Life without humour is like getting a promotion without any salary increase. It’s functional, but it’s no fun! Well-intentioned humour deserves a place in our lives. It can reduce the starkness of life, and give us a glimmer of hope. It makes you very attractive to people, since you have the ability to give them the precious gift of joy and laughter. You are able to evoke trust, warmth and affection in people with humour.
This brings a comfort and flow to your relationships, enhancing your effectiveness. Humour is an excellent stress buster. It releases feel-good chemicals, regulates your blood pressure, improves your immunity, and makes you healthier.
A sense of humour is to life what a filter is to photographs. It’s the same photo, but the scars and blemishes have faded out. The creases and wrinkles don’t look so harsh, and everything looks brighter.
There’s a lot to be gained by nurturing a sense of humour, and here are some tips to get you started if you aren’t already the reincarnation of Charlie Chaplin!
1. Immerse yourself in humour — It’s important to remember that you may not create original humour, yet you may have the ability to appreciate humour. It’s similar to the ability to appreciate music, though you may not be a singer or musician yourself. Immerse yourself in humour. Humour is big business, with comedy movie genres, plays, comic strips, comic websites and stand-up comedians. It’s all around us. Let the comic virus infect you, and start growing within you.
You can start by using humour in casual conversations, sharing jokes, puns, witticisms and slowly move towards integrating humour at work. For e.g., a speaker on marketing, could ask the audience “What are the 4 Ps of marketing? Answer — “ Please, Please, Please, Please”. This wisecrack drives home the difficulty of marketing. Or, if you are giving a talk on instilling values in children, then inserting a one-liner like “Teach your children about tax, eat 30% of their ice-cream”, can help you instantly strike a rapport with the audience. You can easily find enough humour on the topic of your discussion on the internet and in books. Search for the smart, brief and witty ones relevant to your topic.
Caveat — Using humour at work can be tricky, and you need a heightened sensitivity to get it right. Be very clear about your objective and audience, especially if you are trying to use it in meetings and presentations.
Is your objective to connect and strike a rapport with the audience, or are you using humour to drive a point home? Will the audience be receptive to your humour, given the context of the meeting or presentation? Some occasions are serious, and humour is inappropriate in such situations. If in doubt, err on the side of conservatism — if it could be perceived as offensive or ill-timed, don’t do it.
The humour should flow out of you, and appear natural. You can lose your audience if you come across as trying too hard. Also, remember “Brevity is the soul of wit “ — don’t go on and on with a joke. Use simple visuals, one liners and brief jokes to insert a humorous pause in the discussion. Over time, your comic sensibilities will get refined, and you will develop a natural ease with humour.
2. Cultivate self-enhancing humour — This is the kind of humour that actually helps you cope with life’s sorrows and sufferings. It is a way of laughing at yourself, and looking at challenges through a humorous lens.
Making light of a situation actually results in lightness. The burden of worries seems to dissolve into laughter. As if a good laugh has expelled the stress and anxiety from within.
A person fractured his leg, and was laid up in hospital. His office colleagues came to visit him and he said “Don’t you know I am on vacation now”. It immediately infused smiles all around the room, with the biggest smile on his own face, making it easier for him to cope with the stress. Or, someone who went through a break-up with his partner, spoke with his friends and said “ Well, at least now I am free to date all the beautiful girls in the city”.
Not everything can be humoured away. There are unspeakable sorrows and tragedies that might come our way, when it’s next to impossible to bring a smile to our face. It’s alright, we need to respect our grief and give ourselves permission to mourn. But, there are less severe disappointments and frustrations that are often sprinkled into our lives. It is quite possible to humour out some of those situations.
Think of 2 disappointments or frustrations that you had over the last year. What was the brighter side of these disappointments? If you think hard enough, you will be able to come up with some funny angles to these situations. Self-enhancing humour dilutes our pain and agony, and helps shift our perspective towards the situation. It’s a way of taking ourselves out of our misery, and cultivating it helps us grapple better with life’s challenges.
3. Defuse conflict with humour — Humour is a powerful tool to defuse conflict. It often works as a distraction to release tension. Plus, the fact that you are trying to quell the conflict is a strong indication that you value the relationship. So, by using humour you are also sending across a message of peace. Obviously, your intention behind the humour is important — use it only when you wish to reduce the intensity of the conflict. Once again, humour needs to be appropriate. Sarcasm and ridicule are not funny, and will further aggravate the situation. It cannot be used every time, for every conflict. You need to be sensitive to the other person, to the severity of the conflict and the situation. You don’t want to elicit a strict “This is NOT funny” response from the other person. So, choose the situation carefully, and back off immediately if the other person finds it offensive. With these safeguards in place, you can start experimenting with using humour to defuse conflict.
Conflict can be nipped in the bud by apt self-deprecating humour. I remember an instance where a colleague pointed out some calculation errors to another colleague. The colleague responded with “Oh, I think the fat cells have invaded my brains too, sorry, I will make the correction”. She could have chosen an angry repartee saying she was overworked, or put the blame on someone else. We do this all the time. But, by choosing a non-offensive, humorous response she turned around a difficult situation into an experience of fun and togetherness.
Laughter instantly changes our emotional chemistry. It melts away our temper, and reduces the coldness we feel towards the other person in that angry moment. Suddenly, the perceived enemy becomes a friend, and we feel warmly connected.
One of my relatives was an expert at avoiding unnecessary conflict. Once, when his wife was yelling at him for coming home late. He lovingly responded “Oh! You look so beautiful when you are angry! Your cheeks are flushed, and your eyes are shining”. It caught her off-guard as she had expected an aggressive response. He had successfully distracted, as well as disarmed her with flattery, and it did bring half-a-smile to her face. Of course, it won’t work every time, or if there is a chronic problem. But what’s true for sure is that an explosive conflict between husband and wife was averted that day.
Finally, I must share a story where my teenage son used humour to transform my seething rage into irrepressible laughter. I was scolding him for not having bathed, and said “If you don’t bathe tomorrow, just wait and see what happens”. He calmly replied “I will just stink more”. He escaped a severe talking-to that day!
Think about all the conflicts you had in the last 6–8 months. Were some of them unnecessary? Could they have been avoided? How could you have used humour to avoid them? Think about ways in which you can use humour to avert possible future conflicts. And, remember to pack along your humour tool-kit for life’s journey. It definitely makes the ride less bumpy!
Gulshan Walia Blog 