Laughter & Humor: Therapeutic Allies

Up, Up, and Away: The Evolution of Laughter Practitioners

2012-03-04T11:09:00.000-08:00

The Roots and the Evolution & Growth of the World Laughter Tour's Practitioners

The First Certified Laughter Leaders (July 2000)

Proposition: Life is a psycho-social game.
Corollary: If you don’t play the social part right, you will go ‘psycho’.

Proposition: Laughter is one of the universal attributes of human beings.
Corollary: It gives us a clue to universal laws for playing the game and not going ‘psycho’.

Proposition: Improving psychosocial working conditions and educating workers on stress-coping mechanisms is beneficial for the physical and mental health of workers.
Corollary: The benefits include increased productivity among workers, reduction in absenteeism and employee turnover in addition to other costs borne by employers.

Proposition: The human brain is wired for laughter.
     Corollary: The human brain can be rewired.

Proposition: Laughter is vitally and critically important to the successful game of life. A life without laughter is dreadful.
     Corollary: A dreadful life is likely to be void of laughter.

Proposition: An adequate amount of laughter makes life worth living.
     Corollary: A life worth living generates laughter.

What’s In A Name?

It's Official!

When I first saw people intentionally coming together in groups for laughing to improve health and well-being sans traditional humor (jokes and comedy), the leaders were called anchor persons. That was 1998, in Mumbai.

When I tried to apply the concept the following year in he United States, modeled on Activity Therapy well-known in the Western world, it proved to be a fascinating complement to the burgeoning field of applied and therapeutic humor but the title anchor person was not well received.

In the USA, Laughter Leader was a more acceptable title. I could see that the so-called expert model prevalent in the Western World --and my desire that this new field overcome years of resistance from the established health & human services communities-- dictated that Laughter Leaders should be certified. Hence: the evolution of the title Certified Laughter Leader.

It worked. As acceptance and respect grew, doors opened, and by now, probably millions of lives have been touched by laughter.

Now, with new evidence leading to improvements in techniques streaming in every week, the next logical iteration of titles within World Laughter Tour, will include the word Practitioner.

It’s A Neuro-Psycho-Social Thing

Reflect on the Connection

The neurological substrates that control smiling and laughing are mature at birth in all healthy human beings. Evidence for this is the fact that, even though they have never seen or heard laughter, people who are born blind and deaf will eventually laugh and smile.

In some cultures, the primal --first-- laughter of an infant is cause for joyous celebration because the community knows that it signals good health and a healthy environment.

Laughter is often referred to as a universal language because you can go anywhere in the world, and even if you do not speak their language, when you display genuine smiling and laughter, everybody knows what it means.

Dr. Robert Provine estimates that only 10% of the laughter in a lifetime is the result of jokes and comedy. Ninety percent of the laughter in a lifetime is the result of social interaction. This is an important clue to the social part of the psycho-social game of life.

We Need to Become and Create Social Support Providers
Through workplace studies, researchers have identified a cohort of individuals as social support providers.

Studies show:
·       Low social support is as damaging as high blood pressure.
·       Social support is the greatest predictor of happiness during periods of high stress.
·       Social support providers are not only 10 times more likely to be engaged at work than those who kept to themselves.
·       Social support providers are 40% more likely to get a promotion.
·       Social support providers are happier (thriving and learning).
·       Happy employees have, on average, 31% higher productivity; their sales are 37% higher, their creativity is three times higher.

Roots and the Evolutionary Growth of Laughter Practitioners Initially, The World Laughter Tour, which I established in 1998, was built on the popular notion that there was healing power in humor and fun. Josh Billings had said, "There is not a whole lot of fun in medicine but there is a whole lot of medicine in fun." Norman Cousins’ near-miraculous recovery and subsequent scientific evidence lent credence to the idea.

It seemed reasonable and worthwhile to build on that idea to promote the development of “the sense of humor” for success in business, healthcare, and education.

I know now that showing people how they could develop a sense of humor was actually showing them techniques for rewiring their brains.

A closer look at the evolving scientific evidence led to the unmistakable conclusions that (1) for important reasons, laughter could and should be separated from humor; (2) the physiology, psychology, and neurology of the physical act of laughing was much easier --and more reliable-- to measure than humor; (3) the emotional state of true mirth as a possible pre-condition of the benefits of laughter and humor, had to be given serious consideration.

I am ever grateful to my friend and mentor, Dr. William Fry, Jr., for his many contributions to the science of laughter, perhaps especially for the essential concept of true mirthful laughter.

Although it was initially --and still is- touted by some as a yogic phenomenon, the group laughing activity that emerged from India in the form of the Laughter Club, was another clue to the social condition for laughing.

I have been able to train more than 6,000 practitioners of laughter therapy. Many of them are health & human services professionals, educators, and business people. Their more than 15,000 anecdotal reports, archived by World Laughter Tour, do not attain the status of peer-reviewed, double-blind studies, but anecdotes and case studies are the beginnings of science.

The anecdotal reports are unanimous: group laughter results in at least short term improvements in subjective feelings of well-being. Scientific studies now give evidence of why this would be true for laughter as well as for humor, such as adding the viewing of funny TV programs to standard cardiac rehabilitation routines.

Early on, I realized that group laughter sessions alone would not be enough to adequately rewire the brain for a healthier, happier lifestyle. There needed to be a rewiring in terms of the kinds of attitudes and activities that give rise to not only laughter but more positive thoughts, more positive feelings, and more positive interactions.

Rewiring requires practices that individuals can do on their own, repeatedly, both privately and in social situations.

Understanding this need gave rise to my creation of a program called Good-Hearted-Living™, which rewires the brain for more gratitude, flexibility, altruism, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and guilt-free pleasure.

Based on research from Positive Psychology, we are now amplifying our training of laughter therapy practitioners to include a range and variety of Positive Activity Interventions (PAIs). Improvements in our methods amplify social connectedness.

Originally, it was thought that benefits primarily derived from laughter’s triggering of an endorphin release, but the advent of neurologic technology is giving us insight into connections between certain activities and attitudes and actions in the brain related to dopamine, the pleasure centers, and much more.

Practitioners will use Positive Activity Interventions (PAIs) to produce many beneficial effects. PAIs will include music, novel movement, gratitude, meditation, visual imagery, affirmations, non-competitive games, humor, and of course, true mirthful laughter.

(Used with permission.)

Onward & Upward

"The deeper you go, the higher you fly." ~George Harrison

Laughter was just the tip of the iceberg. We are now eagerly drilling deeper and wider and finding more of the rich resources that foster laughter, accompany laughter, and are produce in association with laughter.

Recently (2011) Ruth M. Buczynski, PhD, President and Licensed Psychologist, The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, contends that rewiring the brain can lead to such benefits as:

·       New hope for kids with learning disabilities
·       Freedom from harmful habits and ruts that ensnare patients
·       Innovative (and effective) ways to treat depression, anxiety, and OCD
·       Helpful insights for arguing couples who keep hitting all the same explosive triggers
·       New understanding in how to work with patients who have PTSD

Is it any wonder that I continue to embrace laughter? Breathlessly, I know that there is so much more to come.

Please forward this blog to those who will find the information and ideas useful or interesting.

I would love to hear your thoughts on these matters. Please add your comments below..

Who Cares Whether Employees Are Happy As Long As They Produce?

2012-02-11T15:25:00.000-08:00

If you agree with me that happy employees tend to be healthier than unhappy employees, and that healthy employees tend to be happier, and that therefore they are on the job being creative, productive, and loyal, then you can stop reading. WHAT you should do now is get back to work and make it part of your job to help keep yourself and other employees healthy and happy.

On the other other, if you suspect that happiness, fun, and positive mind-sets might be worthy workplace objectives (TRUE), but you're worried that "happy" might mean all-out buffoonery or class-clowning at work (FALSE), read a little further to find out WHY there's no need to worry.

Still on the other hand, if you get it that things like happiness, fun, and positive mind-sets will produce terrific bottom-line results, but you're not quite sure HOW to make it happen, then read all the way to the end, and then read my forthcoming book --this blog is an excerpt-- and then take my 2-day course on the topic.

…Research shows…Workplace advantages of Positive Activities and Positive Mindsets

From Positive Intelligence by Shawn Achor, Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2012:

• When people work with a positive mind-set, performance on nearly every level—productivity, creativity, engagement—improves.

• People who cultivate a positive mind-set perform better in the face of challenge.

• There is strong evidence of direct causality between life satisfaction and successful business outcomes.

• You can train your brain to be positive…perhaps in as little as three weeks, working at it only a few minutes a day.

• Happy employees mean better bottom-line results: low LSS scores à decrease productivity of 15 days per year due to absence. High LSS scores high customer ratings, more earnings per square foot of space (Gallup) and tens of millions of dollars in profits to a large chain.

From Creating Sustainable Performance by Gretchen Spreitzer and Christine Porath, Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2012:

• “Worrying about whether or not your employees are happy might seem a little over the top. But in our research into what makes for a consistently high-performing workforce, we’ve found good reason to care:
     – Happy employees produce more than unhappy ones over the long term.
     – They routinely show up at work, they’re less likely to quit, they go above and beyond the call of duty, and they attract people who are just as committed to the job.
     – Moreover, they’re not sprinters; they’re more like marathon runners, in it for the long haul.

• Happiness is not about contentment, which connotes a degree of complacency; it is about thriving.

• Thriving employees are not just satisfied and productive but also engaged in creating the future—the company’s and their own. Thriving employees have a bit of an edge—they are highly energized—but they know how to avoid burnout.

• Thriving employees demonstrated 16% better overall performance (as reported by their managers) and 125% less burnout (self-reported) than their peers. They were 32% more committed to the organization and 46% more satisfied with their jobs.

• They also missed much less work and reported significantly fewer doctor visits, which meant health care savings and less lost time for the company.

• Researchers identified two components of thriving: vitality and learning.

• Vitality: the sense of being alive, passionate, and excited. Employees who experience vitality spark energy in themselves and others. Companies generate vitality by giving people the sense that what they do on a daily basis makes a difference. [AWARDING RECOGNITION AND THE GENERAL ENVIRONMENT CAN BOTH BE FUN.]

• Learning: People who are developing their abilities are likely to believe in their potential for further growth.

• The two qualities work in concert. When you put the two together, the statistics are striking. For example, people who were high energy and high learning were 21% more effective as leaders than those who were only high energy.

• The outcomes on one measure in particular—health—were even more extreme. Those who were high energy and low learning were 54% worse when it came to health than those who were high in both.

From The Science Behind the Smile, An Interview with Daniel Gilbert by Gardiner Morse, Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2012:

• By and large, happy people are more creative and more productive.

• Many managers would say that contented people aren’t the most productive employees, so you want to keep people a little uncomfortable, maybe a little anxious, about their jobs. FALSE! “I know of no data showing that anxious, fearful employees are more creative or productive.”

• People are happiest when they’re appropriately challenged—when they’re trying to achieve goals that are difficult but not out of reach (and people hate being bored). People blossom when challenged and wither when they are threatened.

• What are those little things we can do to increase our happiness?

• The main things are to commit to some simple behaviors—meditating, exercising, getting enough sleep—and to carry out altruism, and all six practices of Good-Hearted Lving™.

• One of the most selfish things you can do is help others. Volunteer at a homeless shelter. You may or may not help the homeless, but you will almost surely help yourself.

• And nurture your social connections.

• Twice a week, write down three things you’re grateful for, and tell someone why.

• These may sound like homilies from your grandmother. Well, your grandmother was smart. The secret of happiness is not a secret!

“Having fun is no trivial pursuit.”
Evidence From Other Researchers, Writers, Philosophers and Theorists

Seppala

Mark Beeman, PhD, at Northwestern University, found that people have an easier time solving a puzzle after watching a short comedy clip. Having fun, perhaps by easing tension, may facilitate neuronal connections that are helpful for greater mental flexibility and creativity. In another brain imaging study, Dr. Beeman found that activation of pleasure centers in the brain predicted successful puzzle-solving These findings suggest that well-being helps us think more creatively and could potentially help us resolve challenging situations. ~SPIRITUALITY & HEALTH, May-June 2011

“Play is purposeless, done for its own sake. Nevertheless, such purposelessness has extraordinarily positive effects. Play quiets our busy minds, putting a stop to our constant barrage of thoughts about the past and future.”

From “The Power of Play”, by Hara Estroff Marano, Psychology Today, July 1, 1999:

• Having fun is no trivial pursuit. In fact, it's crucial to mental creativity, health and happiness.

• The very essence of play is antic, full of novelty and joyful abandon.

• Play's value among adults is too often vastly underrated.
      • It lifts stress from us.
      • It refreshes us.
      • It recharges us.
      • It restores our optimism.
      • It changes our perspective.
      • It stimulates creativity.
      • It renews our ability to accomplish the work of the world.

• Play may in fact be the highest expression of our humanity, both imitating and advancing the evolutionary process.

• Play appears to allow our brains to exercise their very flexibility, to maintain and even perhaps renew the neural connections that embody our human potential to adapt, to meet any possible set of environmental conditions.

• It may be that playfulness is a force woven through our search for mates. Certainly, playful people are the most fun to be around. But the ability to play may be a strong and appealing signal of something more. Especially among males, playfulness can protect us.

• It may be a way to indicate to potential partners that a man is not a threat to himself, to his offspring—or to society at large.

• One sign that males may not be dangerous either to females or to their children is their willingness to play with them. "So it is possible that females seek out mates who are playful, both for their own protection and for that of their offspring." Men, for their part, are not immune to the pleasures of playfulness in selecting a mate either. Playfulness is an indicator of youthfulness in women.

• Like art, play is that quintessential experience that is almost impossible to define—because it encompasses infinite variability—but which we all recognize when we see, or experience it.

• If Garry Chick is right, we play because it protects us. Chick, who has studied games and sports in a number of cultures, contends that the standard explanations for why we play just don't wash.

• For example, the belief that play affords practice for skills needed later in life is true—for some animals, and then just for juveniles. "Some animals appear to play at things they will be doing their adult lives," he observes. "Predatory animals play at predation, those that are preyed upon play at escape. Social animals beat each other up to establish rank and hierarchy.“

• It can truly be said that we are made for play; after all, humans are among the very few animals that play as adults. What the evidence adds up to is this: we are most human when we play—and just because we play.

Through my new book and course, we will understand all that contributes to such a necessary, and exalted, psychological state.

BONUS: Need More Fun Ideas? Not sure what to do? Need help? Here are some other unusual ways, adapted from Playfair, to celebrate the day with your co-workers:

* Celebrate International Fun At Work Day, an idea started by the gang at Playfair, Thursday, April 5, 2012. That will also help kick-off National Humor Month, all of April 1, now in its 37th year.

* Ask all employees to bring in baby photos or pet pictures or High School yearbook photos to post on the bulletin board. Then guess who's who.

* The Traveling Bouquet. Bring in a bouquet of flowers and present it to one of your co-workers. Tell him or her, I want you to keep this on your desk for the next half-hour. Then pass it on to someone else and tell them to do the same!

* Hold a Company Limo Lottery. Hold a lottery where the winner gets driven to and from work in the company limo. (If you don't have a company limo, rent one for the day!)

* Offer your employees some unusual gifts (like free housecleaning certificates) to celebrate the day.

* Take some Joy Breaks during the day and teach all your employees the art of scarf juggling. . .or play marbles together.

* Hire an On-site Masseuse for the day.

* Take a group photo portrait of your office mates dressed up for Clash Dressing Day ... or Polka Dots Day ... or Suspender Day ... or Pajama Day ... or Bad Hair Day!

* Dog Days of Spring: Let all employees bring their pets to work with them for this fun day celebration!

* Bring in some champagne (or sparkling apple juice) and take time to toast each other, your successes and your fabulous failures of the past few weeks.

* Hold an all-employee pizza party ... with the name of your company spelled out across the top of the pies in mushrooms!

* Decorate Smiley faces and put them up in a "giggle gallery"; make it a contest; have themes such as love, peace, cheer, get-well, Valentines, birthdays, 4th of July, thinking-of-you...whatever; donate them to a hospital! Make you own smiley or start with the 13" diameter smiley cardboard cutouts shown below, available at www.smileystore.com.

How to Predict the Future of a Dating Relationshp

2012-02-06T08:52:00.000-08:00

STARTING TO DATE AGAIN?

TIRED OF LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES?

TRY PREDICTING THE FUTURE OF DATING USING THESE

PREDICTIVE AWARENESS QUESTIONS

My dictionary defines a rut as a hollow depression which is a pretty good description of how you feel when one relationship after another doesn’t work out: hollow and depressed. One thing you can to protect yourself from the "relationship rut" is to become a better predictor of relationships.

Affirm yourself as someone who is realistic about relationships, who is developing a reliable internal guidance system. Get your head and your heart working together and you can more accurately predict the future of a dating relationship, see and properly react to the danger signs, and stop wasting time.

Ideas for Working With This List
Read the list several times. Rate yourself on each item, for example: I do this one well; I want to do better about this one; I really must do better about this one.

Identify specific relationships from the past (or present) where you could have done better. Write about them in a journal. Discuss them with a friend or in a support group. Turn them into action items.

1) Is your prospect really available? Are they truly free of past relationships legally, mentally, and emotionally? Do you see signs of addictions, dependencies, or compulsive behaviors? If your prospect is legally divorced, are they emotionally divorced as well? Starting a new relationship before a previous one has ended usually creates painful complications. Because people tend to behave in patterns, the way your prospect ended previous relationships may foretell the ending of yours.

2) Do you need to get a background check by a detective or attorney? It may not sound very romantic, but there are situations --financial, family, career-- where such information can save you a lot of grief.

3) How desperate are you for a relationship? People who are too “hungry” might eat anything. Get help with it, or wait long enough to get over desperation, before you make a commitment.

4) Does your prospect have a good sense of humor? Do they laugh and smile easily and often? Do you bring out the laughter in each other? DO you "get" and enjoy their sense of humor? Can they ease tension by finding humor in sticky predicaments without trivializing them? Is their humor good-natured rather than mean-spirited or angrily sarcastic? “Yes” to these questions is a very good sign.

5) During your first date(s), does your prospect ask you questions about yourself? Sales professionals know that a customer who asks good questions is signaling a buying mood, and the sale will likely be closed. At your first meeting, if you are the only one asking questions, it is a pretty good sign that your prospect is not “buying”. Don’t waste your time on more dates.

6) Listen to them describe their feelings about relationships from the past. If they have had essentially good relationships that just didn't work out, that's a favorable sign. If they are angry and blame the women/men of their past for the relationship failure they had, you will probably be next. The best prospects are those whose past relationships ended in a friendly way, without bitterness or ugliness or at least where they point the finger equally at themselves.

7) What is their life like when you meet? Is it a good and satisfying life, or are they looking to be rescued from their financial problems, age problems, or a desperate need to be in a relationship? Many people in need of rescue have a way of becoming romantic and sexy quickly. If you are a rescue vehicle and an object, you are not a person. It's safest to get involved with prospects who have a well-rounded, satisfying life, and who aren't looking to you to make their life work.

8) How did you meet? Were you both flaunting symbols of success, achievement, and career; or of physical allure? The more each of you played symbol games in the beginning, the more the relationship will have a gamey, fragile quality. Without a foundation in authenticity, it may become highly volatile and will tend to be either easy-come-easy-go, or it will last longer before it crashes and burns.

9) How about you? How do you really feel about the opposite sex? What's your history in relationships? And how do you perceive the opposite sex in general? Most important, do you really want a relationship or do you just want to be with someone who knows how to leave you alone? (Men, especially, may be prone to this tendency.)

10) Do you suffer from the fallacy that you can undo the hurts, abuses and injustices a prospect may claim have been done by others in their past? If they may make you larger than life at the beginning, inevitably they will include you as one of the disappointing and dysfunctional people they’ve been involved with.

11) Do you really like the realities of your prospect’s life when you meet? Do you feel positive about their family, friends, habits, values, tastes, the way they eat, how they groom themselves? The more you have to overlook and rationalize at the beginning, the more you will have to deny and block feelings in order to remain in the relationship.
12) Can you disagree --even argue-- with them without feeling guilty or responsible? Can the two of you bring conflict to a reasonably successful resolution? Does your prospect accept responsibility for communications problems as often as they point a finger at you?

13) Are you willing to look at your own hang-ups and their painful effects on relationships with people who try to get close to you?

14) Are you both willing to share your test results so you know what risks you might be taking regarding STDs, HIV and AIDs? If either or both of you have been sexually active within the past 10-15 years, getting tested is smart. Make sure that sharing the results is a requirement.

There's much more incredible advice like this in my book, "Toilet Paper, Toothpaste, and Tuna-Noodle Casserole: Observations and Advice on Love, Marriage, and Authentic Intimacy From a Psychologist Who's On The Practice-Makes-Perfect Program." Click here to buy it now.

Oh, Promise Me: The 27 Commitments for Happiness in Long-Term Intimate Relationships

2012-02-06T08:10:00.000-08:00

"Your mate doesn't live by bread alone; he or she needs to be "buttered up" from time to time."

~Zig Ziglar

Love, Honor, and Obey?
As a psychotherapist, marriage counselor, and a person with more than a few intimate relationships under his belt, it is clear that the traditional marriage vows are just not enough to sustain really successful truly intimate long-term relationships. Anyone who is aware of the divorce statistics knows this. Even the vows couples design for their own nuptials aren't enough to keep them together.

Conflict is Inevitable; Misery is Optional
Research shows that long-tern successful intimate relationships of 15-25 years or longer, have likely hit several lengthy rough patches. These are times for re-alignment. Your car needs periodic alignment because of the rough roads and potholes you have been through; your relationship needs it, too.

In fact, the most successful relationships start with a sustainable set of commitments that also become the tools to do the required periodic maintenance. Start with a good set of tools, then use them as needed.

It might not seem very romantic. It may be difficult and unpleasant to get under the chassis and fix things. But, the smooth ride and extended mileage you'll get will be well worth it.

Stay Out of the Ditch
Before you commit, take time to discuss each of these statements and come to agreement. The less agreement you come to, the less likely you are to sustain romance, intimacy, love, support, and happiness; you'll be off the road in a ditch much sooner than you expected or hoped for. The more agreement you can come to, and the more willing you are to use these commitments as tools, the more likely you are to sustain happiness in the long run.

