke:
A man is told by his doctor that he has a very advanced tumor, and only
has 24 hours to live. He goes home and
breaks the news to his wife, and they cope with it the best they can.
Later that evening, his wife says to him,
"Honey, you still have 10 hours left to live, what would you like to
do?" He says, "I want to make love." So they
go upstairs and make love, with the same passion they had when they
first got married.
A couple of hours later, she says, "Well honey, you've still got 8 hours to
live. What would you like to do?" Again,
he says, "I want to make love." So they take their clothes off and make love
right there on the living room floor.
Two hours later, she again asks, "Honey, you've still got 6 hours left,
what would you like to do?" And again, he
says, "I want to make love." And she says, "Well, that's easy for you
to say. You don't have to get up in the
morning."
I have told this joke at every Cancer Survivors Day Program I've done since
hearing it, and it always gets a great reaction
from the audience. For the man who told the joke, it seemed to provide him a
means of saying, "I may have cancer, but it's
not going to beat me!" When you get to the point that you can poke fun at the
things that happen either as a result of the
cancer or the treatments, it helps you rise above the situation emotionally.
It's a way of taking control over your fears and
anxieties, as you continue your battle to defeat the disease.
Finally, learning to poke fun at yourself is one of the most difficult humor
skills to learn, but it's a powerful stress reducer
when you make a blunder. You want to develop the ability to laugh at yourself,
but you can also go too far with this. If you
are constantly putting yourself down in your humor, others may start thinking
you have a poor self-image. You may even
start believing this yourself.
The basic rationale behind my Humor Skills Training Program is to first
develop your ability to use your sense of humor
when you're in a good mood, and having a good day. Once you've developed
the mental habit of finding and generating
humor in the ways described above, you can then begin to practice using
these skills on the tough days. By the time you
spend 6 weeks or so strengthening your humor skills on the good days, you'll
have what it takes to start using humor to
cope on the tougher days.
And you don't have to leave your sense of humor behind when you go to work.
You can lighten up on your job, and still
retain your competence and professionalism. The key is to take your work
seriously, but take yourself lightly. As you
master this, you'll learn to manage conflicts more effectively, speak more
persuasively, think more creatively (especially
when under stress), and work more effectively as a team. The net result is
that you'll become more effective on your job,
and derive more enjoyment from your work in the process. You'll also find
more balance in your life.
Remember, "They who laugh, last."
Paul E. McGhee, Ph.D. is President of The Laughter Remedy. He spent 20
years conducting basic research on humor
before becoming a full-time professional speaker.
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