06.07.10
You Happy Yet?
Happy yet? Here’s a re-post of part of the article that I wrote for Dr. Nancy Mramor’s Happiness Project. The project shares the expertise of over a dozen authors who have contributed joint articles with Nancy to let you know what the latest research says about what makes you happy. Our wish for you is that you have the happiest year of your life by joining in the free subscription to these 12 E-zines at drmramor.com.
Here ya go:
“According to Baylor College of Medicine BioEd Online, humor triggers parts of the brain that help us to “get” the joke. These are the same areas of the brain that control smiling and laughter. When we respond to (or with) humor, our brain releases dopamine, a feel-good chemical in the brain. Research is continuing on how the appreciation of humor can diagnose the early stages of depression.
Humor actually creates transitions in our bodies and our brains. So, how can we use this humor power to help the transitions we encounter in daily life? Well, humor begins with ACCEPTANCE–exactly what we can’t or don’t want to do during a transition. We want to be in control! We want to overcome! We want to be comfortable again. And so we fight against our situation. Or, sometimes worse, we yield to passiveness and then to hopelessness.
Acceptance is the main factor that propelled my career as a humorist speaker to the next level. When I started performing comedy over ten years ago, I was all over the map. I don’t mean I was traveling to clubs and getting paid. I mean I was doing material about rap music, dumb blonde jokes—a little of everything. I even talked about urban material even though I grew up in the country (yes, this country), and never saw a sidewalk or an elevator until I was well into grade school. But I thought I was hilarious!
The only problem was that no one else was laughing. I thought there was something wrong with my audiences until a wise comedy mentor gave me his observation. “They’re not laughing because you’re not believable. There’s no truth there. Just talk about what you know. Talk about your day.”
I was dejected. I protested, “But there’s nothing funny about my life! I don’t even have a real job. I’m just a substitute teacher until the real teacher dies.” And you know what? He laughed. And as I continued to tell him about my uninteresting and not-funny life, he laughed more. I realized that once I could look at the truth, and accept it, I began to relax. I could see that my best humor was what was already happening all around me. I was living it. I didn’t need to listen to rap music! Not even at stop signs in someone else’s car!
The story got even better. I thought, “If I can talk about these “boring” things in my day-to-day life, why not tackle the more painful things?” I decided I would tell my tragic stories and add some exaggeration. So I threw in some tragic, horrific events. And–voila! More laughs. I talked about my need for a nose job because I’d had a tough childhood. “I was the only little girl in the 4th grade that looked like Alice Cooper.” But now I brag that ever since my nose job I look just like Julia Roberts. “Brother Eric.”
When we are able to accept something painful or hurtful, and then direct it through the lens of humor, we transform it. We disable its power over us and our emotions, our stress level, and our actions. In the process we ourselves are transformed. I’ve gotten the biggest laughs from talking about things that for years had broken my heart. And I hope that in the re-telling of these now-humorous tragedies others will say to themselves, “Hey—if she can laugh at the garbage in her life, maybe I can too. Let’s see–how can I transform my trials into humor gold?”