1. I realize that fairy-tale romance doesn't really exist and that "happily ever after" demands a lot of work.

2. I understand that if I am not happy with myself, I will never be able to make you happy.

3. I realize that communication is the most important aspect of any relationship, and I promise to share my deepest secrets and dreams with you.

4. I promise I will confront problems as they come up, not wait and hope they will go away.

5. I understand that marriage is a commitment and that it is in some ways confining; I choose to accept that confinement in the firm belief that it will help me grow as a person.

6. I understand that there will be joy in our relationship and that there will be pain and sorrow as well.

7. I will not try to change you so that you better fulfill my needs. If I want to see change happen, I will fulfill your needs and see what happens.

8. I will keep my mind and body healthy, and I will expect you to do the same.

9. I believe that self-knowledge is the most powerful tool a person can have, and I expect you to help me know myself better, even if it means criticizing me.

10. I will give you unconditional respect as a human being at all times and I expect the same in return.
11. I promise that I will never be too busy to sit and watch the sunset with you.

12. I realize that, even though you may be able to anticipate some of my needs and preferences, you are not a mind-reader and I need to ask for what I want.

13. I will compliment you sincerely; I will compliment you in front of others and save criticism for when we are in private.

14. I will touch you gently.

15. I understand that it is important to be romantic and I will never stop courting you.

16. I realize that individual space is important and I need to respect your right to privacy; when we spend time apart it will be because our separate interests generate interest between us.

17. I will not fear change because change in our marriage can mean growth.

18. I understand that fighting fairly includes: no threats, accusations, or name calling.

19. I know that in spite of my best efforts, my human imperfection will provide many opportunities to apologize; I am willing to say, "I'm sorry."

20. I recognize that foolish pride and holding on to anger is dangerous to our relationship; I am willing to say, "I forgive you."

21. I understand that appreciation and recognition cannot be taken for granted; I am willing to say, "Thank you."

22. I will develop my sense of humor and invite you to laugh with me.

23. I will develop my ability to connect with you in your feelings; there will be times when we will cry together, and doing so will bond our hearts.

24. I know that it is unrealistic for either of us to always be strong; weak or strong, our marriage will be interdependent.

25. I will make a habit of performing caring acts daily.

26. I will look for love, even when I don't "feel" it or hear the words.

27. I understand that "getting married" is a life-long process; I will be patient.

Bonus Commitments, not in my original list
28. I will cultivate optimism so that we can celebrate rainbows after the rain.

29. I will use my sense of humor to help us maintain perspective, to uplift us, and never to hurt us.

30. I will celebrate the sound of your laughter and the times we share laughter for whatever reason.

More terrific advice like this is included in "Toilet Paper, Toothpaste, and Tuna-Noodle Casserole: Observations and Advice on Love, Marriage, and Authentic Intimacy From a Psychologist Who's On The Practice-Makes-Perfect Program," by Steve Wilson. Click here to buy it now.

The Top 10 Ways To Avoid Getting Into A Relationship Doomed To Fail

2012-02-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

It was my great privilege as a marriage counselor and as the customer of marriage counselors on more than a few occasions*, to get to look behind closed doors of relationships and learn a thing or two about what goes right and what goes wrong.

During this "month of love" I will share with you some of the best advice I ever received or figured out. What's below was adapted from Dennis R. Tesdell, author of "Self Care Weekly" newsletter and numerous lists and articles on self care.

These are ten of the most common things men & women do when they are searching for love or for a relationship where they want to be loved. In each case, it will inevitably *NOT* meet their needs:
1. Forcing your desire for a relationship onto the other person, and because the other person doesn't know how to say "no," they stay with you. (A sick “sixth” sense.)

2. Everything about the other person tells your head and "gut" they are NOT the one, but you ignore your intuition and mind and go ahead anyhow. (“Who do you trust?”)

3. You mix up someone being nice or friendly with you with romance. (Approval-seeking)

4. You fear or hate being alone, so you latch onto the first person who comes by and is available. (Lonely vs. alone. Your own best friend.)

5. You look only at the person's looks and outside "wrappings & trappings" and do not investigate or pay attention to what they are really like as a *person*. (Superficialism projection. Self respect.)

6. Even though you know this person has done bad things to other people in past relationships, you choose to believe that he/she will not do the same to you. (That leopard is a snake!)

7. You mistake your great sexual adventures and fun with this person for love. (“This must be love!”)

8. You are in a relationship, but you don't express your feelings and needs to your partner for fear you will hurt their feelings or make them angry. (Authenticity deficiency.)

9. You know your partner is deceiving you but you refuse to believe it, even though you know the truth. You stay in denial about it all. (Red-flag Syndrome.)

10. The other person shows a lot of interest in you and you respond quickly and passionately, without really finding out if this person is who or what you really want in a relationship partner. (Be authentically free. “Trust, but verify.”)

* I summarized a whole lot of my best advice in "Toilet Paper, Toothpaste, and Tuna-Noodle Casserole: Observations and Advice on Love, Marriage, and Authentic Intimacy From a Psychologist Who's On The Practice-Makes-Perfect Program." Click here to buy this incredible book now.

A Funny Valentine Could Be Serious

2012-02-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

A FUNNY VALENTINE COULD BE SERIOUS
By Steve Wilson, Psychologist, Joyologist
©1998-2012, All Rights Reserved

"A relationship without humor is like shaking hands with gloves on."--Sherry Suib Cohen

"Your mate doesn't live by bread alone; he or she needs to be "buttered up" from time to time."~Zig Ziglar

"Love may make the world go around but it's laughter that keeps us from getting dizzy."

--Donald Zochert

"I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day.
I haven't had time for tobacco since." --Arturo Toscanini

"Acting is not very hard. The most important things are to be able to laugh and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. And if I have to laugh, well, I think of my sex life." --Glenda Jackson

"The most difficult years of marriage are those following the wedding." --Unknown

In my psychotherapy practice I have worked with thousands of singles and couples who are searching for answers to an eternally contemporary question, "When the weight of daily responsibilities drags us down to grim seriousness, how can we recapture the color and exuberance we once enjoyed?" Even in relationships that are comfortable, when you know everything is okay, you can get to feeling bored by the predictability of the same old thing. The answer may be easier and more fun than you might expect.

The great abundance of books, articles, and TV investigations by Geraldo, Sally, Phil, Oprah, Jerry, Tom, Dick & Harry have tried to find the answer which may be as plain as the nose on your face. It isn't really news that a successful relation requires effort. You cannot take it for granted; you have to nurture and care for it. But this is what I find fascinating: one of the most important ingredients for keeping the spice, spark and sizzle in your love life is a good sense of humor and taking time for fun.

What Do You Want In A Mate?
Here are some interesting facts. Glamour magazine reports a survey of 350 brides-to-be who were asked what they admired most in their man. The quality most often mentioned as attractive: sense of humor (outranking romantic nature, intelligence, and good looks). Speaking for the sponsor of the study, Alice Kolator said, "These women take the decision to marry seriously. But the courtship has also got to be lighthearted."

A Newsweek article reports that, in a study of 351 couples married 15 years or more, researchers Robert and Jeanette Lauer found that the most admired qualities in a spouse were integrity, caring, sensitivity, and a sense of humor. A report in Men's Health shows us what a publishing company found when they tallied the attributes most frequently mentioned in its newsletter's personal ads. Humor topped the list for men and women alike. The results, Published in East West Journal, looked like this:

QUALITIES MOST OFTEN SOUGHT BY WOMEN IN MEN
1. Sense of humor
2. Intelligence
3. Nonsmoker
4. Sensitivity
5. Being committed
6. Being slender
7. Being compassionate
8. Attractiveness
9. Warmth
10. Maturity

QUALITIES MOST FREQUENTLY SOUGHT BY MEN IN WOMEN
1. Sense of humor
2. Intelligence
3. Warmth
4. Attractiveness
5. Nonsmoker
6. Being caring
7. Being sensitive
8. Being caring
9. Independence
10. Honesty

Clearly, the report concludes, Sylvester Stallone is no match for Woody Allen in the rugged world of romance.

A Google search on the topics shows that "humor" ranks 1 or 2 on almost every list.

Because true mirthful laughter always discharges emotional tension, it helps you feel relaxed and is part of the "ice-breaker" you need when you first meet someone. As your relationship progresses, the two of you will develop "in" jokes, pet names, and code words which help you feel special, draw you closer together, and reinforce your bonding. When the tough times come (and they will), your sense of humor will help, again, by relieving tension, and giving you a perspective from which you are less likely to be overwhelmed.

When Are You Too Old for Fooling Around?Many octogenarians maintain that you don't stop playing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop playing. And it has been said that "you can't be truly sexy if you are afraid of looking foolish in bed."

Sex therapist, Dr. Ruth Westheimer says, "In a relationship, if there is laughter from making fun of your partner, that's not always good. But if a joke is used to break the tension, it can be very effective in defusing an explosive situation. For example, if a man gets mad because his girlfriend squeezes the toothpaste from the middle instead of the end, he shouldn't make a big scene. A little joke will help much more."

Westheimer adds, "A sense of humor in bed can be very nice if used the right way. But it can also be very dangerous. Some tickling or telling funny stories in bed can make sex more interesting." (I wonder if this could be the origin of the saying that "timing is everything!")

Writer Peter Mehlman says, "Without a sense of humor, life is the kind of thing that can leave a bad taste in your mouth." And, as Sherry Suib Cohen points out, "If you can count on a laugh, sometimes once a day, sometimes more, from your nearest and dearest, consider yourself blessed. I suspect that when we are old and gray we will remember the times we had each other in stitches far more vividly that the times we just had each other.

One of the most common blocks to having fun is the mistaken belief that "I must act my age." Those who suffer from this attitude refuse to take part in fun activities because they feel they are too old for "foolishness." Author Doris Jasinek encourages us to overcome this idea by remembering that roller skates, bicycles, slides, and swings come in all sizes. George Burns tell us, "You can't help growing older, but you can help growing up -- that is a state of mind." After all, you can be 30 years old or seventy years young, it's up to you.

A Funny Valentine Could Be SeriousPet names, private jokes, whimsical gifts, and shared fantasies are the games of love. In an extensive study, William Betcher, M.D., discovered much about how and why lighthearted play and humor can kindly, renew, and reaffirm romance, ease stressful situations, help solve problems, circumvent crises, and add excitement to our relationships. He maintains that humor is important not only for the pure pleasure it offers, but for the loving way it allows you to deal with trouble spots.

Jim Pelley, a humorist in Sacramento, California, suggests several specific ways a man can humorize his love life. There is absolutely no reason why a woman couldn't use these ideas, too.
* Waltz her around the room while you hum her favorite song.
* Ask her what's the matter in your best Pee Wee Herman voice.
* Leave little surprise notes around the house for her, such as, in the freezer: "Honey, the meatloaf was great!" or, about 100 pages ahead of the bookmark in her bedside mystery: "I don't know whodunit, but I'd like to do it with you."
* Slip a new tape into her car stereo if she's been complaining about traffic jams on the way home.
* Carve a heart encircling your initials in the bar of soap she takes to the gym.
* Put a candy bar in her briefcase if you know she loves chocolate.
* Underneath the bread in the sandwich she takes for lunch: "I love you!"

From the first meeting to courtship, marriage, and beyond, it is apparent that a sense of humor and an element of playfulness is vital. However, if your sense of humor isn't enough to get you successfully all the way through the marriage phase, you can always employ it at time of divorce. Not too long ago

Dear Abby offered these examples of authentic divorce announcements:

SPLITAfter Six Years
Lester and Betty
Have seen the light
Married November 8, 1966
Divorced November 6, 1972
Both are happily back in circulation.
Call Lester: 555-6500 (after 9 p.m.)
Betty: 555-1115 (anytime)

WITH HAPPY HEARTS
Lionel and Jane announce with pleasure
the severance of all legal
and/or other bonds that may have
existed between their daughter
Janet and That Boy.
With the new month of August
Janet enters into a new and
Beautiful single life.
As for That Boy -- May the Great
Honcho in the sky love him and
Keep him -- someplace else.

Clearly, improving your laugh life will improve -- or save -- your love life, make you more attractive, and bring satisfaction to your intimate relationships. Here is my best tip for marriage: Pam and I try to maintain a sense of humor about our marriage. I don't try to run her life, and I don't try to run mine, either. That works out real well! (And Henny Youngman is our favorite marriage counselor.)

Excerpted from: "Toilet Paper, Toothpaste, and Tuna-Noodle Casserole: Observations and Advice on Love, Marriage, and Authentic Intimacy From a Psychologist Who's On The Practice-Makes-Perfect Program," by Steve Wilson, 1998.

The Why, Which, Where, When & How of Affirmations for Peace of Mind, Health & Happiness

2012-01-31T10:56:00.000-08:00

"Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words.
Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions.
Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits.
Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character.
Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny."
~Author unknown

To “affirm” something, by dictionary definition, means that you are declaring it to be true.

By design and tradition, World Laughter Tour's laughter therapy sessions close with three affirmations. We shout them cheerfully and enthusiastically, as a call-and-response activity, with participants encouraged throw their arms up in a victory gesture with a chorus of the affirmative response, "YES!"

"We can be happier tomorrow than we are today!" (YES!)
"We can be healthier tomorrow than we are today!" (YES!)
"We love to laugh!" (YES!)

Participants leave the sessions uplifted. They have learned three affirmations that will stand them in good stead if they choose to use them properly.

Positive Psychology
In Delivering Happiness: Translating Positive Psychology Intervention Research for Treating Major and Minor Depressive Disorders, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, V. 17, Number 8, 2011, Layous et al summarize recent studies of the promising initial findings that Positive Activity Interventions (PAIs), saying that PAIs, "contribute to low-cost effective interventions that can serve either as initial therapy for mild symptoms or as adjunctive therapy for partial responders to medication. PAIs teach individuals ways to increase their positive thinking, positive affect, and positive behaviors. Our method draws on positive psychology, social psychology, affective neuroscience, game theory, and ancient spiritual practices to create a model of how laughter and other PAIs might relieve mood disorders and other conditions, as well as strengthen what works well for individuals." (Italics added.)

In addition to the positive psychology basis for understanding the how & why of affirmations, Eve Hogan asks, "So when we affirm that we are fit when we may not be, wealthy when we are financially struggling, or loved when we are lonely, how exactly does that work if we are striving to live authentically? Are we just kidding ourselves?" Not at all.

"An affirmation is usually a sentence or phrase that you repeat regularly to make a formal declaration to yourself and the universe of your intention for it to be the truth. While some may say it is akin to 'fake it until you make it,' I see it a bit more like holding the vision of what I know can be true. Here is how they work."

WHAT? Consonance, Dissonance, and Affective Neurosciences
We all have in our brains a thing called a reticular activating system (RAS), composed of several neuronal circuits connecting the brainstem to the cortex. The RAS helps mediate transitions from sleep to wakefulness, and from relaxed wakefulness to periods of high attention. When we use affirmations we want to increase our attention to the positive thoughts of the affirmation, the positive emotions that accompany the vision of achieving our goals and fulfilling our needs, as well as opportunities to act accordingly.

The RAS is like a filter that lets in information that we need, and filters out information that we don’t. If we didn’t have this system, we would be bombarded with so much information that our senses would overload and we would go into massive overwhelm. Instead, through heightened attention when we are awake, our brain registers what matters to us based on our goals, needs, interests, and desires.

During a lecture I attended many years ago in Columbus, Ohio, when teaching about meditation, mindfulness and awareness, Ram Dass, an American contemporary spiritual teacher, gave this example. If you are driving into a strange town and your car engine is making a strange noise, you will tend to notice garages, mechanics, and auto repair places, but probably you will not notice the restaurants. On the other hand, if you are hungry as you drive into the town, you will tend to notice all the restaurants and none of auto repair shops. We tend to notice (be more aware of) that which is important to us. The RAS does that for us; it is helping us focus on what's important.

Most of us have had the experience of a friend showing us their new car and it’s a make and model we have never seen before. Then, now that it is important to us, we suddenly begin to see that particular make and model everywhere we look.

Your RAS recognizes what is important to you and allows the information in. When what is important to us is congruent with where we focus and how we act, we experience consonance.

Repeating an affirmation--holding the thought-- may also serve us by setting up a kind of cognitive dissonance. Eve Hogan uses the term dynamic tension to refer to our awareness of the difference between the state described in our positive affirmations and the reality of where we are. Hogan says, "If ideal weight is your emphasis, you will suddenly begin to see every gym and weight loss product. If money is your goal, investment and earning opportunities will move to the forefront of your awareness. In essence, the affirmation can kick your creativity into high gear." She suggests that we then will take actions to bring our actual state closer to the affirmed state, thus relieve the tension. "See if you can make the dynamic tension go away by making your words and reality match." I can see where this would work for some people.

TAPPING INTO HAPPINESS
Positive psychologist, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, says that you tap into happiness "whenever positive emotions resonate within you.” When you say an affirmation over and over again, a couple of things happen. One is that it sends a very clear message to your RAS that this is important to you. That starts positive emotions resonating within you. Your brains gets busy noticing ways to help you achieve your goals.

WHERE? WHICH?
You can find many books of affirmations, and lists appear in magazines weekly and monthly. How do you know which ones to work with?

There is no sure way to know which ones will work for you. It's partly intuition, partly trial-and-error, and partly common sense. You may come across an affirmation that "speaks" to you, it just feels right. Write them down and keep them in a safe place for use immediately or at some later time. And, you can design your own affirmations.

Every bit as important as which affirmation you choose to work with is how you work with it.

Hogan, again: "So what makes an effective affirmation? First, determine what kind of transformation you want to bring about in yourself—a goal or intention. Or determine what quality, attitude, value, or characteristic you want to remind yourself of or develop in yourself.

Second, if it fits, add an emotion to the mix or a word that qualities the statement. For instance, I am joyfully at my ideal weight of 125. Or, I’m happily living in my own home. I personally like affirmations that strum my heartstrings: I offer gratitude for every step and every breath."

Third, make it positive vs. negative: “I am healthy and fit” rather than “I am no longer fat.”

"We become, have and attract what we think about and act upon correctly the most."

~John Assaraf

WHEN?
You don't have to say every affirmation every day. Punctuate your day with the affirmation as little as five times in eight hours. Create a "proper" action so that you are doing something associated with moving toward your desired state.

Hogan suggests, "Some say it takes 21 days of repetition for an affirmation make its mark on your psyche, so you can get great benefits by keeping just one of you affirmations going for at least a month. In the beginning you will have to consciously choose to repeat your affirmations. If you repeat them at every opportunity they will begin to replace the negative mind banter that takes over when we are not monitoring our thoughts."

HOW? A Rubric for Using Affirmations to Sustain a Positive Lifestyle
The sequence of development of sustainable positive thoughts, positive emotions, and positive behaviors (actions), follows a logical path beginning with mindfulness.

When acted upon properly, positive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors eventually become the natural way people live their lives; if not actually inborn, this way of life can be so internalized that it feels effortless and "natural." With proper repetition, thoughts and actions that at first had to be consciously brought to mind will become learned as habits.

Typically, the “proper” actions will result in sufficiently and frequently pleasant results (positive reinforcement) that they will be repeated. With enough repletion and reinforcement, they will become internalized (mapped in the brain). At that point, positive thoughts, emotions and behaviors have become so automatic that they “feel natural.”

I will map the progression using Good-Hearted Living™ as an example. It is a program of six practices that reduces stress, improves interpersonal relationships, and helps individuals enjoy life more, that specifically builds on this sequence.

Simply put, the six practices that comprise the low-demand Good-Hearted Living™ program have each practice linked to a different day of the week. This is merely to assist with remembering what they are. Any practice can be done on any day of the week. The six practices are: paying compliments (Monday), being flexible (Tuesday), gratitude (Wednesday), kindness (Thursday), forgiveness (Friday), and guilt-free leisure pleasures, i.e., informally called the chocolate or the “sweet things” in life (the weekend).

The sequence of development of a sustainable positive way of life, is:
Intention (Agreement to Focus) - you agree to give the program a try.

Mindfulness - you are reminded by reading a list (see Appendix for Good-Hearted Living™), or by memorizing or remembering which practice is the focus of a particular day of the week, e.g., “Fridays are for forgiveness.” Coupled with intention, this thought activates your RAS, a filter that will help bring opportunities for action on this thought into sharper focus throughout your day.

Action<->Result - the outcome of the proper action will almost always be pleasant or otherwise beneficial. This pleasant outcome will increase the likelihood that the behavior/action will be repeated. Example: In the supermarket, a fellow shopper aggressively jockeys ahead of you in the checkout line. Rather than stewing in your resentment and spending time plotting revenge, with your blood pressure boiling, you remember “forgiveness” and decide to let go of your anger. Immediately you feel (a) more calm, (b) your muscular tension turns t muscular relaxation, and, (c) you are pleased with yourself for remembering to do this positive practice. Later, you write about it in your journal.

Repetition - Sufficient repetition begins your brain mapping process (refer to the work of neuroscientist Antonio Damassio).

Habit - Brain mapping increases the tendency to have your affirmative positive thought linked to the tendency to follow through with an associated behavior, thus you form a habit.

Further Repetition - Sufficient repetition deepens the brain mapping process and extends the map to additional neural centers, thus strengthening the likelihood that you will be more alert to opportunities for positive thought, emotions, and actions.

“Natural” Way-of-Life - At some point, you will have a heightened perception of opportunities (triggers) for positive thinking, feeling, and acting that requires little or no conscious effort. That is when “positivity” has become a way of life and feels natural to you.

A SET OF AFFIRMATIONS TO CULTIVATE A MENTAL ATTITUDE THAT WILL BRING YOU PEACE, HEALTH, AND HAPPINESS

I (happily) fill my mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope.

I (calmly) never try to get even with my enemies.

I expect imperfection; I adjust my expectations so that I more often predict reality more accurately.

I count my blessings not my troubles, and I fill my mind with thoughts of gratitude.

Rather than imitate others, I (respectfully) emulate qualities I admire in others, and create my own best self.

