No, really. Make an adult laugh. I read somewhere that children laugh an average of 300 times a day while adults only laugh, on average, 5 or 6 times a day. So you might be thinking, “Of course children can afford to laugh 300 times a day. What problems do they have?” Well, they are living in the land of giants, feeling powerless much of the time. Yet they somehow can find plenty to laugh about.
So, as part of our daily practice — and weekends are an excellent time for all sorts of practice — let’s try to up the daily laugh quotient with someone we know.
Daily, deliberate practice. And doing so helps us to build up our ‘comedic muscles’ around a close friend or family member…and then, who knows?
Maybe our new skill starts affecting other aspects of our lives…like our careers. Maybe we’re finally able to deliver memorable speeches because we took the time to practice a joke that helped our audience establish an emotional connection with our ideas. Maybe our next negotiation is that much more successful because our humor transformed our ‘opponent’ into — if not a friend — then at least a person who sees another person. Maybe our employees feel less stressed and become more productive and maybe it’s easier for our boss to feel we’re a valuable member of the team.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:
A senior executive with a critical role to fill, takes her leading candidate to lunch and tries, with little success, to get the candidate to open up about his experience and qualifications. Frustrated, the busy executive sets her salad aside and proposes a specific and highly complex situation to the candidate. Then she asks him, “Now what would you do?”
The candidate hesitates, then, looking the executive straight in the eye, says, “Are you going to eat all of those tomatoes?”
(Feel free to share a better joke with me, and have a great weekend!)