I profit from my losses; I celebrate rainbows.

I consider my impact on others so as to (uplift) contribute happiness for others.

I (joyfully) balance my perspective with laughter and humor.

Try these affirmations one at a time or in pairs that make sense to you, for a few weeks. I believe you will like the results.

(Some Material adapted from Affirmations: Why They Work & How to Use Them | by Eve Hogan | Spirituality & Health Voices Blog; http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/blog/affirmations-why-they-work/ 1/4/2012)

Game On! How to Create Positive Activity Interventions

2012-01-11T11:52:00.000-08:00

Yo-Yo c. 600BC

Game On! is the name of the book I have written for "How to Create Positive Activity Interventions," which is the working title of a course I have designed to advance the development of therapeutic humor and laughter by a revolutionary leap. It will fortify and extend clinical practice and training with positive activity leadership skills.

We are now seeing more and clearer evidence for a major expanded role for humor, laughter, mirth, games, meditations, and other positive activities, in health, happiness, and improved human relationships.

Learning Positive Activity Intervention (PAI), professionals and lay persons will be able to incorporate elements of a variety of additional activities, beyond laughter exercises, that show great promise for ameliorating health challenges and paving the path to happiness.

Students of Game On! will be able to deliver programs that are stronger as therapeutic interventions, powerful boosts to achieving workplace objectives, strong supports for educational environments, and keys to enjoying life, i.e., happiness.

Game On! will save untold years off of the learning curve because I have been studying PAI in one form or another for more than 30 years. For Game On! I have distilled and synthesized the best thinking and practices so that they can be learned and put them into practice quickly. And, students will have an additional credential under the auspices of World Laughter Tour, to attest to their expertise.

From Harvard Business Review, January-February 2012, “Emerging research from neuroscience, psychology, and economics makes the link between a thriving workforce and better business performance absolutely clear.” In other words, there is undeniable scientific evidence that happy employees are more creative, more productive, healthier and more satisfied. Yet, for many people, the way to happiness, to more positive emotions, more positive thoughts, and more positive behaviors remains elusive.

Game On! will show the way.

Dreidel c.100BC

Speakers, trainers, teachers, medical, mental health and human services professionals and volunteers are about to make a quantum advance in audience participation and client self-administered programs that is memorable, meaningful, energizing, and fun.

Many of us have been intrigued with, studying and advocating the power of humor to heal, to improve the educational environment, to improve workplace environments, and to enjoy life more.

Those (6,000 or so) who have completed the basic course in “How to Create Therapeutic Laughter”, have a basic understanding of leading groups in activity experiences; they know about the physiology, neurology, psychology, attitudinal influences, and social psychology of laughter, health and well-being; and they have some experience in planning and conducting related programs. They have a better than average understanding of the difference between humor and laughter.

Over the past 20-30 years, we have refined our knowledge and application of the field to differentiate laughter and mirth from humor, to develop specific activities around each which are thought to be therapeutic.

During that time, there has been a growing awareness and respect for other activities (interventions) such as therapeutic or caring clowns, non-competitive games, relaxation theory, and meditation practices.

The advent of the concept of Positive Activity Intervention, and the benefits suggested by research (Delivering Happiness, Layous et al, 2011), begs the question of a synthesis of theories and activities, and represent a significant next step in illuminating the human condition.

Board Game c. 1870

Putting together courses of study will fortify a variety of clinical and professional practices in this regard, as well as for volunteers and others who do have extensive professional training.

In the Western world, in what might be called modern times, starting in the mid-1960s, work on the concept mostly was centered on humor, with laughter taking a kind of back seat. This idea got a huge boost in 1979, when Norman Cousins published “Anatomy of an Illness.” Although Cousins was advocating humor as possibly the main source of his recovery from an illness, he became known as the man who laughed himself well. Indeed, most of the science of humor actually employs protocols based on the act of laughing.

Video Games c.1972

Various organizations that sprung up on the topic focused on humor, with humor and laughter treated pretty much as one thing: The Humor Project with its newsletter “Laughing Matters”; the International Society for Humor Studies, with the journal "Humor;" the European Summer Humor Institute; the American Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor, formed out of an organization called Nurses for Laughter (NFL); Patch Adams’ Gesundheit Institute, with the vision of a ‘happy hospital’; Wavy Gravy’s Camp Winnarainbow, blending humor, laughter, clowning, and performance art with peace and love; the International School of Laughter and Well-being in France
(formerly the French School of Laughter), with a 5-to-7 week training program.

Impressed and fascinated by Joel Goodman’s humor education courses, I joined this non-movement movement in 1984.

All along, there had been references to arcane Tibetan Buddhist laughter practices, but the mainstay, and the research, seemed to be about humor, comedy, jokes, finding humor, sensing humor, and developing one’s sense of humor.

Dr. William Fry, Jr., had long before (c.1964) suggested that humor (a psychological phenomenon), laughter (a physical act/reaction), and mirth (an emotional state) could and should be separated for certain purposes of research, practice, and understanding.

It was not until I returned from India (1998), where I had been invited to lecture about positive work environments, which was a variation on the theme of “Putting Humor to Work at Work,” that I felt it was important, and possible, to distinguish laughter from humor as separate human capacities with therapeutic implications and applications.

In 1999, World Laughter Tour created a curriculum for laughter therapy based on the psychologic model familiar to the Western world in the form of Music Therapy, Art Therapy, and Activity Therapy, which required broadening the definition of “therapeutic” along the lines suggested and adopted by positive psychology.

Game On! gives access to a variety of approaches that will appeal to a broad spectrum of the population that seeks happiness or a boost in the management of a variety of ills from mood issues to the classroom environment, from supporting primary treatment for physical health to improving morale and productivity in the workplace.

Non-competitive Games c.1986

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The emotionally loaded quarter of the year (HICA)

2011-11-15T04:31:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I was heartened to see a TV commercial for a store that promised they would not put up Christmas decorations this year until after Thanksgiving. Sadly, they stand alone amid the commercial whoop-dee-doo of the season with their noble decision to "celebrate one holiday at at time".

The holidays give many of us the HICAs: a heebie-jeebie mish-mash of emotions with the ominous realization Here It Comes Again.

Every year, around this time of the year, for more than ten years, I have been publishing variations on a humorous and serious article about how to stay sane, maintain emotional balance, and beat the holiday blues & blahs.

From October through News Year's the holidays pile up. Many of us get tied in emotional knots caught up between commercial rat-race exhortations, memories, social pressures, family "shoulds" and limited financial resources.

Included with a more or less psychological explanation of holiday blues, common-sense advice, some tongue-in-cheek observations, and to show that it is actually possible and appropriate to find the lighter side of all this, I included a dozen or so one-liners and eventually built a list of nineteen guidelines.

Here are a few of the jokes:

• You can't blame Native Americans for being upset. To the world, Columbus was a great explorer. To the Native Americans, he was a subdivider.

• I love Halloween. It's the only night of the year rock stars look natural.

• It's all right to scare people at Halloween, but this year I think kids are overdoing it. I saw one of them dressed up as a heating oil bill.

• Last Halloween there was a knock at the door, I opened it and there were my three kids dressed up as the scariest thing I could ever imagine --my three kids!

• To me, Thanksgiving is a very important time of the year. It's my stomach's busy season.

• My wife and I always have an equitable division of labor on Thanksgiving. She shops, cooks, sets the table, serves, cleans up -- and I tell her who's winning the game.

• Santa Claus makes a list of who's naughty or nice. I just hope he grades on a curve.

Here are the guidelines.

BEAT THE HOLIDAY BLUES
1) Join a laughter circle or laughter club.
2) Tell people how you feel. Do not isolate yourself.
3) Give yourself and everyone else permission to feel less than perfect.
4) Talk openly to a trusted friend or family member.
5) Get some exercise.
6) Avoid excessive use of drugs or alcohol.
7) Do something you're good at.
8) Function within your routine.
9) Do something nice for yourself.
10) Look at your unhappy feelings logically.
11) Stay away from depressed or emotionally upset people.
12) Give yourself some quiet time.
13) Maintain contact with your counselor or support group.
14) Keep your holiday expectations realistic. Expect the intensity of holiday togetherness to breed some irritability, and take it in stride.
15) Give added attention to the things you enjoy.
16) Don't take on more responsibility than you can comfortably handle.
17) Skip the commercialized pressures. Don’t go into debt for gift-giving. Give what represents the real spirit of the season: your time, attention, and caring.
18) Negotiate to get a reasonable amount of whatever you need (time, attention, support). At the same time, be flexible about the way things are done. Build some change into family rituals.
19) Engage in prayer or meditation that suits you. Try it both alone and in community.

Click here to read all of the advice, all of the jokes and all of the guidelines, and please pass it on.

Hitting home runs

2011-11-13T08:48:00.001-08:00

The idea that the frequency of merely getting on base might just be the single most important statistic in the game was drawn ever so clearly for me in the film, "Moneyball".

I have spent way too much of my life waiting to hit the grand slam that wins the World Series, believing that it was the only thing that counted. I expected that one day I would hit 'the big one' and then be bathed in glorious contentment, satisfaction, and the admiration of my family and friends, thereafter. I could not have been more wrong.

I see now that I have not kept score on myself either accurately or realistically. By under-valuing the importance of just getting on base, I diminished my accomplishments and the joy that I might have had all along.

I am making up for that now with a new perspective. I have lowered my standards appropriately.

I realize that I am really good at getting on base.

Yes, I have made a lot of outs, and swung at some mighty bad pitches,

Notwithstanding the occasional home runs and the even rarer grand slam, there have been many, many more walks, singles, doubles, and triples than I ever gave their proper due. I've gotten on a few times by being hit by pitches, but, fortunately, never been beaned.

I’m reviewing a lifetime of stats now, hoping to re-live as much as possible every on-base at bat, delighting in them all, watching the game films in slow-motion, savoring every step around the bases.

A recent epiphany brought me another kind of clarity as I partied into the night with a group of workshop attendees. Haunting memories of last year's medical Odyssey melted away somehow and moved from an irrational, PTSD-type of apprehension, to the background. Over. Done. Past. And passed. It was the gift of insight into a personal milestone.

To paraphrase Ernest Thayer with a different ending for the Mudville nine:

"Oh, right here in this favored land the sun is shining bright;

The band is playing right here, and here now hearts are light,

And here one man is laughing, and hearing children shout;

There is great joy in Mudville — Stevie Wilson's back on base."

Looking back over a lifetime of getting on base I am determined to enjoy taking my sweet time rounding my way towards home.

Laughter therapy's healthy respect for humor & comedy

2011-10-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

A recent audio report focuses on the curiously curative potential of humor and comedy in the face of cancer. Laughter therapists should find it useful.

For important reasons World Laughter Tour (WLT), draws distinctions between therapeutic humor and therapeutic laughter. WLT methods and theoretical foundations are almost exclusively about laughter, mirthful laughter. But, how could laughter therapists, i.e., Certified Laughter Leaders (CLLs), be fully effective without at least a basic knowledge of both humor and laughter?

It would be wrong-headed and misleading for an enthusiastic appreciation of the power of laughter to imply a disdain of humor.

In a 1996 documentary about laughter clubs getting started in India, a laughter club member in Mumbai declares, “Laughter alone is the solution!” But, respectfully, I have always disagreed. To me, his zealous enthusiasm for laughter is too narrow of a viewpoint.

Laughter and humor are allies that overlap

Therapeutic humor entails different challenges from therapeutic laughter; it has its own theories and methods. Still, there is the place where humor and laughter overlap, and that place is essential to laughter therapists. That’s one of the reasons I advocate for them to try at least one year’s memberships in AATH (Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor) and ISHS (International Society for Humor Studies).

The theme of this blog is that laughter and humor are therapeutic allies. Separate in some ways but inseparable in other ways. Over the years, the WLT course of study has included more and more information about this alliance.

To add breadth and depth the curative potential of laughter (and humor), we integrate a six-step program of attitudinal healing as a vital part of our process. The International School of Laughter (France) includes extensive coursework in Playful Sophrology. Fully effective laughter therapy blends many complimentary practices.

Laughter therapy blends many complimentary practices

This combination plus the dynamic/organic process of developing the method, has fostered a distinctive and highly credible brand of laughter therapy, drawing from numerous schools. I am excited that even more will be added soon and in the coming years as we become aware of the true depth and breadth of both our mission and our method.

The fact Public Radio aired a report on comedy & cancer is subtle evidence that the pioneers in this field, in their own special way, are making significant inroads into illuminating and improving the human condition.

Enjoy!

a SHIFT to a higher consciousness

2011-10-07T16:37:00.000-07:00

Listen up and pass it on.

Finding happiness requires playing life like an accordion. The sweetest music requires compression and expansion of the bellows, in the right amounts at the right times.

Sometimes condensing ideas to their simplest forms is helpful. For example, my blog of 5/17/11, tells the story of how all the wisdom in the world could be condensed into a single word. The word is maybe.

And while that may be true, most of us will need a more complete map for our journey to territories like health, happiness, joy, and contentment. To get there, I suspect, most of us would need a few more details, guideposts, landmarks, and road signs. We'd appreciate an expanded map.

Generous helpings of humor and laughter result from Good-Hearting Living

Expanding from the wisdom and truth of maybe, I added a half dozen guideposts to help point the way. They are the practices of attitudinal healing that comprise the program of Good-Hearted Living(tm): paying compliments, being flexible, gratitude, kindness, forgiveness, and chocolate. You can click on the link in this paragraph for a one-page summary of how it works (condensed). Or, buy the book (expanded).

When I was a practicing psychotherapist the school of psychology I followed was W.W.: Whatever Works, an eclectic and pragmatic approach that was very successful. I learned that "crazy" comes in two basic forms: bad and good.

Crazy bad is shorthand for conditions of emotional distress and mental illness that makes some people dangerous and prevents people from being fully functional, highly effective, and truly happy. Crazy good often results in negative judgements that some others put on us when we are merely being creative and individualistic, our unique selves, pursuing higher consciousness, doing no harm, but not doing what they think we should be doing.

Attached to the pursuit of the therapeutic alliance between laughter and humor are some values about the world being a better place and people treating each other in a kinder, fairer, more humane way. If peaceful co-existence, a greener world, a more loving and laughter filled world are crazy ideas, then I would say that are crazy good ideas.

Now, as the world seems to be tilting more toward crazy bad, we need a SHIFT to more crazy good.

That shift will require an expanded map. More details. More landmarks. More road signs.

Here is one written by Rabbi Howard L Apothaker. It was presented during Yom Kippur services as "An Acrostic 'Days of Awe' Prayer" - actually a series of prayers from A-to-Z, "from Awe to Zeal, for returning to our most humane conduct." With gratitude to Rabbi Apothaker, I offer it here, slightly paraphrased, as an expanded set of alphabetic guideposts to help us balance ourselves and thereby contribute to a more balanced world.

Please join me on the path of a SHIFT to a higher consciousness...

From animosity to affability,

From bigotry to blessing.

From cruelty to caring.

From deception to devotion.

From enmity to engagement,

From faultfinding to forgiveness,

From greed to generosity,

From hostility to heartfulness,

From injustice to integrity,

From jingoism to judiciousness,

From Klanishness to kindness,

From lewdness to love,

From maliciousness to mercy,

From nastiness to niceness,

From obstinancy to openmindedness,

From prejudice to peacefulness,

From querulousness to quietude,

From ridicule to respect,

From selfishness to sacrifice.,

From trash-talk to tact,

From violence to values,

From warfare to welcoming,

From xenophobia to examination of self,

From yelling insults to yielding ground,

From zero-sum to a zeal for cooperation.

True mirthful laughter and humor will be the greatest therapeutic allies when they are linked to a higher consciousness. Let us seek to accomplish that alliance and fulfill its potential, in Rabbi Apothaker's words, "For all peoples, for every person, at this time, through all time, in our time; and for all human convictions and creeds."

Gelopedia: Some antics, semantics, and the language of laughter & humor

2011-09-17T08:32:00.000-07:00

I have always maintained that one of the key requirements of an effective Certified Laughter Leader (a laughter therapist, or an expert in laughter) is to be cheerful. “I can’t be happy every day,” said opera star Beverly Sills, “But at least I can be cheerful.”

That, plus my fascination with the importance of semantics and the role of general semantics in happiness, explains my excitement about the most recent entry in Gelopedia.

Exhilaration: "Exhilaration" was introduced as an emotion construct aimed at integrating the various responses occurring at the levels of behavior, physiology, and emotional experience (Ruch, 1990a).”

“Of Latin origin (hilaris means ‘cheerful’) and is used here in its original sense to denote the process of making cheerful or the temporary rise in cheerful state.”

“…an emotion construct denoting a temporary increase in a cheerful state that is observable in behavior, physiology, and emotional experience, and that occurs in response to humor, but also to other stimuli.”

“Although conceptually different, exhilaration and the state of cheerfulness should be studied together, since it can be hypothesized that there is a reciprocal relationship between them. A cheerful state facilitates the induction of exhilaration, and an accumulation of exhilaration responses may lead to longer-lasting changes in the level of cheerfulness.”

“Within taxonomies of emotion categories, exhilaration may be seen as a facet of the positive emotion of happiness (or joy). Within the family of positive emotions, exhilaration may be the one most strongly aligned with laughter; whereas empirical studies of happiness rarely report its occurrence, laughter is an inevitable response category in humor studies.”

From Exhilaration and Humor, Willibald Ruch, In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland (Eds.) (1993), The Handbook of Emotion (Chapter 42). New, York, NY: Guilford Publications, 605-616.

Readers are encouraged to submit additions to Gelopedia to keep it dynamic and organic; a living document. Send nominations to info@worldlaughtertour.com

Click here to get Ruch’s paper

Click here to get the gelopedia

What does a Rigologist look look like?

2011-09-14T07:18:00.000-07:00

Bonjour, mes amis! C'est moi, le Rigologist!

With my teacher Corinne Cosseron

An old joke has a very nervous 13 year-old Bar Mitzvah boy thinking so much about the presents he is about to receive that instead of saying "Today I am a man," he distractedly starts his thank-you speech to the congregation with, "Today I am a fountain pen!"

Well, today, thanks to our good friends and colleagues Corinne and Fred Cosseron, I am Rigologist! I am not nervous, and I did receive two magnificent gifts: le beau chapeau rouge (beautiful red hat) you see in the photo above, and the masterful teachings of Corinne and Fred, who came from France to share wisdom, inspiration, and technique with me and eleven compatriots in Columbus, August 15-19, 2011.

From the website of the International School of Laughter (ISL): RIGOLOGY® and RIGOLOGIST® come from the French word “RIGOLO”, that means “funny” or “amusing” in child talk. « RIGOLOGY® » means « the science of laughter and joie de vivre» « RIGOLOGIST® » is « the professional expert in laughter ».

A unique and very special workshop in Laughter is the Best Medicine
Pam and I organized the World Laughter Tour, Inc. (WLT) production of a 5-day course in Rigology. The curriculum highlighted the major topics covered in five weeks of education and training typically taught in France by Corinne and Fred Cosseron, founders of ISL, and their expert staff. It was conducted for the first time ever in the United States at Columbus, Ohio. Twelve professionals earned the title of Rigologist.

Working collaboratively brings the world closer together. Laughter is universal. Studying it together and having an open exchange of ideas connects us all with greater tolerance and better understanding of the human condition.

A baker's dozen of Rigologists at USA workshop

Rigology, Steve Wilson and Corrine Cosseron
Independently, Corinne and I have ventured around the world exploring and synthesizing the techniques that stimulate joyful living.

I am impressed by the parallel developments in the ISL (France) and the WLT (USA) certification in therapeutic laughter. Our methods overlap in some areas, diverge in others, and are very complementary. It is surely a zeitgeist, a sign of the times and great minds thinking alike! Both methods teach techniques of laughter and joyful living to health care and social workers as well as people working in education and businesses, and also to the public at large.

The ISL course included highlights of Playful Sophrology®, a technique developed in Bogota, (Colombia) using Indian cooperative games, clowning techniques especially oriented toward hospital care, various humor exercises from different countries, games for all ages, playful exercises associating dance, rhythms, sounds, singing, touch, massages, hugs, and more. Participants engaged in guided imagery to find their "inner smile", laughter meditation to clear the mind, and street clowning (not the circus type) to give away laughter and free hugs.

"From all corners of the world, unlimited imagination for celebrating provides a catharsis to help us digest events that are somewhat painful and which we all must sometime face," Corinne explains. "All People recognize the universal therapeutic power of laughter, smiling, and positive feelings in general."

Based on a synthesis of these findings, the course offered a toolbox combining many different techniques from all over the world. ISL co-founder Fred Cosseron said, "The goal is to offer to the grumpy westerners we have become, an array of efficient, quick, playful and funny tools intended to bring back laughter and joyful living wherever it has disappeared − that is, everywhere!"

So, now there are 2 dozen "Rigologists"® in North America offering to all, and more specifically to health care professionals, social workers, and people working in education and businesses, the techniques for healthy and joyful living whose benefits are now scientifically proven. Plans are in the works to repeat the USA course in 2012.

For more information e-mail info@worldlaughtertour.com

Great news for laughter-and-humor-o-philes, especially if you are raising kids

2011-09-13T07:43:00.000-07:00

I love finding tidbits like this. They reassure and encourage me. They underscore my love of humor and laughter. When our grandkids, all ten of them, react (and they do) to my antics with, "Silly Pop-Pop!" I know I am on the right track.

Some antics in the family

From The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More Than Some Antics, by John Pollack, speaking of the digital influence on learning, the inclination and ability to make connections i.e., get the joke, Pollack writes:

"Research has suggested that the single most important predictor of intelligence, academic performance and later social success is how many words a baby hears on a regular basis, as long as those words are spoken by an engaged and present person, not broadcast over radio or TV. So, if encryption theory--the idea that humor requires shared, unspoken information to 'Get' the joke--actually explains the evolutionary advantages of verbal humor, the most verbal among us might just end up getting in the last word for generations to come.

"If such wordplay does offer and evolutionary advantage, a propensity for it might well be hardwired within us. As the late neurologist Max Levin theorized: 'If play were not pleasurable, kittens would never chase each other's tails, and so would lack practice in the motor skills needed for survival. If there were no pleasure in the appreciation of the absurd, if there were no fun in playing with ideas, putting them together in various combinations and seeing what makes sense or nonsense--in brief, if there were not such a thing as humor--children would lack practice in the art of thinking, the most complex and most powerful survival tool of all."

Being picky

From a British Minister of Education: "It is important not to make plans that are too rigid … Everything to do with children must have room to grow … Schools must have freedom to experiment, and variety for the sake of freshness, for the fun of it even … Laughter in the classroom, self-confidence growing every day, eager interest instead of bored uniformity … (Ellen Wilkinson, Minister of Education 1945–1947, Labour Government, concluding paragraph of The New Secondary
Education; quoted in Vernon, 1982).

Ear-to-ear

And, making my heart sing, comes this from Helen Johnson, Director of the Professional Education Research Centre at Roehampton University of Surrey, UK (2005):

"What is laughter? Its sound is easily recognisable. But what can it be said to represent? Aristotle saw the tendency to laugh as a force for good, and clearly laughter reflects an amusement and happiness with life, however fleeting. But in itself it can be a building block to high positive self-esteem and confidence. The playful and laughing child, one who has not been cowed into a sullen acquiescence or provoked into an aggressive rebellion, has the spirit and the means to learn, and that such learning should go beyond the mere assimilation of the familiar (Ken Dodd’s ‘logic’), though rules are important, to the adding of new ideas (Piaget, 1952; Inhelder B and Piaget J, 1958). So humour and laughter are part of the development of the individual child – and support the personal, spiritual and professional development of the teacher. Laughter is about autonomy, but it is also a unifying force. Laughter builds relationships in the classroom and the playground – and in the staff room. These relationships are between child and child, child and adult, adult and child, and adult and adult.

"In summary, it can be said that, as a qualitative performance indicator, laughter reflects the following behaviour:

Management● Laughter helps effective decision-making
● Laughter locates a moral sense in that decision-making

Difference● Laughter sees difference
● Laughter is an ironic process
● Laughter is an expression of the awareness of moral complexity
● Laughter is an expression of cognitive or emotional or social dissonance

Political position● Laughter is a political act
● Laughter is an expression of plurality
● Laughter trains pupils to be citizens
● Laughter is dissent
● Laughter is unifying

Human development● Laughter sees the gap between the norm or standard or target and the reality of life
● Laughter gives the individual autonomy, self-esteem and self-confidence
● Laughter builds relationships with others

Educational processTherefore, laughter is an educational process.

"It has been argued that one such indicator of culture and organisational climate and its impact on the performance of the school is laughter. (Its importance is based on it being a significant precondition and support of learning; being an indication that learning is taking place; and that it is a learning act in itself). On that basis, it is suggested here that each school should have a laughter rating.

"This is important; as research has long shown (West, 1992) that parents choose a school where their child will be happy." (Italics added by SW, who is very happy about all this.)

Grafito incognito

Soulful family

Family nose

Psst! God Doesn't Expect Us to Do Everything (pass it on)

2011-08-31T08:10:00.000-07:00

In my healthy lifestyle program, Good-Hearted Living(tm), Wednesdays are for gratitude. I am grateful for the friend who sent this to me today (a Wednesday).

God Doesn't Expect Us to Do Everything
by Charlie W. Shedd

   Grandpa was working on the gate when a small boy appeared. He puzzled a while as small boys will. Then he asked, "Whatcha' doin', grandpa?"
   To which the aged sage replied, "Sonny, there are five kinds of broken things in this old world."
   "There's the kind which, when they are broken, can never be fixed.
   "Then there's the kind that'll fix themselves if you leave them alone.
   "There's also the kind which are none of my business. Somebody else has got to fix them.
   "There's the kind which, when they are broken, you should never worry about. Them only God can fix.
   "And then there's the kind I got to fix. That's what I'm doing. Fixin' this gate."
   Wouldn't it be fine if my grandchildren could also learn this from me --- God doesn't expect us to do everything.

Regardless of where you stand on the question of God, I think there is a good lesson here. Pass it on.
Steve

Pre-script for Patient Communication: Your words are powerful

2011-07-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

"A kind word often goes unspoken, but never goes unheard."

November 2010, Columbus Ohio: My surgery for a perforated bowel was as much of a surprise as it was an emergency. There was no time to prepare but in a very important sense my preparation had already been underway because I used a particular surgery preparation method for my hip replacement a few years earlier.

I feel certain that because I had practiced the program for an earlier, planned surgery, my brain was already unconsciously "mapped" for the emergency episode.

Thanks to my nursing entourage: wife & Wonder Woman Pam, Deborah Harbinson, and Susan Stewart, this has also been true for my subsequents surgeries. There were no surprises, no emergencies, lots of preparation, and tons of support from friends and colleagues.

Both Deborah and Susan are RNs and Certified Laughter Leaders (CLLs), and Deborah is also certified in a method created by Peggy Huddleston, RN, called Prepare for Surgery, Heal Faster

If you or a loved one is facing surgery, I highly recommend that you learn and apply this method. If possible, give the patient a month or more of lead time to practice and prepare.

The audio relaxation and imagery program is excellent; it was powerful for me. Huddleston claims it will reduce anxiety before surgery, lead to using less pain medication, and help you recover faster. I used then both before and after each planned surgery, and I am convinced that it works!

My favorite imagery is the "pink, fuzzy blanket". It is so comforting to imagine being wrapped up like that. And it helped to feel the support of friends who referred to it in e-mails, text messages, and get-well card. Some even sent actual blankets!

My other favorite part of the program is writing a script for the doctors and nurses to say while I am going under the anesthesia. The unconscious mind responds to statements made within earshot of the patient. You want only positives, and lots of them, going in through the auditory channels.

Happy to report: My health care professional teams have always been cooperative and supportive.
Here is the script I used for my most recent trip to the operating room:

FOR PATIENT: STEPHEN H. WILSON, D.O.B. 1/5/1941

TO: My dear Dr. Zochowski, my anesthesiologist, and the super OR staff:
I am looking forward to the surgery you will do for me on Tuesday morning.

Part of my preparation is using the program created by Peggy Huddleston, RN, “Prepare for Surgery, Heal Faster.” I used this a few years ago when I had a hip replacement, and believe it was helpful. It makes use of goal-setting, visualization, progressive relaxation, and a short script for the OR staff. That’s where you come in. I earnestly request that you and the nurses and any other professionals present during the surgery take a minute or so to speak the script below.

As I am going under the anesthesia, please say:1) “Following this operation, you will feel comfortable and you will heal very well.” (Repeat 5 times.)

Towards the end of surgery, say:2) “Your operation has gone very well.” (Repeat 5 times.)

3) “Following this operation, you will be hungry for chocolate protein shakes. You will be thirsty and you will urinate easily.” (Repeat 5 times.)

4) “Following this operation, your bowels will ‘wake up’ smoothly and comfortably. At home, you will resume your program of exercises for recovery and health.” (Repeat 5 times.)

THANK YOU for what you are doing for me!.

We had copies of the script in the pre-op area, handed them out, and reviewed the instructions. Following Huddleston's advice, I also had a copy of the script pinned to gown in the middle of my chest. It was a very friendly experience that helped to put my mind at ease. I always let them know I am grateful for what they are doing for me, not what they are doing to me.

When I was wheeled into the OR and transferred to the table, the staff immediately began saying all those reassuring things to me. I remember smiling and feeling reassured. The nurse to my right, held my hand and even ad-libbed her own, sincere assurances. The anesthesia too hold gently and the surgery was a terrific success.

More On Patient Communication
Edward Leigh, a good friend and a cancer survivor, has created The Center for Healthcare Communication. (CHC). Eddie is also a Certified Laughter Leader. (If you see a pattern here of many of my friends being health care professionals as well as Certified Laughter Leaders, I believe it is a reflection of our shared humanistic orientation to our practices.)

CHC is a results-oriented organization focused on using evidence-based information to create productive healthcare organizations. They work with a variety of healthcare organizations, including hospitals, long-term care facilities, healthcare associations and medical practices.

Mission and Vision
The CHC mission is to increase patient satisfaction/safety and decrease communication-related medical errors. They accomplish this by:

Establishing an open and empathic environment for patients and their families.
Providing superior training, coaching and consulting services.
Creating a productive and positive environment for people to work.
Finding the best practices, refining them and incorporate them into other organizations.
Providing resources to help healthcare organizations achieve excellent patient care

Their approach is comprehensive in that they work with everyone in the system (doctors, nurses, administrative professionals, etc.) to create a thriving healthcare environment.

Anyone facing surgery, and everyone who is part of a healthcare professional team, would do well to be sure they are in synch with the CHC philosophy and methods.

Therapeutic Laughter: A humanistic orientation

2011-07-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

The World Laughter Tour, Inc. logo

A Would Laughter Tour, Inc, Laughter Therapy Photo Album

In the World Laughter Tour (WLT) model of therapeutic laughter, great care is given to creating a particular psychological environment in which the therapeutic laughter activity will take place.

Being quite familiar with activity therapy in general as well as the specific applications of music, art, and recreation as therapeutic modalities, and with the help of astute scientists and practitioners in the field of applied and therapeutic humor and laughter, I was able to develop a therapeutic prototype based on a humanistic orientation toward what variously might be referred to as “sense of humor abuse” or “a deficiency of authentic laughter”. It contains psycho-educational activities, attitudes and techniques with which to effectively work with those who seek a therapeutic or remedial experience.

The presumption of trauma
The WLT therapeutic laughter program assumes that virtually everyone suffers from some degree of humor/laughter trauma. With rare exception, and most of the exceptions are people who have had or practice a therapeutic laughter type of program, I have never met a person who was satisfied with the amount of laughter in their life. It is common to hear, "Of course, we could use more laughter at work (or at home, or wherever). Who doesn't need more laughter?"

I believe that this serious and nearly ubiquitous condition of laughter deficiency prevents people from getting the most enjoyment out of life, interferes with constructive human relations, and keeps us from being as healthy and happy as possible. In previous writing I have addressed the likelihood that there is a natural minimum RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) of laughter, which I estimate to be about fifteen minutes in the aggregate.

Trauma to one’s humor/laughter apparatus can be inflicted by abuse, by accidental injury, and in the normal course of human life events. We will look at the abuse type of trauma in some detail in this writing.

The accidental traumas would include the ingestion of various substances including alcohol, manganese, anesthetics, and narcotics; and could include brain injury, tumors, and other neurological conditions including dementias. Life event traumas that affect, i.e., compromise, humor and laughter would include misconceptions and misinformation, grief, PTSD, physical illness, mental illness, addictions, and other significant life stressors. I believe these can often be successfully addressed by laughter therapy.

Elsewhere, about twenty years ago, I have written about the conditions resulting from this trauma under the coined term “Sense of Humor Abuse”. I defined this abuse as (1) the continuation of harmful, painful, unwanted actions toward the victim even after the victim has implored for them to stop; (2) inflicting damaging actions upon the victim even if the victim does not ask for them to stop, but taking ill advantage of a difference in strength or power of the perpetrator over the victim; or, (3) the perpetrator teaches the victim false, erroneous information and/or beliefs that weakens the victim’s ability to develop adequate emotional and physical defenses and, hence, inadequate functionality as a mature adult.

Now, with a deeper understanding of the science of laughter, and a lot more experience with the results of laughter therapy, I can expand on and update my thinking about the process. For one thing, I would add that the method being developed addresses significant deficiencies in authentic, true, mirthful laughter.

This new therapy is a necessity based on the assumption that many cultures precipitate widespread emotional trauma by prevalent toxic humor and toxic --including erroneous-- attitudes about laughter. These traumas manifest in many ways. We assume that almost everyone who would seek or benefit from the therapeutic laughter experience has experienced one or more types of this trauma, and would find it advantageous to have a suitable remedial experience. I will give just a few examples here.

Laughter/humor trauma often begins with the victim in childhood. It may be inflicted by a peer or adult. It can cause people to reach the point where, among other symptoms, they express that they have “lost their laughter” or “forgotten how to laugh”; they stifle their uninhibited joyful, mirthful laughter for fear of criticism; and, they do not develop humor and laughter as resources for a healthy, balanced life. These are just some examples.

Almost every person who attends a therapeutic laughter session remembers being on the receiving end of sense of humor abuse (a figure of speech that we will have to work with for now), such as:
“You laugh too loud.”
“You snort… or cackle… or sound like a horse laughing.”
“Stop your giggling and settle down!”
“Grow up!”
“Laugh before breakfast and you will cry before supper.”

The victim gets, often repeatedly, ego-deflating criticism, blame and even punishment for laughing. Humor/laughter abuse may also show up in the familiar blame-the-victim scenario associated with teasers, ridiculers, and other abuses delivered as insults or ‘zingers’. The abuser hides behind rationalizations of blame by which the victim may be admonished as:
“You can’t take a joke.”
“I was only kidding.”
“You are too sensitive.”
“You have a lousy sense of humor.”

Having felt the mortifying sting of rejection or the implication of being flawed, the victim typically attempts to modify something about their laughter, which may have been perfectly natural and genuine for them. In hopes of find acceptance and love, they adopt a false laugh by modifying the pitch, tone, timing or frequency of their own laughter. They practice this false laugh until they forget that there ever was an original, authentic, natural laugh. Such false laughter can never induce the mirth nor have the powerful physiological correlates of authentic laughter. The victim arrives at adulthood with less than adequate ego defenses and resources for happy, fully functional maturity. The therapeutic laughter experience contributes to correcting this condition.

Getting the laughter therapy cart and horse in the correct order
We would not withhold cough medicine and give it only when the patient has earned it by stopping coughing. The medicine, especially in our program, often mistakenly looks like the reward but should not be withheld until the cure is effected.

In the WLT method, Certified Laughter Leaders (CLLs) expose participants to the therapeutic potential of mirthful laughter through a systematic, repeatable, and educational program. More or less, the fun comes first, last, and if we can manage it, in a manner of speaking, always. Such experiences turn out to be emotionally corrective.

Fun, mirth, attentiveness, support, encouragement and proper information are the heart of the experience in the laughter therapy circle, along with the invitation to examine and adopt a healthier life style through healthier attitudes. This is done systematically and is quite advantageously repeated until the participant can carry on the process independent of the formal laughter therapy session, with self-education and, perhaps, occasional returns for ‘booster shots’.

The adage says that “all work and no play” makes Jack dull because it is an unhealthy, unbalanced lifestyle. A full, rich life echoes with laughter, and is anything but dull. Conventional wisdom has it that fun, relaxation and laughter are rewards that come after being earned through hard work. This is also known as “saving the best for last.” WLT takes the unconventional position that the remedial experience is, of necessity, mirthful and uplifting, i.e., it is one of eating dessert first.

The ability to participate in and create spontaneous, uninhibited, joyful, mirthful laugher with others and for one’s self is one of the most important characteristic goals of the therapeutic laughter method. Fun and laughter and loving support are both the “medicine” and the sign that it is working.

People who fear laughter
I will sometimes refer to those who have been traumatized by sense of humor abuse as people who fear laughter. It is a figure of speech I will use for now, recognizing that it deserves further elaboration down the road. It is not the laughter that they fear but the awful repercussions they have come to associate with laughter.

They need to be heard, listened to, protected from further trauma, and given remedial corrective emotional experiences.

Creating a laughter therapy environment
Albeit quite fun, the WLT CLL has training, education, and support for creating the environment most likely to engage the participants in corrective emotional experiences. Techniques, including specific attitudes and group leadership, are used by CLLs to help participants be amenable to enthusiastic participation.

Programming is largely about imparting accurate information and ego support and encouraging participation that gives each person their own ‘data’ upon which to judge the values of the experience. The CLL often begins by pointing out that many different activities and aspects of laughter have been described or proven to be beneficial; gradually, over time, these benefits are enumerated. Typically an activity may be viewed by adults as silly, or as a diversion. The CLL explains and demonstrates that these ‘therapeutic devices’ are actually exercises in life-skill development, in socialization, in stress reduction, and a supplement to their education, or other healing processes in which they may be engaged: physical, mental, emotional or spiritual.

Above all, the process of the therapeutic laughter activity must be managed so that it does not damage anyone, for example by deliberately highlighting a known weakness. Beyond this, it needs to be able to release tension, minimize frustration, and accommodate to the group’s cognitive development and also to any norms of the group, start gently, finish gently and only go on for as long as conditions are favorable.

A CLL Training Class

The CLL training has three over-riding objectives. Successfully completing the basic training course, the CLL will be better able to
• Use information from many sources including Gelotology (laughter science), Positive Psychology findings, knowledge of ancient practices, and modern clinical, counseling, healthcare, educational, consulting, corporate, and volunteer work.
• Help their clients use life energies to choose and modify their life and work directions, and bring mirthful laughter to life.
• Identify emotional and attitudinal factors that improve health and increase happiness & life satisfaction for clients, patients, residents, and students.

Based on the anecdotal evidence provided by more than 6,000 people already trained in laughter therapy, I believe that a well-founded, systematic, humanistic therapeutic laughter program can successfully address concerns of humor/laughter trauma and health & happiness, and bring about improvement in a wide variety of conditions. I eagerly await and encourage the gathering of scientific evidence as well.

###

The Audacity of Laughter: a salute to the laughter troops

2011-07-25T08:42:00.000-07:00

au•dac•i•ty–noun.
1. boldness or daring, especially with confident disregard for personal safety, conventional thought, or other restrictions.
2. effrontery or insolence; shameless boldness
3. Usually, audacities. audacious acts or statements.
Synonyms 1. nerve, spunk, grit, temerity, foolhardiness.
2. impudence, impertinence, brashness.

Starting with cave dwellers and proceeding through jesters, wits, and witty fools, there has long been an unconventional cohort of people who have the temerity to assert that the world can be a better place if only we can generate enough laughter and humor. They are not claiming that laughter alone can cure the world’s apparently human-influenced ills: famine, war, hatred, disease, etc., but they do ardently believe that human beings have the power to bring about some pretty significant improvements.

Not only do they have confidence in their belief that they can make a difference in the right direction, but they dare to offer their contributions through laughter and humor. They have done it in the face of rejection, resistance, and opposition and, talk about temerity, they even did it at times when laughter was considered extremely un-fashionable, or when they have to break laws to do it. Take Lord Chesterfield, please! (c. 1770): "I would heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill maners...In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill bred, as audible laughter."

Seemingly undaunted, they have had the grit to proceed and persist in helping us keep the funny side up.

People have enlisted in this laughing legion from all walks of life, some accidentally, some intentionally. Some seem to be “naturals” while others work hard at developing a talent or craft or strategy. Their initial motivations are quite varied and sometimes difficult to fathom, but they have two things in common: the desire to evoke mirthful laughter, and the nerve, the chutzpah, to fly in the face of traditional and conventional thinking, even defying some religious beliefs that laughter is merely an immature waste of time, juvenile, puerile, trivial, trifling, and unholy.

I like these people and salute these laughing troops. I am one of them. I consciously joined this laughing army in 1984, making it my life’s work.
Some scientific, anthropological laughter theorists contend that we humans have been laughing for about 4 million years; it’s a social thing. In fact, they tell us, we probably laughed together before we had language and could talk to each other. Now, that’s pretty funny.

"I've got a million of 'em! Don't forget to tip your waitress."

The Philogelos is collection of Greek jokes that were being told 3,500 years ago. And, can you imagine an even earlier prehistoric, pre-linguistic knock-knock joke?
Grok-grok!
Ungh grmph?
Oogloish.
Ooglish urp?
Ooglish hurmph kblemr!
(Yuk! Yuk!)

Through the ages we have gone by many names and played many roles:
Jester
Fool
Comedian
Humorist
Poet
Shaman
Healer
Teacher
Swami
Clown (Class, circus, or hospital)
Clergy
Psychiatrist
Traveling salesman
Husband, wife, mother-in-law

I salute the kindred spirits who have the audacity to provoke laughter, to embrace laughter, to cherish laughter, and to believe that we can make a difference with laughter.

Very punny, without apology

2011-07-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

Energizer Bunny arrested - charged with battery.
A pessimist's blood type is always b-negative.
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.
I used to work in a blanket factory, but it folded.
If electricity comes from electrons... does that mean that morality comes from morons?
Marriage is the mourning after the knot before.
A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
Corduroy pillows are making headlines.
Is a book on voyeurism a peeping tome?
Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.
Banning the bra was a big flop.
Sea captains don't like crew cuts.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

It has been said that the most typical response to a pun is a groan. They may be delivered in the short form illustrated above, often called "groaners", or they be even more groanful when they appear as punchlines at the end of long, drawn-out tales known as a "shaggy dog stories."

An apocryphal story has it that as a young boy George Bernard Shaw was an incessant punster. One day, his father was so irritated by all the punning that he put George into a closet and threatened to not let him out until he had made a very great pun. Whereupon, according to the story, young George immediately implored his father to, "O-pun the door!"

Where are you on the pun spectrum? Some people love this kind of word play; others hate it; still others are indifferent. Some just don't get the jokes. Some people seem to be natural-born and even habitual punsters. I love them and admire the well-constructed pun. I don't typically think them up until someone or some thing gets me going, then I can usually bounce them back and forth fairly readily.

MY ADVICE: If you are a punster, don't expect peals of laughter from your audiences. You would do well to learn to expect and be pleased with groans more so than laughter; and if you also get rolling of the eyes accompanying the groans, that is a bonus sign of appreciation for your well-delivered pun. Just say, "Thank you!" and take a bow.

USE THE COMMENT SECTION BELOW TO SHARE YOUR FAVORITE PUNS.

Yours Truly featured in Oprah's blog

2011-07-18T07:27:00.000-07:00

In Oprah's July 11th Spirit newsletter she has an article on laughter followed by Dr. Oz's contribution. I am delighted to have been a source for the information in this report.

Here is the link:
http://www.oprah.com/blogs/Laugh-Until-You-CryOr-Your-Heart-Rate-Slows

Click here to lo learn more about how to bring the remarkable spirit-lifting and other benefits of mirthful laughter into your life.

The Time Bank

2011-07-18T07:09:00.000-07:00

True mirthful laughter is both a therapeutic ally and signal of health. Remarkably, for human beings, it is both like a medicine and also the sign that the medicine is working.

Barbara Hee is a popular Certified Laughter Leader (CLL) in Philadelphia. She sent the following piece to the communications network of CLLs, who are always sharing inspiration and encouragement with a cadre of dedicated pioneers leading the world to health, happiness and peace through laughter. It reminded me of the saying, "Yesterday is like a cancelled check, you cannot spend it anymore; tomorrow is like a promissory note that may or may not be paid off; today is cash, spend it wisely."

Imagine that you had won the following prize in a contest: Each morning your bank would deposit $86,400.00 in your private account for your use. However,this prize has rules, just as any game has certain rules. The first set of rules would be:
          Everything that you didn't spend during each day would be taken away from you.
          You may not simply transfer money into some other account.
          You may only spend it.
          Each morning upon awakening, the bank opens your account with another $86,400.00 for that day.

The second set of rules:
The bank can end the game without warning; at any time it can say, "It's over, the game is over!" It can close the account and you will not receive a new one.

What would you personally do?
You would buy anything and everything you wanted right? Not only for yourself, but for all people you love, right? Even for people you don't know, because you couldn't possibly spend it all on yourself, right? You would try to spend every cent, and use it all, right?

ACTUALLY, this GAME is REALITY!   Each of us is in possession of such a magical bank. We just can't seem to see it.

The MAGICAL BANK is TIME!
Each morning we awaken to receive 86,400 seconds as a gift of life, and when we go to sleep at night, any remaining time is NOT credited to us. What we haven't lived up that day is forever lost. Yesterday is forever gone. Each morning the account is refilled, but the bank can dissolve your
account at any time....WITHOUT WARNING.

SO, what will YOU do with your 86,400 seconds? Those seconds are worth so much more than the same amount in dollars.

Think about that, and always think of this: Enjoy every second of your life, because time races by
so much quicker than you think. So take care of yourself, be Happy, Love Deeply and enjoy life!

Here's wishing you a wonderful and beautiful day.
Start spending.

Chemical mismodulation and other questionable laughter

2011-06-27T09:03:00.000-07:00

Laughter and humor are in the news a lot these days because they are being proven to be therapeutic allies, however, humor and laughter are not always helpful. Yes, there are benefits to be derived from the psychological, social, and physiological effects associated with laughter and humor. Yet, as too many people are painfully aware, being the butt of a joke or part of a group that's made fun of can leave lasting emotional scars. Laughter and humor they are not always signs of health; they may be signs of something disordered or pathological. What makes the difference?

Some humor and some laughter is hurtful (toxic). According to the therapeutic principles, methods, and code of ethics of World Laughter Tour, Inc. (WLT) , anyone engaged in capitalizing on the therapeutic potential of laughter and humor --lay person or professional-- will certainly be less than effective, and is cautioned against doing harm if they fail to distinguish between helpful, hurtful, and pathological laughter, and make the appropriate interventions.

For example, ridicule, zingers and put-downs, are joking that makes fun of or takes unfair advantage of other people’s weaknesses, disabilities, or differences. WLT categorizes these as hurtful, harmful, or toxic; to be avoided. The same is true of sneering, jeering, and sinister, or sarcastic laughter. Some mental and physical maladies have laughter as presenting characteristics; they are signs of an illness (pathology). None of this is promoted or permitted in the context of WLT therapeutic laughter programs.

True-Mirthful Laughter
I first came across this very useful term in the writings of William Fry, Jr., MD. The distinction he was aware of more than thirty years ago is now finding favor among contemporary theorists of laughter and humor. Some go so far as to conjecture that the physical act of laughter in the absence of the emotional state of mirth, i.e., faked or forced or chemically induced laughter, will not have the same associated positive physiology; will not have the same benefits.Hurely, et al, offer another useful concept in this regard, "...the chemical mismodulation of normal neural responses." (Inside Jokes,(MIT2011) p.128)

According to Wikipedia, in the mid-19th century, positive smiling, something akin to true-mirthful laughter, was first identified by French physician Guillaume Duchenne, while conducting research on the physiology of facial expressions, identified two distinct types of smiles. A Duchenne smile involves contraction of both the zygomatic major muscle (which raises the corners of the mouth) and the orbicularis oculi muscle (which raises the cheeks and forms crow's feet around the eyes). A non-Duchenne smile involves only the zygomatic major muscle. “Research with adults initially indicated that joy was indexed by generic smiling, any smiling involving the raising of the lip corners by the zygomatic major…. More recent research suggests that smiling in which the muscle around the eye contracts, raising the cheeks high (Duchenne smiling), is uniquely associated with positive emotion.

"Duchenne laughter" is the name given to stimulus-driven, emotionally valenced; spontaneous. In some research, Duchenne laughter was found to involve orbicularis oculi muscle action, related to self-reports of reduced anger and increased enjoyment, the dissociation of distress, better social relations, and positive responses from strangers, whereas non-Duchenne laughter did not.

In contrast, non-Duchenne laughter is self-generated, emotionless; forced; false; manipulative, e.g., always laughing at the boss’s jokes.

Characteristics of true mirthful laughter

1. It sounds warm and inviting. You want to join in even when you don’t know what was funny originally.

2. There is almost always something in the objective reality which can be observed as the laughter stimulus (or it can be feasibly explained).

3. The laughter erupts spontaneously and is often followed by a [comment about] sense of relief or release, “Thanks! I needed that.”

4. The laughter is not forced or faked in any way.

5. The laughter is not chemically induced.

6. The laughter is at no one’s expense.

Examples of laughter associated with pathology

A. Neurological conditions:

Pseudo-bulbar palsy
Gelastic epilepsy
Various brain-damage disorders

B. Psychiatric conditions:

Hebephrenic schizophrenia
Psychotic hallucinations (auditory & visual)

C. Intoxications:

The “happy” drunk
Nitrous oxide (laughing gas)
Cannabis- (marijuana) induced giggles
Manganese poisoning

D. The humor itself is toxic (from Joel Goodman):

It fails the “A.T. & T.” test (is not Appropriate, Timely & Tasteful).
Uses ridicule, sarcasm, or taboo language.
Makes unwanted jokes about serious subjects.
Hostile teasing hides behind “just joking” excuse.

At the present state of our understanding, awaiting further evidence that proves otherwise, WLT has taken the position that it is best to think of “true mirthful laughter" as the positive, helpful, or beneficial laughter, and "toxic laughter" is that which is associated with some pathology or other negative state.

In The Gelopedia, Therapeutic is defined as: Originally, or traditionally, the exclusive domain of medicine. Adopted and expanded in modern times, e.g., from a field called Positive Psychology, therapeutic goes beyond finding cures and ‘fixing what’s broken’ to include strengthening what is working well, improving/maintaining quality of life, building self-confidence and self-esteem, enhancing social skills, teaching coping strategies, blocking fear/panic/anger/depression, uplifting perspective, and reinforcing hope.

Go for the good

Beware of toxic humor and laughter for the damage it can do and the pathology it might portend. For its therapeutic benefits, the laughter you're after should be the true-mirthful kind.

Get a job...sha-na-na-na!

2011-06-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

Role Models
My parents were my earliest role models for a work ethic, which is a very good thing because, while they obviously enjoyed my consistent reply to, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" ("A doctor!"), they were fairly short on experience from which to give me actual career advice. I was the first and only member of our immediate household to go to college. My career has been a matter of fate, divine intervention, trial-and-error, bad decisions, dumb-luck good choices, and a philosophy I picked up along the way.

Born in 1909, Jack Wilson and Shirley Kalter made a comfortable middle-class home for the household family that included my sister, Phyllis (6 years older) and our maternal grandparents, the Kalters (Pop-pop Jacob, from Budapest, and Maman Anne, from Vienna). Like many other depression-era survivors, they became frugal money-managers. They always drove a relatively new car, managed to give us wonderful, summer-long boarding-house vacations in Atlantic City, and eventually could afford to move us to a luxury high-rise apartment in center-city, from which dad could then walk to work.

Atlantic City 1950

During the last 65 years of his life, my father held two jobs. They were very similar functions and responsibilities (be sure the customers get what they ordered, on time) in the same industry (the design and manufacture of high-end men's clothing), but for two different companies. And the last job carried an impressive title. He had grown with the company in that job, and way before computers, had designed and organized all of the paper-and-pencil systems for order fulfillment and inventory management & movement that kept his side of this international business running smoothly; no customer or employee complaints; his employees loved him. He was the only one who knew all of the intricacies of the system he had built and acclimated to slowly over time. When he finally called it quits, it took five people to replace him.

Dad's career advice: "You have to have stick-to-it-ive-ness!" He certainly had it and lived it. He quit school in the third grade to go to work to help support his parents, brothers and sisters. The success he achieved later in life was the result of being a self-made man. At age 8, he was selling newspapers on street corners in the business district of Philadelphia, learning from his fellow street-hawkers to cut the fingers off of his gloves during the cold winter days to be able to make change faster. At the end of the day, if he could bring home fifteen cents for his mother, that was a very good day. I was touched by his stories of poverty and hard work. But stick-to-it-ive-ness did not stick to me the way they expected.

Dad's formula for a balanced life was expressed in his often repeating a proverb from "the old country", Russia, where his father was born, "If a man has only two pennies, with one penny he should buy bread and with the other penny he should buy flowers because the soul needs nourishment." He also observed and passed on to us in an advisory tone, "It doesn't matter how many talents and assets you have in life, or how hard you work, you need a little bit of luck, too." Now, those thoughts stuck with me.

As the family breadwinner, he rose daily at 5 a.m., shaved, had a breakfast of coffee, toast and six prunes, which he stewed himself weekly. Then he rode two trolleys and the "El" (the elevated train & subway part of public transportation) to work, and returned promptly by 6 p.m. via the same route. The postal creed must have been learned from my dad: neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor dark of night, nor that he suffered from a progressive nerve deafness, could keep him from getting to and doing his job.

Mom, who looks quite the flapper in the early part of the family album, was runner-up harmonica champion of Philadelphia circa 1923. She invariably reminded us of this achievement every time she played harmonica for us; we always accepted her claim but I don't recall ever seeing any substantiating evidence. At about the same age (14) I was the yo-yo champion of our section of West Philadelphia, winning lots of trophies, a vest and sew-on patches, but there's no existing proof of that, either, so it's easy for me to say let's just let the claims stand as fact.

My mother, too, had a phenomenal work ethic. Smart and musically talented, and very outgoing, marriage at 18 and raising a family thwarted her dreams of going to Normal School (that was the name given to the teacher's college). When her kids were old enough, she went to work as a bookkeeper. Also a staunch proponent of stick-to-it-ive-ness, she held that job with one company, where they loved her. In her day she would have been lauded as a steady-Eddie (highly reliable) and a crackerjack (top-notch) employee. Her untimely death of ovarian cancer at 52, was a shock that threw all of us for a loop.

Having lost the only love of his life, my dad went into a dark, grievous depression that lasted more than two years. Years later he told that he had been so far down that he thought he would never come out of it, would never see a happy moment again. He said that it was impossible for him to believe his friends who told him, "Jack, this too shall pass." His salvation was work; keeping his routine and getting to the office every day. "And one day," he told me, "I realized I was not as sad as the day before. It was passing." I know from watching him sob at my mother's grave every time we visited it for the next forty years, that he never completely got over losing her. And, why should he?

Mom and Phyllis c.1938

Dad c. 1951 with a high-tech hearing aid built into his eyeglasses

With these as my primary role models, and no one at home to give me guidance, and with a few helpful platitudes and here-and-there advice, I have managed to stumble into a career. As Danny Kaye recounts his career path as "The Court Jester":

I'm proud to recall that in no time at all,

With no other recourses but my own resources,

With firm application and determination,

I made a fool of myself!

But First, Hauling Ashes
Confucius said, "Choose an occupation that you love and you may never have to work a day in your life." I wonder how long it took him to figure that out. Historically, boys, girls, and other lowly grunts have started their working lives by "hauling ashes". Now, in today's nomenclature, getting one's ashes hauled refers to relief from sexual tension, but back in the day actually doing a job called hauling ashes meant doing the most menial of jobs, for a pittance, often as the first work anybody would pay you to do, and part of the rites of passage to eventually being worth real wages. In today’s world it often means working in fast food, asking “Would you like fries with that?” Well, I don't think I chose my occupation so much as tip-toed staggeringly into it; I don’t recall that there was any ceremonial rite-of-passage about it; and, I'm still not entirely sure what "it" is.

My earliest jobs, around age 14, were working for a friend of my father's who had a connection with the concessions at various events in Philadelphia: at Convention Hall, climbing up and down the stand hawking "Ice cold orange drinks! Who'll have an orange drink?" at the Warriors (later the Seventy-Sixers) basketball games. Also, hawking pennants and souvenirs at the Army/Navy game, hot chocolate at the Mummer's parade (too damn cold if you ask me), selling hot-dogs at the vacation show, the home & garden show, the sportsman's show, and the dog show. No puns and no buns. I was told to bring bread from home and then I could use it to eat all the hot dogs I could without being charged for them because we were accountable to turn in cash only for the buns used; they could easily count the buns but the hot dogs were by weight, not actually counted. These jobs provided good spending money (paid in often-soggy cash) for a kid, and my first lessons in beating the system, putting one over on the man. I was hauling ashes.

I Hate School!
From age 10 through my teens I demonstrated what can only be called a variegated curiosity. I'm sure it wasn't any actual deficit of attention span, but it caused my parents worry and obvious disappointment as they repeated their refrain of stick-to-it-ive-ness. I am sure they gave up all hope that I had any. Many passions that blossomed for me during those formative years. Some lit up and mesmerized me like shooting stars but burned out quickly; others have lasted a lifetime. Some of my varied interests included: tap dancing, radio serials and quiz shows; Erector(tm) sets, chemistry sets, orange crate skaters, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, bicycles, football, baseball, magic, stage make-up, yo-yos, Tom Lehrer, and guitar (folk singing); Oscar Brand's bawdy songs; American Bandstand; girls.

Cub Scout 1950

Biology at Sayre Junior High School was a disaster for me. The phyla of flora and fauna were a mystery to me. I never admitted it to my parents, but all of my plans for medical school vanished right there. Chemistry at West Philly High School was the same. I loved the demonstrations when the teacher made things explode, and my friend, Myron Mintz, using laboratory equipment (beakers, burners and condensation tubes) built a still in his basement where we home brewed vodka from potato peelings.

I hated tenth grade, felt like a misfit, discovered that I had quite a knack for playing pinball, and made the greatest, most enchanting discovery of all: I could skip almost all of the tenth grade. I could play hooky frequently, skip school for a day or two at a time, forge my father's signature on an absence excuse note and, except for an "F" in French, never got caught! What was so enchanting was that I rode the trolley from the school to downtown, arriving just as the magic shops were opening for business.

I Become The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Bowman the Magician (1955)

Magic was magical. The magicians who worked there were excellent demonstrators are what make customer buy the tricks, to learn how it's done. Harry Reed ("The Great Hareedo"), at Ben's Magic Shop, and Bill Cordray at Chanin's Magic down the street, sort of took me in, gave me asylum, paid me (in always dry cash) for cleaning up the stock rooms (another form of hauling ashes) and taught me the secrets of magic & illusions. They also taught me the importance of having a stage name. A age 14, I was inducted into the Junior Yogi Club of Philadelphia and I became "Bowman the Magician", the precursor to Joyologist, and Cheerman-of-the-Bored.

I Love School

High School yearbook (1958). The pattern is set.

By eleventh grade somebody flipped a switch. I cannot explain why, but now I loved school and went every day. I still missed the Magic Shops but visited my friends there only on Saturdays. I became president of the high school French Club and created its newsletter, which my first guardian-angel teacher, Janet Swerdlow, helped me name "Le Blageur", French for "The Joker"! Are you starting to see a pattern here?

Early Humor Influences

When an infant laughs in its crib, we don't say, "Gee, that kid's got a great sense of humor!" The ability to laugh and smile is inborn, but a sense of humor is something you develop.

This list is impossible to make complete, and many are lost to memory, but here are some that I remember that amazed me, amused me, thrilled and inspired me. As usual, they are in no particular order. Abbott & Costello, Gene Shepherd, Morey Amsterdam, “The Life of Riley”, New Yorker, MAD Comics, Roger Price, Ernie Kovacs, Max Shulman, Blackstone, Clarence Day, Will Cuppy, Ogden Nash, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Fibber McGee & Molly, "Can You Top This?", Howdy Doody, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Donald Duck, Little Lulu, Popeye, the Marx Brothers, the Ritz Brothers, Red Buttons, Bob and Ray, Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Martha Raye, Red Skelton, Steve Allen, “Your Show of Shows”, Jack Paar, Jerry Lester, The Three Stooges, The Little Rascals, my bunk-mates at Camp Kahagon in 1952, and my dad's Pinochle pals.

Back to Jobs and Careers
"I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun." Thomas Edison is supposed to have said that. All fun? Really? All?

For the next two years, my after-school job was as the shipping clerk (actually, I was the entire department) for my uncle Irving's clock-watch-and-electric shaver repair shop. He learned the trade in the Navy during WWII, and had built a thriving business. I punched the time clock, worked a few hours every day, wrapped and labeled every package, and wearing a smartly stylish work apron (a symbol of my status), wheeled the packages on a hand cart to the post office. This was a higher form of hauling ashes; there was an actual bi-weekly paycheck.

Throughout my undergraduate years at Temple University, my brother-in-law, Bernie Torner, gave me a job with a very cool place to hang out. "Electronic Servicenter" (not exactly a stage name, but at least a play on words) sold fine, often imported, "Hi-Fi" audio equipment for custom installation to upper-crust Philadelphians; several customers were musicians n the Philadelphia Orchestra. Stereo was just coming into fashion. The place was just a few blocks from my now downtown classy Philadelphia apartment. Okay, I stilled lived with my parents, but Park Towne Place was a fabulous address, on Benjamin Franklin Parkway just one block from the Museum of Art. I learned about and helped sell amplifiers, tuners, turntables, and speakers. My uniform was now the tweed jacket and striped tie of an Ivy League B.M.O.C. (well, the University of Pennsylvania was a stone's throw from here), and my paycheck was large enough to keep my car (a tiny Fiat sedan) running and allow me to take girls on nice dates. I was hauling ashes but at a much higher level.

1957 Fiat 500

Fast Forward (see if you can spot the stage names as I move from job to job)
A series of jobs followed. Occupationally, I was at sea. my career path became a zig-zag wake behind me. Here's a quick resume; hang on tight. Human Resources intern in the Personnel Research Department of Sun Oil Company (Phila.); human resource intern with the Ohio Highway Patrol; psychology assistant conducting employment testing for an industrial consulting firm (Phila.); psychologist/director of treatment services at the Ohio Reformatory for Women; the Weeks School in Vermont (delinquent and emotionally disturbed kids); the Connecticut Women's Prison; director of the Nicholas Youth Center (back to Ohio); educational consultant with the Ohio Department of Mental Health; director of Help On Weekends (the H.O.W. adolescent drug treatment program) at Cincinnati Jewish Hospital Department of Psychiatry; Chairman of Mental Health Technology at Columbus Technical Institute, which is now Columbus State Community College; founder of Ohio Professional Counseling Services, large group private practice for counseling and psychotherapy in Columbus, Ohio; created PHOTO-LAFFs, a carnival-type business; professional speaker, author and founder DPJ Enterprise (Don't Postpone Joy), then Steve Wilson & Co.; founder of World Laughter Tour; Director of National Humor Month.

At first glance it may look like I can't keep a job, but take a closer look and you will see some patterns here. The obvious one is, to the chagrin of my dear departed parents looking down from heaven, that I don't seem to stick to anything for very long. One that isn't so obvious is that I have a very strong work ethic. I didn't start working as early in life as my dad; he had a five or six-year headstart on me. I work hard, with integrity and creativity. After I got the hang of what working a jobs were all about, I pretty much only changed changed when I had a vision that I could do better or be happier. Eventually, changing jobs became more like morphing into the next good thing. I learned that I could love my work if I was willing to follow a few principles.

Peripatetic Career Counseling Eventually Led Me to This

In no particular order, here are some of the most important ideas that I picked up along the way. These are the advice and directives that most likely have brought me through the jobs I've worked at and the career I now enjoy.

You have to have stick-to-it-ive-ness!
If a man has only two pennies, with one penny he should buy bread and with the other penny he should buy flowers because the soul needs nourishment.
Making a living is not as important as making a life.
You can't always do what you want to do, but you can almost always stop doing what you don't want to do.
In every job to be done, there's an element of fun." ~Mary Poppins
If it isn't fun, I don't want to do it.
Permission granted to be unconventional; a mandate for making progress; and, mandatory for my happiness, too, but not everyone is suited for it.
If you want to be good at marketing and advertising, take all the psychology courses you can.
I'm tired of working for a**holes, idiots and jerks.
I want to make and learn from my own mistakes; I'll take the blame and I'll take the credit.
Being your own boss means you get to choose any eighty hours a week you want to work.
Being your own boss means working half time; you get to choose noon-to-midnight or midnight-to noon.
Don’t cheat. Charge a fair price. Strive for a right livelihood.
I'm not the hat I wear or the title of the position I fill right now; I am first, last and always a human being.
No risk, no reward.
No matter what other assests you might possess, you have to have a little bit of luck, too.
“Do you know what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted? He lived happily ever after.” ~Willie Wonka
I have certain essential qualities and talents that can never be lost or taken away from me; these are the tools that enable the Phoenix to rise from the ashes.

Look, mom! Look, dad! Can you see me now? Thanks for the gifts you gave me. What I've stuck to is being me, and it worked out well. I hope I've made you proud.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Parthenon

2011-06-23T07:18:00.000-07:00

By a show of hands, how many of you have had someone tell you a joke or send you one via e-mail that you've heard before, maybe heard it many times before? By a show of hands, how many of you actually heard the joke a really l-o-n-g time ago, say like in 2nd grade? One more time, by a show of hands, how many of you roll your eyes and have a clever retort to let the teller/sender know it was old, like, "thanks for the moldy oldie"?

Here are a few I have heard:
"That joke was so old, the first time I heard it I broke the slats on my crib laughing!"
"That joke was so old, the Big Bang woke it up!"
"That joke is so old the dinosaurs were telling it."
"That jokes is so old that Moses told it in the desert!"
"That joke is so old that Eve told it to Adam!"
"That joke is so old that the first time I heard it I fell off my dinosaur!"
OK, you get the idea. You can use the comment section of this blog to share your favorite moldy oldie-type of retort.

But did you know that many jokes being told today actually were told thousands of years ago? They just get updated with modern scenarios and up-to-date semantics & syntax. How do we know this? We know because we (well, archaeologists, anyway) have a copy of the first joke book: Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana*, more commonly known as Philogelos, a collection of 264 Greek jokes first complied in the fourth or fifth century BC, and considered to be the first known joke book.

Here are some of the jokes as translated by Professor William Berg**.

Any resemblance between these ancient jokes and anything you might have heard in your lifetime is purely, absolutely historically fascinating...and funny!

130. A Sidonian professor enters the public bath as soon as it opens. Finding no one else there, he comments to his slaves, 'It looks to me as if the bath isn't working.'

141. Steering his ship, a quick-witted captain is asked, 'What kind of wind do we have today?' 'Beans and onions, I'd say,' comes the response.

146. A sharper steals a pig and starts running with it When he's caught, he sets the pig on the ground and thrashes it, declaring, 'Do your digging here, not on my property!'

147. A quick study, coming upon a singer who's both shrill and off-key, greets him with the words, 'Hello there, Mr. Rooster!' 'Why do you call me that?,' asks the singer. 'Because whenever you crow, everybody gets up.'

148. When the garrulous barber asks him, 'How shall l cut your hair?,' a quick wit answers, 'Silently.'

160. A Kymaean goes to see a friend of his. He's standing in front of the friend's house, calling his name, when another voice answers, "Shout louder, so he can hear!" So the Kymaean shouts, "Hey, Louder!"

170. Someone asks a Kymaean where the attorney Dracontides lives. The guy responds, 'I'm all alone here,
but if you don't mind, watch my workshop and I'll go out and show you.'

228. A drunk is being railed at for losing touch with reality when he's had a snootful. Barely able to see straight because of the wine, the drunk retorts, 'Who's the drunk here, you or me - you two-headed freak!'

263. Someone tries to needle a quick-witted man by telling him, 'I had your wife for free.' But he just says, 'Me, I'm forced to put up with such an evil. What's forcing you?'

264. A sharp lawyer is pleading a case before a judge. When the judge nods off, the lawyer shouts, '1 appeal!' 'To whom?', asks the judge. 'To you, to wake up!'

265. A student dunce asks how many pints a 9-gallon amphora holds. 'Are we talking wine or water?' is the
answer he gets.

It has been said that there are two sure rules for making something funny; unfortunately, nobody knows what they are! But, somebody must know something because here you can see the ancestral heritage of material you've heard and enjoyed from Hope, Youngman, Dangerfield, Leno, Benny, Berle, and many others who entertain us in modern times.

This jester tips his hat to the humorists, comics, and comedians who keep us laughing, whether the jokes are 3,000 years old or fresh and original, whether they are delivered by professionals, traveling salesmen, class clowns, or the person in the cubicle next to yours. Hooray, for funny people and for jokes!

Now, let's see, what would you imagine a 3,000 year-old joke might have sounded like?
"Knock, knock."
"Who's there?"
"Euripides."
"Euripides who?
"Euripides pants, you in big trouble!"

Try your hand (or funny-bone) at coming up with our own, then share in the comment section.

* Ed. R. Dawe (c)K.G. Saur Verlag, an imprint of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG Munchen 2001
**YUDU Media, London, UK

Someone You Should Know: Katy Franco

2011-06-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

The art of humor and the humor of art are important but often overlooked aspects of the vital role that humor and laughter play in our lives. Humor itself is an art. And, artists of all genres--visual, musical, written, comedic, etc.) create humor, portray humor, and use their talents to illuminate the human condition. Many of their creative 'products' can contribute to healing. There is a significant art-humor-healing intersection or energy vortex that I'll be elaborating on in a future blog.

With this blog I want to introduce you to Katy Franco, one of the people I consider the personification of the art-humor-healing intersection. The information here is largely taken from her websites, but comes from my heart because her joyous and funny work comes from her heart.

Katy Franco is a Latin American actress, celebrity, screamingly funny stand-up comic, and now a Certified Laughter Leader with World Laughter Tour.

Performing in English and Spanish, she has entertained in the United States, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Argentina.

Her acting credits include dramatic and comedic roles in the theater, soap-operas, films and mini-series (with an award for "best supporting actress"). She has hosted a children's television series and HBO Latino in Hollywood, and has been an entertainment reporter at Telemundo in Los Angeles. As a comic, she performs through:out Puerto Rico and tile USA, and in Hollywood's most famous nightclubs (including the Laugh Factory on Sunset Strip, where she is a regular, the Improv on
Melrose and the Ice House in Pasadena).

In 2006 Katy stepped into a very different spotlight when she announced that she was a breast cancer survivor. Appearing on stage and in countless news programs, magazine articles and newspaper stories, she devoted the past two years to educating Latinas about early detection. Her experiences became a one-woman show called Sacando Pecho about overcoming the disease. Since 2007 she also has been the spokesperson for Avon Puerto Rico's breast cancer crusade.

Since 2006 her breast cancer awareness campaign has enjoyed extensive coverage in the media. She created a one-woman show about her fight against the disease, and wrote “Chemorella” with her husband. Bilingual in English and Spanish, she has the experience and talent to enlighten and entertain women about breast cancer.

“Chemorella” is a Cinderella story about beating cancer and seeing your dreams come true. The heroine is a young woman who goes from the rags of illness to the riches of health, love and success.

The book is in English and Spanish and has 28 beautiful fill-color illustrations.

“Chemorella” inspires hope while it entertains. This retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale is an inspiration to the patient, and helps kids and teens to deal with their fears. The story also gives parents a means to introduce the positive effects that the experience can have on the family.

Chemorella herself is a positive role model for the patient. Reaching out to the patient, this is a story to inspire her, make her laugh and reassure her she will indeed get better.

With humor and compassion, “Chemorella” addresses the challenges a cancer patient faces, such as depression, chemotherapy, surgery, and baldness. It shows how tears and fears can be overcome by courage, creativity, and accepting love from everyone around you. Its happy ending says that everything is going to be okay.

I am glad to call Katy my friend. I am glad she had the inspiration and talent to write this book. Everyone I know has been affected somehow by breast cancer. I wish it wasn't so, but you can be sure I will be sending out many copies of "Chemorella".

Universal Principles of Human Being

2011-06-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

"Wherever there is separation, wherever we see someone as 'other', as enemy, violence is possible. Where there is connection, there you will find only kindness, love, and compassion. It is not possible to see the humanity in another person and commit a violent act against him or her."
-- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Several years ago I started wondering about the possibility that a set of laws parallel to the laws of physics might apply to being human, being humane, or to how human beings should act in order to maximize safety, health, and happiness. Initially, I believed that these laws would have to pass the same tests as the laws of physics in everyday life, but could they? (I say everyday life because modern technology is showing that the older laws of the physical world have exceptions in extreme situations and with the advent of modern technology we know that atomic particles, and those even smaller, behave differently than you might expect under conditions of extreme speed, pressure, or temperatures.) For now, let's see if there are universal laws for everyday living.

I am not at all convinced that universal principles of human being operate the way I might wish, as laws, but I am open, and opening up the discussion as a way to help us think about it. For example, imagine that treating employees badly would, sooner rather than later or even much later, lead to the failure of a business. Imagine that your nose would grow like Pinocchio when you lied, or that your feet would burn like fire if you cheated someone, or that your hemorrhoids would flare up if you charged an exorbitant price.

Law Seekers
Sir Isaac Newton was looking for universals laws of motion.

Faraday and other early scientists discovered the universal laws of electricity, magnetism, and mathematics.

John Forbes Nash thought there might be a universal theory of human sociality.

More recently, Antonio Domasio is looking for a unified theory (universal laws?) of how the brain produces a self, as well as how it does many other things.

Matthew Gervais and David Sloan Wilson are looking for a unified theory (universal principles) of laughter.

Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennet, and Reginald B. Adams, Jr., are looking for a unified theory (universal principles) of how humor works.

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow are looking for a unified theory (universal laws) of how the universe works.

Helen Johnson, Professional Education Research Centre, Roehampton University of Surrey, Southlands College, is looking for a unified theory (universal principles) of qualitative and redemptive indicators of performance of, especially, children in educational institutions.

Although they have been sought for centuries, I suggest we would do well to continue looking for a unified theory (universal laws) of human being. It is in our best interest to study the matter and, whether or not we find "the law" we will be much better off for having educated ourselves about the moral principles for human being.

Perhaps columnist, reporter and writer, David Brooks, had something like this in mind when he wrote about the dim prospects for peace in the Middle East ( June 2 , 2011), stating "They (Syria and Hamas) can never be part of a successful negotiation because they undermine the universal principles of morality."

Regarding the Ten Commandments, Rabbi Benjamin Blech writes, "God's words weren't intended just for one people. They were meant for the whole world because they represent the key to universal survival...Simply put, it is the idea of law, the concept of 'do this' and 'do not do that.' It is the notion that some things are right and some things are wrong. It is the rejection of cultural relativism..."

Qualities of Universal Laws
Hurley, et al, propose that a unified model of humor will have to adequately answer twenty specific questions that they put forth.

Hawking and his co-author also propose a list of questions that a proper set of unified laws of the universe must correctly answer.

To simplify the discussion for our purposes of our work with laughter and humor as therapeutic allies and necessaries for a happy life, I propose these 'tests' of a universal principle:
1. It has extremely high, almost perfect, predictive power. "If this, then that" holds true so often that we can reliably count on it affecting our lives in the very near term, short-term, medium-term, or very, very long-term.
2. The effect on our lives is such that safety, health, and happiness are involved. If you "obey" the law, you are highly likely to be safer, healthier, and happier. "Disobey" the law and you jeopardize your safety, health, and happiness.
3. The law operates equally on everybody, good and bad alike. There are no exceptions. It has no respect for age, intelligence, status, prestige, beauty, nationality, or religious belief.
4. The law works in your life whether or not you believe in it.

Let's look at a few examples.

Gravitational Force. Objects fall down. There is a gravitational force acting between any two objects in the universe. There is a gravitational force between you and Earth. There is also a gravitational force between you and the Sun, between you and all the other planets, and between you and the people sitting next to you. Why do we fall down towards Earth rather than towards the Sun, another planet, or the people next to us? The force of gravity between us and Earth is larger than the force from any of these other objects.

It's the law! Does it pass my tests for being a universal principal? Let's see. Is it predictable? Yes. Can we count on it reliably? Yes. If you "obey" the law, are you highly likely to be safer, healthier, and happier? Yes. If you "disobey" the law do you jeopardize your safety, health, and happiness? Yes. Does it operate equally on everybody, good and bad alike, without exceptions (in everyday life)? Yes. Does the law work in your life whether or not you believe in it? Yes. You can't see gravity, touch it, taste it, hear it, or smell it. So, you might decide that you do not believe in gravity. But, this law does not require your belief in order to be operational. You might not believe in it, but don't step off the roof!

Centrifugal Force. When something is going straight, it always keeps going straight unless something else stops it or turns it. If it can't go straight, then it goes as straight as it can. So when you hit a tetherball, it tries to go straight away from you. But the rope pulls on it and keeps the tetherball from going straight. So the tetherball goes as straight as it can - around the pole in a circle. That's centrifugal force - the energy of something trying to go straight even though it can't.

We know from Newton's first law that a body will retain its velocity (speed) unless another force acts upon it. When a body, say you are driving and the 'body' is your car, travels in a circle (around a curve) a force must be applied (apply the brakes) to slow it down and stop it from travelling in a straight line. This force is the centripetal force, the only force necessary for a circular motion. What is interpreted sometimes as a centrifugal force is the tendency of the object to follow in a straight line, which would bring it outside of its circular trajectory. Simply put, drive too fast around the curve and you are going off the road!

It's the law! Does it pass my tests for being a universal principal? Let's see. Is it predictable? Yes. Can we count on it reliably? Yes. If you "obey" the law, are you highly likely to be safer, healthier, and happier? Yes. If you "disobey" the law do you jeopardize your safety, health, and happiness? Yes. Does it operate equally on everybody, good and bad alike, without exceptions (in everyday life)? Yes. Does the law work in your life whether or not you believe in it? Yes. You can't see centrifugal force, touch it, taste it, hear it, or smell it. So, you might decide that you do not believe in it. But, this law does not require your belief in order to be operational. You might not believe in it, but don't speed around curves!

Get the idea? There are universal principals operating in the physical world. you might have studied them in high school in a class called Physics. The teacher may not have told you that obeying these laws could save your life, but it is true.

If they met the same tests that I proposed for laws of the physical world, universal laws of human being would have reliably predictable outcomes (long or short term), have a big influence on our health, safety and happiness, apply equally to everybody, and would operate in your life whether or not your believed in them.

Nominations for Laws of Human Being
Let me share some of the ideas that a few of my friends, family, and colleagues have come up with as possible laws of human being, or at least areas of everyday life for which laws could, should, or might be written. Readers are welcome to add their own nominations. From time to time I will update the topic.

The first thing that comes to my mind is what has come to be known as The Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," (Jesus), or, perhaps in the form of, "That which is hateful to yourself, do not do to others," (Buddha, Hillel). Or, maybe it's Hippocrates' dictum, "First, do no Harm". Do those 'laws' pass my tests? Do the Ten Commandments pass my test?

In no particular order, other nominations already received suggest that perhaps there are universal laws regarding:
- love
- honesty
- humility
- empathy
- kndness
- forgiveness
- compassion
- flexibility
- freedom from desire
- gratitude
- smiling
-"Look both ways before crossing a street."
-Torah
-"Laughter, oh man, laughter REALLY helps!"
- "I believe God gave us instruction for living in His word, the Bible, and if followed will lead to a safer, healthier, and happier life and if disobeyed you jeopardize your safety, health, and happiness."
- Do not kill (unless it's a mosquito or a roach)
- "Everything I like is either illegal, immoral or fattening." -W. C. Fields
- The Science of Epigenetics, Assad Meymandi, MD, PhD, trying to show links between behavioral science and genetics, has begun to offer proof that health laws parallel natural laws.

Do you really believe that if you obey these laws and you find happiness, health, and a good life, but disobey these laws and you end up with sickness, violence, hatred, war, fear, rage, and depression?

Perhaps the universal principles of human being defy the test criteria because they work differently from the laws of the physical world.

What do you think?
Do we have any hope at all of finding a universal law of human being that would have consequences the way the laws of physics have? Or, is it the human dilemma that we can make choices and can create rationalizations and loopholes to justify any behaviors? If so, the consequences will not be automatic or necessarily be predictable. Human beings will have to be vigilantly aware that there is no correlation between celebrity and character, and we must rely on consequences of conscience, or obtaining justice in the enforcement of civil and criminal codes.

Please leave me a comment with your opinion or nomination for a topic for universal principles. If you can spell it out, all the better.

Happy Mapping for Resilience and Healing

2011-05-31T13:58:00.000-07:00

There is a deep and interesting explanation of one kind of brain mapping by Antonio Damasio in “Self Comes to Mind”. In "Inside Jokes", the authors explain about the brain constructing "mental spaces", a neurological architectural requirement in the process of creating our sense of humor, mirth, and laughter. I highly recommend both books.

The term "mapping" has been used many ways. Some use the term to refer to being prepared by practicing for stress before it hits. This 'practice' can be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. This kind of mapping takes time, repetition, testing and correction.

For example, let's say you need to do 10 repetitions of bicep curls once a week for a year in order to reach a particular bicep strength goal. The idea is that, at the very moment when you need strong bicep muscles, it is too late to go to the gym. You cannot achieve that goal by doing 520 reps all in one session! With each rep, the brain draws in the details of the 'strength map' for that muscle. It must have the benefit of space and time and repetition. (There may be some exceptions, e.g., Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which may arise from the construction of a seriously imprinted brain map based on a single experience. But, in all other cases, it takes time, repetition, testing and correction.)

I attribute my resilience in the face of being deathly ill last November to my years of this kind of practice of positive attitudes. I was very sick, and had several complications. Even my complications had complications. How did I recover? I am sure that a lot of my recovery was due to years of mapping about laughter, humor, positive attitudes, and about loving relationships, and one love relationship in particular. My 'atlas' of positivity, laughter, humor and love had been constructed over a period of years with thousands of repetitions, tests and corrections, but for a while, I could not consciously find the maps; my humor gyroscope was way off kilter.

For weeks following my initial emergency surgery (subsequently there were four other surgical procedures), I was so infused with anesthesia, pain medications, and other powerful drugs, that I was in a dense fog and “blind” to anything humorous. It was as if a thick coating of armor was insulating me from my great sense of humor. During that time, laughter was absent and humor was almost totally impossible. Pain and fog and delirium ruled my life. It was like a waking nightmare in which I could hear a distant voice faintly telling me to find the humor, but when I tried to run in my dream-like state, my legs would not move; when I tried to scream or laugh, no sound could come out. I was "humor helpless," in a black box trying to fight my way out of a proverbial paper bag.

I am certain that during that time, my brain was still determinedly and constantly a driving force pushing me toward life and health, because that is the natural state and function of the brain (always to seek and restore homeostasis). I believe the maps I had laid down were a special source of fuel and direction for that energy. During the time even though I was unable to consciously will myself to humor and laughter or positive thinking, or love, somewhere inside my head my brain still had excellent maps to follow.

My mind had to work on locating my humor without my conscious assistance, but with wonderful external forces helping. I was dimly aware of the rubber chicken that my wife, Pam, had hung faithfully from my IV pole (a family tradition for any of us who is hospitalized). For weeks, hundreds of humorous get-well cards and gag gifts poured in, and Pam read every one of them to me. Although my response was minimized by the medications and being weak and tired, it was as if each one of those chipped away a small bit of the armor that had built up. My first realization that my sense of humor was gradually being exposed came when I least expected it.

Eventually, those maps guided my brain to where I needed to be, and I had an amazing breakthrough. Here's what happened.

In the hospital, every few days, I would be sent for a CAT scan. CAT scans are a specialized type of x-ray. The patient lies down on a couch (more like a hard, flat table) which slides into a large circular opening. The x-ray tube rotates around the patient and a computer collects the results. These results are translated into images that look like a "slice" of the person.

Transferring from my hospital bed to the CAT scan table was such a painful move, and because I was so weak, it required the help of 3 staff. Each dreaded trip to the CAT scan room seemed to add to my depression. But, with one of these, the last one, came a fabulous development that marked a switch-point in my recovery.

The staff tried to be gentle in transferring me to the motorized CAT scan table, but it was agony. They left the room so as not to be exposed to the x-ray radiation. As always, the room was darkened as the table and I slid into the giant donut ring of the equipment.
A recorded voice, reverberating in the room, says, "Take a deep breath."
(I was only capable of a shallow breath.)
Recorded voice: "Hold it!"
(Are you kidding?)
Machinery whirs and rumbles for several seconds.
Recorded voice: "Breathe normally."
(There is no normal breathing. For me, every breath is painful.)
Again, the reverberating recorded voice says, "Take a deep breath."
(Here we go again. This entire process is repeated 2 or 3 times.)

Finally, the staff came back into the room as the CAT scan bed was simultaneously slid out of the donut ring. (I was dimly aware of the name Torquemada, a prominent leader of the Spanish Inquisition.) I was breathing only slow and shallow breaths. My eyes were tightly shut in pain. I am sure I was grimacing as a nurse leaned over me to ask, "Are you comfortable?" And, there, instantly was my breakthrough!

"Are you comfortable?" is part of an very old joke*, the set-up or straight-line. When she asked the question, after weeks of depression and "humor blindness", as if by magic, I instantly remembered the whole joke, and the punch line, and the proper delivery, with great relief and a great inner giggle. At long last, my funny bone was tickled. My eyes popped open, to look directly into hers, and I could feel energy rising in me as I replied. The right answer requires a Yiddish inflection, a shrug and the words, “I make a living.” I think I did a pretty good job of it. With the proper shrug and little bit of a Yiddish accent, I told her, "I make a living!"

I was ecstatic that after so much humorless time, and in spite of my pain, I was giggling on the inside and delivering a punch line.

The nurse, however, did not get the joke. She looked at me sternly and asked again, more emphatically, "Are you comfortable?"

I am sure my shoulders must have been shaking with my chuckling as my energy rose and I repeated the punch line with the requisite Yiddish inflection and a shrug, but also more emphatically, "I make a living!"

She said, "Sir, this is serious. Are you comfortable???"
I said, "This is vaudeville. It's an old joke. I make a living!!"

We weren't getting anywhere. I could see that she was never going to get it, but she was getting exasperated with me. I, on the other hand, knew that the exchange was a signal that I was going to be OK, and I happily forgave her in my heart with gratitude for unwittingly activating an important map in my brain, which led me to the onset of what was to become a full recovery. "Please, take me back to my room," I whispered, exhausted but exhilarated.

I did not instantly bounce all the way back to health, but the joke was the start of a slow, steady, sure and laughter-filled program of physical therapy, occupational therapy, loving care at home, and the support of hundreds of friends around the world.

The positive (funny) maps that my brain had been constructing for years were triggered into action by a straight-line, and good health followed naturally.

The human brain is amazing in so many ways, conferring upon us the resource of constructing funny maps, happy maps, and mental spaces for our resilience and ultimately for healing. What humor does it for you? What punch line or funny image can throw you into a mirthful mood? Have you helped your brain do some funny mapping today? You should all be doing it as it daily practice. After all, it is the most fun that you can have that could possibly save your life.

Love, light, and laughter.

*The joke: A pedestrian crossing the street is hit by a car. As he lies dazed in the street, a policeman comes over, takes off his uniform coat, rolls it into a pillow and places it under the man's head. The officer asks the man, "Are you comfortable?" With a slight shrug and a bit of a Yiddish accent, the man lifts his head slightly and replies, "I make a living!"

The Path to Happiness is Simple

2011-05-31T07:35:00.000-07:00

The path to happiness and health is simple and well-worn by those who have gone before. But, it is not easy. It will have challenges and difficulties, and will require assistance from time to time. You cannot leap over it or hop over it. If you try to skip some of it, you’ll just have to go back and do that part again. You have to walk it, step by step. Then, as we have been told for centuries, it becomes a journey that is richest when we focus on where we are now.

Ram Dass says, "Be Here Now." Rabbi Alan Ciner teaches us to spend little time anticipating the destination, and very little time thinking about the past. Rabbi Ciner says, "You should go through life like a deer running through the woods, focused on where you are, moving as swiftly and deftly as possible, alert to dangers and obstacles, but only occasionally glancing back over your shoulder.”

And, I would add, be sure to take ample time for laughter and humor.

Guest blogger Debra Joy Hart, RN: "Potentiation"

2011-05-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

po·ten·ti·ate [puh-ten-shee-eyt]
–verb (used with object),
1. to cause to be potent; make powerful.
2. to increase the effectiveness of; intensify.

Humor, laughter and mirth can potentiate health and happiness. Sure, you can take all your vitamins, prescribed medications, get your teeth cleaned twice a year and eat a rainbow of vegetables, and most likely you will lead a fulfilled life. But, when you add laughter and humor to your daily regime, you potentiate all your other healthy habits.

Potentiate is a term I learned long ago in pain management. When giving a narcotic medication, the medical team must be alert to the fact that certain OTC’s (Over The Counter) drugs, can potentiate the narcotic. If a patient was taking a particular OTC, you might actually administer less of the narcotic. Think of it as “getting more bang for your buck” (that's NAANT: Not An Actual Nursing Term).

The psychological and physiological effects of laughter potentiate your immune and cardiovascular system. The physical act of laughter in combination with the emotional state of mirth (mirth is needed for health benefits) has a potentiating effect. Laughter, humor, and mirth, potentiate your mental health, brain power, and spiritual being. Systematically leading others to mirthful laughter and humor helps to potentiate their navigation of the perilous seas of fear, shame, helplessness and hopelessness.

In nursing, I often see how certain terms or abbreviations can be applied in different areas of my life. The abbreviation WNL stands for Within Normal Limits. I often ask my therapist, “Am I at least WNL?” SOB can have many meanings; however, in nursing it means Shortness of Breath.

Laughter and humor potentiate the discharge of emotional tension. When I was a nurse and teacher in a detox/drug rehabilitation unit, I took my rehab inpatient group to a public park where I led them in laughter exercises. Many were ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) who initially reacted with skepticism and dismay about laughing in a public place (without the aid of alcohol or drugs), followed by expressions of fear of being laughed at by others. In order to process and learn from the experiences, a discussion followed the session. With repeated efforts, mirthful laughter eventually potentiated this group’s ability to do healthy risk-taking, invest in future healthy happiness, and adopt healthy coping skills.

Leading laughter circles in long term care units, I see how laughter, humor and mirth can potentiate many therapies, which can then lead to increased compliance in medicine regimes, ADL’s (Activities of Daily Living), and other healthy behaviors. As evidenced by their fingers wiggling, hands clapping, and feet tapping, laughter exercise has potentiated mobility in residents who were previously slumped in their chairs during the day, virtually stock-still.

I hit a humor-home-run for myself when I can use my humorous perspective to potentiate my own sanity and balance the stresses of my responsibilities. For example, I can have fun with both the aging process and the ‘alphabet soup’ of text messaging. These make me smile. I hope you smile at them, too.

BTW: Bring The Wheelchair
BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth
DWI: Driving While Incontinent
LOL: Living On Lipitor
ROFLCGU: Rolling On Floor Laughing, Can’t Get Up
FWB: Friends With Beta-blockers
FYI: Found Your Insulin
IMHO: Is My Hearing -Aid On?
FWIW: Forgot Where I Was

Debra Joy Hart RN, BFA, CLL is part of World Laughter Tour and the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. She owns M.I.R.T.H. (Medicine is Relationships Trust and Humor) [tm]. www.debrajoyhart.com, debrajoyhart@gmail.com

Kindness: The Heart of the Matter

2011-05-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

Good-Hearted Living(tm) (GHL) is my simple-but-not-easy six-step program for finding happiness, reducing stress, and having more laughter and humor in your life. To borrow a phrase from Joel Goodman, founder of The Humor Project, GHL prevents hardening of the attitudes.

In GHL, Thursdays are for acts of kindness. Kindness is the antidote for meanness and selfishness.

Bob Hope may have been thinking about kindness when he said, “If you haven’t any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Kindness is the act or the state of being kind —ie. marked by goodness and charitable behavior, mild disposition, pleasantness, tenderness and concern for others. It is known as a virtue, and recognized as a value in many cultures and religions.

An act of kindness can be done with careful planning or on the spur of the moment. When you first start practicing kindness, you may have to be mindful to give it some thought. Eventually, it will become your natural way of life. You can use a simple formula for constructing a spontaneous act of kindness. It might be at work, at home, in the grocery store, or anywhere. Just ask yourself, “What’s one thing I could do to make this person’s life a little bit easier right now?” Then, do it.

Acts of kindness bring immediate benefits to the receiver and the giver, and then ripples of goodness go throughout the world. Recent research strongly suggests that human beings have a healthier physiology when they do kind acts and even when they think kind thoughts. And, remarkably, research shows that people benefit from merely witnessing acts of kindness. How cool is that!

I want to focus in on the special case of kindness in interpersonal communications. Two people have had a profound influence on me in this regard: Virginia Satir, an American author and psychotherapist, and Norman Guitry, founder of the Franklin County (Ohio) Mental Health Association. Satir taught the importance of speaking to the heart's singular message. Guitry taught that everything we need to know about mental health could be summed up in two words.

Communication between human beings often gets sticky, thorny, confused, angry, hurtful, and otherwise irritating. In an attempt to understand how communications gets so jumbled on a gender basis, a socio-linguist, Deborah Tannen, characterized these problems in the titles of two books which explore what so many of us have experienced, “That’s Not What I Meant” and “You Just Don’t Understand.”

In the mid 1980s, I attended a powerful lecture by Satir, which was life-changing for me. She described a metaphorical model of human communications that struck me as logical and sane. It stuck with me and has proven to be an excellent way of understanding human nature and how to improve communications.

Satir said it is as if the human mind is filled with 10,000 ideas, all buzzing around, all seeking expression. Trying to communicate “from the head” is fraught with complications and gets us tied in knots. The odds are not very good that the one-in-ten-thousand idea in my mind that I am trying to express to you is going to match up with the one-in-ten-thousand ideas in your mind I want to connect with. Mostly, getting you to understand me, or me to understand you, is like looking for a couple of needles in two haystacks of thoughts.

The good news is that the human heart, on the other hand, has only one message, which is easily understood, and which we can predict with a high probability of success will accurately match up and feel understood when we “speak” to it. And, that message is “Please love me.” That's what's in my heart, your heart, and everybody else's heart, even they have been damaged by abused or otherwise lost sight of it. It may be blocked or camouflaged and seemingly impossible to reach, but it is there at creation and never really goes away.

If we are willing to assumptively “speak” to the one heart message, we will get along better, with far less confusion, because we have reached to the “heart” of the matter of human understanding. We will connect in a positive way, which will make a good basis for working out other differences. We still need several other good communications skills, but the best start is to and from the heart.

From 1973-1976, I was privileged to have Norman Guitry present the opening lecture each year to the incoming class of students in the 2-year Mental Health & Mental Retardation Technology program at Columbus (Ohio) Technical Institute. A man in his seventies, Norm was a man of impressively tall stature, with a strong shock of white hair. Always in a carefully pressed 3-piece suit, he had the bearing of authority, but a twinkle in his eye, and a heart of gold.

Norm's lecture was,"Everything You Need to Know About Mental Health Can Be Summed Up in Two Words." He was persuasive in his contention that 90% of the mental health problems would not exist if everybody followed his two-word practice. The two words? "Don't belittle."

Don't put people down. Don't speak words that diminish another person's sense of worth or self-esteem. Lift people up. Instead of beating people down because of their weaknesses, help them build up their strengths.

Not only do the most effective interpersonal communications generate greater goodness in the world, they keep us healthier physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and they attract more laughter and humor into our lives. Before you even speak one word to another person, you already know that in his or her heart they crave loving acceptance, so keep that heart message in your mind as you speak to them. Eliminate sarcasm and ridicule. Choose your words carefully. Don't belittle.

I think you will enjoy this video; four minutes of inspiration and quick lessons about kindness.

All of the Wisdom of the World

2011-05-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

In which a king, in pursuit of all of the wisdom of the world, learns the most important lesson about flexibility...

Long ago and far away, when books were becoming more readily available to the educated classes, the sovereign monarch of a small empire became enamored with the possibility of accumulating wisdom through books. The king had ascended to the throne at age ten. Being quite precocious, intelligent, literate, and curious, he immediately sent his emissaries and explorers far and wide to buy up and bring back any and all books that might bring him the wisdom of the world.

He built many buildings to house his vast library where he daily spent the hours from sun up until sun down, reading. Indeed, by the time he was nineteen, he had gained quite a reputation for being quite wise.

Gradually, he began to realize that, although these books surely contained all of the wisdom of the world, there was no way he could possibly read all of them in his lifetime. This made him sad. He loved knowledge, wisdom and his books, but the more he grasped this undeniable reality, the sadder he became, until he hit upon a solution.

He summoned his most trusted advisors, the Grand Council of Twenty, to his throne room, where he charged and challenged them with a task that would solve his predicament.

“As you know,” he carefully informed them, “in my vast library I have accumulated the books that contain all of the wisdom of the world. However, even though I have barely reached midlife, and as much as I would love to, I can see that I will not be able to read all of these books and thereby find all of the wisdom of the world.”
The Council listened intently. “Therefore, I am wondering can you reduce all of the wisdom of the world to one book?"

Of course, nobody ever refused a "wondering" request from the king, and they were a super smart group, so enthusiastically-but-respectfully they replied, “Of course, your Highness. We will start immediately!”

When they returned several years later, they found the king sitting on his throne, reading, of course. They announced, “Your Highness, we have completed the task, met the challenge.”
“Wonderful!” exclaimed the king. “You were able to condense all of the wisdom of the world into one book?”
“Yes, your Highness.”
“Really?”
“Yes, your Highness.”
“Do you have the book?”
“Yes, your Highness, we have the book. We will bring it immediately.”

They left the throne room and returned pushing a very large wheeled table upon which rested the largest, thickest book the king had ever seen. He was astounded and a bit disbelieving, not to mention taken aback by his quick assessment of the physical strength it would take merely to open the cover of a tome of such gigantic proportions. But, he was eager to try.

Quickly, he slipped down from his throne and approached the immense volume. Pushing back the sleeves of his royal robe, he reached out to grasp the book’s cover with both hands, and with not a little effort, he hefted the cover open and began turning the pages. He turned several pages at a time, scanning the contents and taking in some of capacious information that was printed on every page. A small ladder was brought to the book table so that he could get a better vantage point.

After quite some time, he turned to the Council, looking very satisfied, and said, “You have done well, and you will be well rewarded. Surely, all of the wisdom of the world is contained in the pages of this magnificent volume.”
The Council members looked very self-satisfied.

Then, the king's face turned sad, and in a softer voice he told them, “Alas! I doubt that I will ever, ever be able to read this entire book. Therefore, I have another charge and challenge for you.”
The Council members looked puzzled.
“I wonder,” asked the king, “Could you possibly condense all of the wisdom of the world into one sentence?”

Of course, nobody ever refused a "wondering" challenge issued by the king, and they were a super smart group, so enthusiastically but respectfully they replied, “Of course, your Highness. We will start immediately!”
Several more years passed before the Council returned to announce that they had completed the task; they had met the challenge. The now balding king was napping on his throne with a couple of good sized books in his lap.

Loudly but gently they “Ahem-ed!” to rouse the king, who woke vaguely aware of who they were and delighted to hear them say, “Your Highness, we have completed the task, met the challenge.”
“You have the sentence?”
“Yes, your Highness.”
“You were able to condense all of the wisdom of the world into one sentence?”
“Yes, your Highness!”
“Really?”
“Yes, your Highness!”
“Well, then, don’t waste another moment. Tell me the sentence!”
“Your Highness, the sentence is: This, too, shall come to pass.”

The king was silent for a long time, mulling over the words he had just heard. He turned to the Council, looking very satisfied, and said, “You have done well, and you will be well rewarded. Surely, all of the wisdom of the world is contained in this one sentence.”

The Council members looked very self-satisfied.

Then, in a soft voice bespeaking his deepest curiosity, he said “I have another challenge for you.”

The Council members looked puzzled.

“I wonder,” asked the king, “Could you possibly condense all of the wisdom of the world into one word?”

Of course, nobody ever refused a "wondering" challenge from the king, and they were a super smart group, so enthusiastically but respectfully they replied, “Of course, your Highness. We will start immediately!”

Several more years passed before they returned, to announce that they had completed the task, met the challenge. They found the king, now with a long gray beard, napping sonorously on his throne with a small book in his lap.

Loudly but gently they ‘Ahem-ed!’ to rouse the king, but he did not stir. They ‘Ahem-ed!’ much more loudly, which did the trick. The king woke groggily, vaguely aware of who they were, but he had to be reminded of their task, and then was delighted to hear them say, “Your Highness, we have completed the task, met the challenge.”
“You have the word?”
“Yes, your Highness.”
“You were able to condense all of the wisdom of the world into one word?”
“Yes, your Highness!”
“Really?”
“Yes, your Highness!”
“Well, then, don’t waste another moment. Tell me the word!”

Following an expectant silence, in unison, the council gave the king the word, “Your Highness," they chanted as a chrous, "all of the wisdom of the world condensed into one word is maybe!”

Content with the knowledge that this surely was true and the greatest of all wisdom, the king and his Council lived happily ever after.

Happiness: Candles in the Wind and Elsewhere

2011-05-14T17:52:00.000-07:00

Those of us who consciously opt for happiness bring light to the world in two ways, with two candles, so to speak. The source of one of these candles is within you; it always has been and always will be within you. It is not something you earn; it is something that you already have. In a manner of speaking, it is original equipment. If you are going to be happy, joyful, mirthful, content, and contributing to a better world, you must find your inner candle and understand the power it gives you.

The other candle is external. Figuratively, we hold it in our hands to help us make our way through life. We can follow its light, and others can see its light, too. It is very helpful. But as much as we try to protect it, it is vulnerable to being snuffed out by the tides and storms of life's "weather", by accidents, and by assaults from others. When that candle is extinguished, and it will be from time to time, because that's how life is, you can lose your way. You might lose your happiness, your joy, and your laughter. Your world will seem very dark. If don't re-kindle it, you can think that you have lost your "self". But you have not.

The vulnerability of that external candle is exactly why you should never tell your life’s purpose to anyone other than some very special people who love you so dearly that they would never, ever hurt you. It is why you should be very careful to whom you tell your dearest dreams.

As soon as you announce your life’s purpose or something that you dream of achieving, unless you are extraordinarily selective, the Pareto Principle will kick right in. Known as the 80/20 rule, it means that 80% of the people to whom you tell your dreams and heart’s desires will react with negativity. They will tell you that it is impossible, that you might as well give up now because you could never accomplish something that important, that good, that valuable.

They are wrong of course, but they just snuffed out your candle. You need to know how to re-light it so you can see the path a few feet ahead and keep moving forward. Martin Luther King taught us that we do not have to see the end of the staircase, or know precisely where the final destination will be. We need only to see the next few steps and keep climbing, and our mission will be accomplished.

When that external candle gets snuffed out, we can re-light it. And, how do you re-light your external candle? You light it from your internal candle, of course.

          The second candle with which you light the world is internal, perfect and permanent. Nobody can snuff it out. No judge can order it taken from you. It is and always will be yours, but you have to know that it is there and how it works.

          It glows in your heart. It comes from your fundamental goodness and your essence, from the permanent essential traits and abilities that are yours forever. It comes from your willingness to take the risks of being kind, being forgiving, looking for the good in others, being flexible, being grateful, and allowing yourself guilt-free pleasures in life. It may seem odd, but it also is easier to find and understand when you open yourself up to true mirthful laughter and humor. You don't have be become a comedian or "be" funny. You do have to let yourself "see" funny.

         And, as it happens, it is much easier to find if you are willing to believe that you deserve happiness. Although that inner candle is always there in all of us, those who do not believe they deserve happiness, or who aren't willing to master the attitudes that bring happiness, have a much harder time finding their inner candle.

But, this candle is invulnerable and invincible! It can never be snuffed out. It can never be taken away from you. What a phenomenal asset!

Once you realize that it is there, and it is inside of you, you will always be able to find it. It is your own personal eternal flame with which you light the way to a better world. It is the source of your resilience, the energy that enables the Phoenix to rise from the ashes. When all seems lost, when the day is darkest for you, your internal heart-light is always there. Eventually, and if necessary, you will find it again and again and again, and then you will re-build, recover, and have the renewed spirit to carry on to your happiness.

Find the source of those candles by keeping your heart open and laughing generously. These are your lights to the world. Watch how you shine for yourself and others.

Humor, recovery programs, and human development

2011-05-12T06:16:00.000-07:00

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood!”

That saying comes out of 12-step and other recovery programs. It is a remedial concept that perfectly fits the fact that laughter & humor can be therapeutic as processes of re-balancing as an adult what was unbalanced in childhood. Restoring healthy humor and playfulness is necessary to recovery.

There is a seriously humorous aspect to recovery. Recovery program meetings are rife with intensely unpleasant emotions but the best ones ring with the sounds of laughter, too

Here is a sampling of the pointed-but-loving humor from "God Grant Me The Laughter: A Treasury Of Twelve Step Humor" (CompCare Publishers, Minneapolis), by Ed F (anonymously), and from other recovery programs, too:

"When we talk about denial, we don't mean a river in Egypt"
"We have to like ourselves to be able to laugh at ourselves"
"Recovery is a stairway, not a landing".
"Alcoholics don't have relationships, they take hostages".
"The strength of our recovery is in direct proportion to our ability to laugh at ourselves".
"Our spiritual lives grow with good-natured fun".
"This (recovery) program liberates us from heaviness by facing it".
"Recovery teaches us to enjoy life".
"Our Creator has concocted a world of many pleasures and delights to play in".
"Some of us adult children need to grow up before we can be the children we never were".
"What are the skills of a child: Openness, lightheartedness, trust, the ability to expect wonderful surprises. Those of us who didn't learn these attitudes effortlessly and naturally will have to practice. But if we choose to, we can learn".
"When I grow up, I want to be a child".

As a psychologist, I view the "happy childhood" concept as a reflection of and remedy for the aborted carefree childhood that was experienced by so many dysfunctional adults. Healthy human development takes about 20 years. Give a kid too much worry and responsibility too soon (or not enough, as it turn out) and the result is often co-dependency, compulsive behaviors, and other dysfunction. Properly presented laughter and humor can have definite curative influences.

Several years ago, these grim statistics were reported in Barbara Yoder's Recovery Resource Book: in the USA about 88 million people are chemically dependent or in a relationship with someone who is. At that time, there were an estimated 30 million children of alcoholics; 50 million smokers and 12 million chewing tobacco; up to 37 million "food addicts"; and, 4 million compulsive gamblers. What's so funny about any of that? Plenty. Not necessarily "funny: ha-ha!" but "funny: aha!"

Some of the current trends in substance abuse can be found at the website of the National Institute on Drug Abuse http://www.drugabuse.gov/infofacts/nationtrends.html.

The recovery movement provides education, support, and new ways of understanding how life experiences, especially in our early years, can leave emotional injury and damaged self-esteem that keeps us mired in unhappy and unsuccessful careers and failed personal relationships. Part of that understanding includes the role of laughter and humor, without which our lives are lopsided.

The psychology of recovery is about how to heal these injuries and break the ties that bind us to chronic poor decision-making, compulsions (like work, sex, exercise, shopping, gambling, eating) and addictions. Essentially, it is about finding and living a balanced life. Examining these dilemmas from all sides, many experts eventually come to side that is, rightly, ludicrous, absurd, or laughable. It turns out that humor and laughter are among the most important hallmarks of recovery. Mirthful laughter, self-deprecating humor, and even derisive laughter that puts things in perspective, are part of the prescription.

"If alcoholics have things in common (and I think they do)", says Ed F., anonymously, "one of those things is a wonderful sense of humor".

In programs such Lee Glickstein's "The Comedy of Recovery", and others that employ the art of stand-up as part of the treatment of mental illness, the laughs are neither mundane nor cheap shots. In those special settings, it has been observed that most of the "comics" take the time to gently evoke the audience's memory and empathy, building their stories to ecstatic, cathartic crescendos. The resulting release feels clean. It would be hard to find a better time free from the risk of emotional hangover.

More than an ultimate goal, mirthful laughter is a taste of what you'll get when you get mentally, physically, and spiritually healthy. Laughter is a fore-taste, an appetizer, of what we will have when our personal lives and the world in general is less chaotic, less violent, less angry, and more forgiving; when fewer people are going hungry, when more people are healthy and safe.

That's the laughter I'm after.

On roaring back...

2011-04-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

I am amazed and amused at how my insides (brain included) know what’s happened (sepsis, surgery, ileostomy, surgery reversal) and are working together to get back on track cooperatively as I instinctively re-toilet-train myself. I am brilliant, an awesome thing.

Do you know the story about the argument among body parts as to which is most important: brain, heart, liver, rectum? Of course, the rectum wins. When that shuts down, nothing else can work.

When I realize that I am coming roaring back, it has a whole new meaning. tee-hee

Why is the baby laughing?

2011-04-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

I was a early-baby-smiler. And, cute, too. How about you? I'm pretty sure I've been laughing since darned near the day I was born, literally since almost midnight January 5, 1941. I will explain how you might know that so that you can decide whether or not you have been, too.

Simply, as far as I can tell, the conditions in our middle-class Jewish home and family life, in West Philadelphia, made early-baby-smiling practically a sure thing. I was a healthy 'bouncing boy' (is that term still used?) with loving parents, a loving older sister, Phyllis, who giggled constantly as it turned out, our maternal grandparents living with us to help raise us, dad's good job as the breadwinner, intelligence, musical talent, and the threat of war had not yet clearly arrived at our doorstep.

I was a natural to be an early giggler: healthy, pain-free, well-nourished, loved, protected, in a calm, predictable environment.

Very modern neurological technology is showing how and why this works at a nearly primal and instinctive level in the enormously powerful health-and-reproduction-drive of human beings. Current science is backing up the earlier theorists on these matters. For many years, experts in the field of human development have said that laughter appears to be inborn in human beings while a sense of humor is something we develop over a period of years. I have been told that this has been further detailed by neurologists, saying that the neurological substrates that control laughing and smiling are mature at birth, but when the infant laughs in the cradle we don't decide "That kid has a great sense of humor!"

Laughter, including smiling and a kind of giggling happens in humans within weeks after birth, perhaps within days, and some think that smiling may even happen in utero (but this brings us to contentious, perhaps unanswerable, religious and political debates, so I will leave it out for now).

Early-baby-smiling has often been explained as “the baby has gas”, but now we know better. Flatulence in young infants might be related to smiling the way any kind of relief from discomfort starts the production of feel-good chemicals in the brain. The infant laughs before it has a sense of self and, because it is still undifferentiated in the world, we can be certain that it does not have a sense of humor and is not responding to a joke. But, barring any anomaly of function, it has a brain that reacts in a healthy way to signals/information it gets from the body.

When the conditions are right (http://www.worldlaughtertour.com/sw/full-belly.pdf), what occurs might be called primal laughter; very basic and seeming instinctive. It may well be a result of the brain chemistry of pleasure. Also certainly, this laughter is spontaneous, uninhibited, and un-self-conscious. It is, perhaps, our most authentic laughter, to be modified soon enough under social pressures.

I believe there are conditions that we should say incline the human brain to produce signals resulting in smiling and giggling, even in a newborn so young that it has no 'self' awareness. The presence of the opposite of these conditions is dis-inclining the brain to send forth signals, with feel-good chemical signals for smiling and giggling.

So, what were your first days and weeks and months like? Were you an early-smiling-baby? If so, then how fortunate for you. You had some good luck. If not, you may have picked up your proclivity for laughter and humor a little later down the road, and you can still develop more of it right now. Humor and laughter therapeutics, such as programs offered by World Laughter Tour (http://www.worldlaughtertour.com/), are being used to help people approach or re-create that authentic and pleasurable state. This experience has been reported by some who engage in practices known as laughter circles, and laughter meditation. Although there is not yet clear agreement on the definition of these practices, some experts have confirmed the experience of “authentic” laughter as “real”, pleasant and satisfying. More evidence-based research is needed, but until then, laugh all you can.

And, while you’re at it, how about helping create a world full of early-baby-smilers, where the conditions are right, nobody goes hungry, everybody has healthcare, education, and peace prevails.

So, You Can’t Tell a Joke?

2011-03-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

“The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed.” --Sebastian Chamfort

"When we see how funny we are, we see how dear we are." --Anne Wilson Schaef

I am grateful that in today's world there is an increasing awareness that humor and laughter are good for us. The evidence is mounting. Every day there is more news about the power of humor and laughter to heal us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Every system of the body responds to laughter in some important, positive, healing way. Most folks seem to want to get all the laughs they can, and would love to tell jokes. Two big obstacles to joke telling are 1) most of us don't have very good memory for jokes, and 2) very few people know the secrets of telling a joke really well. (Perhaps, from listening to your brother-in-law’s attempts to jokes, you already knew that.)

It has been said that there are two sure rules for making something funny; unfortunately, nobody knows what they are! Therefore, this blog is NOT going to teach you how to tell jokes. It IS going to show you how to add vast quantities of humor to your life WITHOUT telling jokes.

But, while we're on the subject, here are my two best tips for telling jokes. 1) The punchline comes at the end. Don't ruin the joke by asking, "Did you hear the one about..." and then saying the punchline. By the way, a well-crafted punchline will have a punch word. If you tell it right, the punch word is the absolutely last word of the joke! 2) If you can't remember a joke don't dismember it. Telling a joke well requires practice and getting feedback so you can revise the telling and practice again. Do NOT unleash a joke on a key audience until you know it cold, and have mastered the gestures, voice inflections and timing.

Not interested or capable of the following my advice? Never could tell a joke? Relax. Not to worry. You can earn a reputation for being funny without ever telling a joke. Ninety-five percent of people believe that they have a good sense of humor, but only about 2% - 5% can tell a joke really well. Most people can’t think of a snappy comeback when someone hits them with a zinger, until about two hours later when they realize, “Now I know what I should have said to him!” By then, of course, it’s too late.

Sound like you? I hope you're feeling better about not doing a good job of telling jokes because you are in good company, and the humor doctor is here. I believe that everyone can locate and develop their sense of humor. First, we should clear up two mistaken ideas about humor and laughter.

1. Many people mistakenly believe that you are born with a sense of humor. The parts of the brain and central nervous system that control laughing and smiling are mature at birth in human infants, but that is not the same thing as having a sense of humor. (After all, when an infant laughs in its crib we don’t rush over and say, “That kid has a great sense of humor!”) Your sense of humor is something you can develop over a lifetime.

2. Humor covers a lot more than laughing and joke telling. A sense of humor requires an attitude that includes the willingness and ability to see the funny side of life’s situations as they happen to ourselves and others. One of the best definitions of a sense of humor is: the ability to see the non-serious element in a situation. The ability to tell jokes is only one small part of humor.

You may know people who have taken the time to memorize some jokes, and they may have good timing and delivery, but if they cannot see the humor in everyday life when there are foul-ups or set-backs, they don’t really have a very good sense of humor. On the other hand, if you can see the humor in everyday situations, even if you are terrible at telling jokes, you still have a great sense of humor!

For example, I saw this sign in a store window. I am sure the store manager placed the sign to impress customers with the service they would receive there. That is a serious point in business these days, but to me the sign was humorous. It read: Any Faulty Merchandise Will Be Cheerfully Replaced With Merchandise of Equal Quality. Pretty funny, eh?

The Top Ten (eleven, actually) Ways to Have Humor (and be funny) Without Joke-Telling

1. Look for the unintended humor of reality. Example: a sign seen in an Acapulco restaurant, “The manager has personally passed all the water served here”. Collect examples like this in a notebook so you have them available whenever you want to share a laugh with others or just to review yourself whenever your spirits need a lift.

2. Wear funny hats or T-shirts with funny sayings printed on them. Conduct a “Funny Hat Day” at work. My wife, Pam's favorite T-shirt is emblazoned with, “My Next Husband Will Be Normal". Good for loads of laughs and understanding looks from other women.

3. Become a toy collector. You never outgrow your need for toys. They induce playfulness and laughter in yourself and others. Make it a point to shop for toys for yourself. Buy the toys that suit you best. Whether its a simple wind-up toy that bounces and jiggles across your desk or an elaborate electronic gizmo. It may be just the icebreaker to get to know a new employee at work or to create a pleasant exchange with a new customer. If it brings a smile to your face, it can give you the relief you need to ward off the ill-effects of stress.

4. Wear fun badges. Start your own collection. Some of my favorites read, “I’m not deaf! I’m ignoring you!" and “Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal!” The badge conveys the humor; you don’t have too tell a joke.

5. Place humor in your environment. Put cartoons on bulletin boards at work, or put up a humorous poster in your office or at your desk. When there are cartoons on bulletin boards, people will read more of the other notices. When your eye catches your funny poster, you get a lightening quick boost.

6. Schedule time for fun. Be sure you get to see that favorite funny TV show, or go to a comedy club, or just take time to play with your kids. If you have a very busy schedule it’s important to put it on the calendar and mark it “Don't Postpone Joy!”

7. Enroll in a humor class. Many adult education programs are now offering classes designed to help you discover and develop your humorous personality. Several types of “Humor Conventions” are now held throughout the year.

8. Hang out with people who have a well-developed sense of humor. Watch them and see what makes them laugh. Let them serve as good examples for you. If some people leave you feeling tense, drained, guilty, depresses, or otherwise bummed-out, get away from those energy thieves as fast as you can! Get with people who make you laugh, who leave you feeling good, uplifted, re-energized!

9. Subscribe to humorous publications or read them at the library. Check them out! (I love that pun.)

10. Become a HUMOR i-PENPAL. Line up a few friends who share your sense of humor, maybe even include a couple who's sense of humor is diferent, off-beat. Viia e-mail or snail mail, exchange anyhing you find humorous - a greeting card, cartoon, bumper sticker, badge, poem, story, whatever. This is a great way to see what others are finding funny and infuse your day with laughs. And, be sure to Google "jokes" because even if you can't tell them, you sure can enjoy reading them!

11. Join a laughter circle or laughter club. These popular gatherings are for the love of laughter, NOT about jokes. They help you unleash your inner spirit of laughter through activities that are fun and "emotionally safe". i.e., laughing with rather than laughter at, no judgment or criticism. Especialy good therapy for jesters who have lost their jingle.

Use these ideas and find others that work to help you be more humorous and less serious and get the most out of life. Everything goes better with humor and you definitely don’t have to be able to tell jokes!

Friends in Japan Promote Peace and Laughter

2011-03-15T16:43:00.000-07:00

I just finished a delightful reunion Skype call with my friend, Gart Westerhout, an American from the Baltimore area, who has been living many years in Komatsu, Japan. He and his family were spared in the current catastrophe.

Gart writes plays that he then produces and directs with residents of the small town of Komatsu. His plays are about peace. Five times they have been invited to perform outside of Japan. For the 2^nd invitation, in 1999, he brought the troupe to perform in Washington, DC. He and I had already met online (it was only the third year of the Internet) and discovered our shared interests in peace and laughter. Following a beautiful performance of his play “Birds of Peace” (all in Japanese), and a pizza party for cast and crew, Pam and I met Gart and about two dozen of the actors from Komatsu, for a memorable laughter session on the National Mall between the Lincoln and Washington monuments.

We started with my yo-yo tricks. Gart was the translator. We ended up with the cast spontaneously inventing a form of peace laughter, which entails standing on one leg like a crane, while laughing and gracefully flapping our arms like large wings. You see, in Japan, the crane is known as the bird of peace, commemorating the story of a young girl made fatally sick from the atomic bombings. There is a belief that if you fold 1,000 origami cranes, you will be granted a wish. Ill with a leukemic condition, the young girl started folding cranes. Her wish was to be for peace. Gart wrote the play to tell her story. The cast brought 50,000 origami cranes, made by the townspeople of Komatsu, to distribute during their tour. Hence, the crane pose became a form of peace laughter. Pam and I we were very encouraged that (1) we were able to communicate and connect friendship and laughter, and (2) we witnessed the close connection between laughter and creativity.

In today’s e-mail, Gart writes, “Leaving Saturday for the UK and the continent - see http://osugimusicaltheatre.com We bring a message of peace and much-needed laughter through our show which catapults characters from Japanese history into the present. No one-meter laughs in the show, but plenty of giggles and guffaws, and what you taught us back on the National Mall (with official permit to hold a gathering, I recall!) has stuck with me all through the years. One of my favorite memories of that workshop was that my parents and several of their good friends started as onlookers (they had attended the show) but by halfway through they were all full participants!”

Subject: laughter kanji

“Here is the kanji for the word warau, or laughter, suitable for color printing and framing! It was done by a good friend here who did the art for our poster this year (see http://osugimusicaltheatre.com for poster and trip schedule), and he is coming on the trip and will do giant calligraphy onstage (link to photos on the main page right under the March 13 show info in the left column).”

[The laughter character is done by the calligrapher Kazu Mori of Akaze, Komatsu, Japan. He did the poster you can see at http://osugimusicaltheatre.com/, and below the poster is a photo of him at work.]

And, now, dear reader, I share the beautiful laughter kanji with you to print or frame or pass along or just to look at. You can get it at http://www.worldlaughtertour.com/images/kanji.jpg. In the midst of a catastrophic event, some who survive continue their work –even re-double their efforts-- for peace and laughter. I am happy to have this friendship.

National Humor Month Kicks Off with April Fool's Day

2011-03-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

On June 28, 2008, I received the mantle of the auspicious position of Director of National Humor Month, with all responsibilities, rights, privileges and laughter appertaining thereto (along with a big box of funny stuff) from best-selling humorist and philanthropist, Larry Wilde, Director of The Carmel Institute of Humor who founded the special month in 1976. It is designed to heighten public awareness on how the joy and therapeutic value of laughter can improve health, boost morale, increase communication skills and enrich the quality of one's life.

We honor those who make us laugh, professionals and amateurs alike, as well as friends, neighbors, teachers, and relatives, including your Uncle Fred and your Aunt Tillie. This is the place where you can come to share ideas about how to celebrate humor, information about the ancient roots of humor and the myriad contemporary expressions of humor.

We look forward to encouraging humor in everyone's life around the world and all year long.

Special materials for teachers, parents, librarians and others interested in using humor to help kids enjoy reading are free at http://www.humormonth.com/. You will also find "Thirty Ways in 30 Days" ideas for celebrating National Humor Month, and a bunch of other good stuff...also free.

National Institute of Health Wants to Know...

2011-03-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

I am honored to have been invited to participate in a program within NIH (April 5, 2011, Washington, DC) exploring humor and healing. Other panelist/presenters include Dr. Lee Berk and Dr. Paul McGhee. I will be blogging and otherwise sharing information about the program and the material I am preparing to present.

My part of the program will be about training and education in therapeutic applications of laughter and humor, and how we have been able to create an organization and programs to train nearly 6,000 CLLs so far, who have sent more than 16,000 Forum messages with feedback and observation about results.

Although World Laugher Tour (WLT) does not conduct formal scientific research, case studies and observations are considered the beginnings of science, and WLT programs are being used by OT, PT, and Speech & Hearing professionals, to innovate a concept we call “Integrative Laughter Therapy” in a large company operating about 100 facilities.

We have a lot to offer to NIH and others who want to know about laughter, humor and healing.

Keep Your Funny Side Up - Discover The Humor Perspective

2011-03-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

Here’s a sobering prediction I came across not too long ago: 52% of American executives will die of stress-related illnesses. As a psychologist I know that a good deal of the emotional tension and stress experiences by those executives will not be caused by the events in their lives. Rather, the stress will be caused by their perceptions of those events. It is not what is happening to us that hurts as so much as what we think about what is happening to us. And, Lily Tomlin wryly and rightly observes, “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat!”

Good News/ Bad News

How would you react if you received notice that the Post Office was trying to deliver an unexpected certified letter to you? If you thought it was bad news, you would react with trembling, butterflies or knots in your stomach, increased heart-rate and blood pressure, perspiration; in other words, worry and stress. But imagine the letter will tell you that you have inherited a fortune and that all your troubles are over; no knots, no trembling, no skyrocketing blood pressure, no worry, no stress. You might even giggle. It all depends on what you think is going to happen, and you can control your thoughts.

Look at all sides of a situation and you will eventually come to the side that is absurd, ludicrous, zany, or ironic. Find the laughable side of a situation and you will reduce the emotional tension, which is part of your stress. Humor provides an emotional distancing with which your perspective changes by allowing you to step back and take a second (or third) look at things; trouble don’t seem as large, and you can see more of the resources to help solve the problem. Alan Cohen encourages us, commenting that “laughter lifts us over high ridges and lights up dark valleys in a way that makes life look so much better.”

There is always another way to look at things. There is more than one way to skin a cat. Life is a balance of opposites. Yin and Yang; the Ecclesiastical “time for all things”: planting and harvesting, coming and going, crying and laughing. When you look at the proverbial glass of water, do you see one that is half full or one that is half empty? Personally, I see a glass that is twice as large as it needs to be - yet another way of looking at it!

So, one excellent way to handle emotional tension or stress, especially in the “lighter” stages - the minor irritations - is to look not just at both sides, but at all sides of the situation, and looking for the humorous side while you’re at it.

Grace Under Pressure

You can also help yourself by having that A-Number-One all-important special sense of humor: the ability to laugh at yourself. According to psychologist Harvey Mindess, Ph.D., “Though we make fun of ourselves for being stupid or lazy or klutzy, by laughing at those flaws, what we are really saying is that we’re lovable nonetheless.” Develop your sense of humor and you will find it easier to see all sides of a situation and all sides of all sides of that situation as well.

Can you do it? Can you see your own shortcomings as funny foibles rather than fearsome failings? Can you take yourself lightly when the crunch comes? if so, you will certainly handle problems better, keeping your blood pressure at healthier levels. And there are bonuses such as winning the admiration of your co-workers for your ability to quell panic, get the job done, and not be disturbed by disappointment or discouragement.

Cultivate the ability to see the lighter side to everyday life and you won’t feel defeated nearly as often. Take the joke on yourself in a good-natured way and it will be impossible for others to make jokes about you. If you don’t feel very creative in this regard, just look around for examples from others who are able to adopt this attitude. Try to learn from them, but, at least, borrow from them. I know of a secretary who, when she drops the telephone (who hasn’t?), retrieves it and tells the caller, “Oh, you must be on candid telephone today.” She doesn’t get flustered or embarrassed or make excuses. She stays in control of the situation, maintains her poise and dignity, and gets the job done, probably winning the respect of the caller, too.

Who Are You Laughing At?

You might try your hand at making up fun descriptions as one way of coping with the tougher parts of your work. Here is a job definition which might help teachers have a good healthy laugh at themselves: “A teacher is a person who can drink three cups of coffee before eight o’clock in the morning and hold them till three o’clock in the afternoon!” (Of course, teachers have a lot of class!) One nurse says that sometimes she thinks “R.N.” stands for “Real Nut.” (And we all know that nurses call the shots!)

Shakespeare created a play on words which compares a shoemaker to a clergyman, “A cobbler is a mender of men’s soles (souls).” Paul Harvey has fun with bumper stickers which he calls “bumper snickers.” Many of them are job related: “Plumbers go with the flow!” “Electricians want your shorts!” “Bakers roll in the dough!” And, “Doctors need a lot of patients!” What is your job like? Can you think of a phrase that will put it into a humorous and healthier perspective?

We have choices about how we look at the things that happen to us. Reader’s Digest compiled some questions that show that common annoyances can seem less irritating once you find an uncommon way of looking at them. Here are a few examples:

“Where else but in Washington, D.C. would they call the department that’s in charge of everything outdoors the Department of the Interior?”

“Why is it called baby-sitting when all you do is run after them?”

“Why are income taxes due April 15, the same day the Titanic went down?”

“How come the windshield wiper always works better on the passenger side?”

And the los Angeles Times Syndicate poses this metaphorical question, “Do you ever feel that life is a car wash and you’re going through it on a bicycle?”

My Sense Of Humor?

I realize that not everything is funny and that laughter can be completely out of place if the timing is wrong. But, the next time life’s little foul-ups are getting to me, I’m going to see if I can find the comic’s perspective and use my wittiness to outwit the dimwits and the nitwits and ... RELAX. You can do it, too!

Attitudes, emotions, health and healing

2011-03-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

“To the extent laughter or any of the positive emotions, can block panic, depression, despair, we have a therapeutic ally.“ –Norman Cousins

I am grateful for and in awe of the prescient philosophers and scientists who were foretelling the good news about humor and laughter long before it could be proven scientifically.

To my mind, it is significant and essential to begin here by reviewing and bringing to your attention Dr. William (Bill) Fry, Jr.’s 1964 report to NIMH: FINAL PROGRESS REPORT - PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE Grant. No. MH 07665-01, (Covering the Period - April 1, 1963 to June 30, 1964).

Title of Project: A Classification of Emotive Laughter Responses. Principal Investigator: William J. Fry, Jr., M.D.. Institution: Palo Alto Medical Research Foundation, 860 Bryant Street, Palo Alto, California.

Forty-seven years ago, after more than a year of studying the topic, he made a clear and strong recommendation that laughter would be a suitable field of study. A few excerpts from that report are in order (and remarkable).

“There is much intuitive and subjective, but also unorganized and undisciplined, material about laughter - mainly in the humanities. There is an almost complete absence of objective, organized, and meaningful information about laughter - particularly utilizing modern technical developments and disciplines that have flowered during the past fifty years.”

“We have achieved valuable specific results during the past year. 1.) The most crucial result has been the establishment of a framework for what promises to be a productive and significant study of laughter. This framework is cornerstoned by the concept of laughter as emotive behavior relating to a variety of emotions, with implications relevant to the psychological, and perhaps physiological, homeostasis of the human. We divide the study of laughter into two general categories - 1) laughter as an acoustic phenomenon, of communicative (in 'the broad sense of the word’ - "Communication Theory”) and interpersonal importance; (2) laughter as a physiological experience of homeostatic, psychosomatic, perhaps even survival, importance. This division is also appropriate to the talents available in our research teams - Linguistics and Medical Electronics.”

“It has been our decision…to extend and expand the study of laughter. A large-scale project is being designed and will soon be presented to NIMH in the form of a grant application. In the meantime we are continuing our study on an informal, unfunded basis.”

“On the productive side, the project team has been convinced by the various experiences of the past year that a large scale investigation of laughter is feasible and is desirable. Techniques, procedures, hardware and personnel are all available to allow for significant contributions to be made to a science of laughter. [N.B. Fry put the next sentence parenthetically, but I have removed that punctuation for emphasis.] “The science of laughter was formally established in March, 1964, by the origination, by Dr. Edith Trager, of its name - Gelotology, from the Greek root, gelos (laughter.”

Having coined the term “gelotology” to mean the science of laughter, Fry became the first self-proclaimed Gelotologist. Recently, I asked him what happened to his recommendation because it did not appear that NIMH had acted on it. He replied, “Vietnam”, indicating his belief that any thoughts anyone might have had about pursuing research about laughter had gotten put on the back burner due to severe budgetary restraints. Given the current politics of budgets, we may not be much closer than we ever were to adequate funding for research and application, but I am glad that therapeutic laughter is achieving the credibility it deserves. Bill is glad, too.