The series was based on my 7 Humor Habits Program, published in my book, Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World: The 7 Humor Habits Program. Starting January 23, these broadcasts first discussed the physical health and coping benefits offered by humor, and then (starting February 10) began showing how to build the key Humor Habits required to begin to use humor to cope with the stress in YOUR life.

If You HAVE been Following the Broadcasts over the Past 3 Months

If you’ve been actively engaged in listening to the live radio broadcasts on improving your sense of humor over the past 3 months, and took the Sense of Humor test at the start of the broadcasts, it is now time to see just how much progress you’ve made in improving your sense of humor. So take the Sense of Humor test again now. (You’ll find it in the February 3, 2012 article at this website under “Radio Humor Training Exercises.” Click on “older posts” at the bottom of the page.) Remember, the research suggests that the gains you make in completing the 7HHP are directly related to the time and effort you put into cultivating the Humor Habits. We’ve shown you the path, but actively engaging your sense of humor—doing the exercises I’ve suggested—is the key to successfully using humor to cope and boosting your daily happiness in life.

If you HAVE NOT been Following the Broadcasts over the Past 3 Months

Archives of all 13 humor radio broadcasts are (or soon will be) available so that you can use them at any point when you’re ready to do so. So if you have just discovered these broadcasts, go back to the archives (just click on the radio on the Home Page of this website) and listen to them in sequence from the beginning. If you want to use the broadcasts to actually begin working on your sense of humor, also see the weekly article here at LaughterRemedy.com (under “Radio Humor Training Exercises”) that correspond to the date of the archived radio broadcast. Of course, you should also take the Sense of Humor Test before beginning the program.

To achieve the maximal gains, get a copy of Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World and follow the full Humor Training Program provided there.

What does the Research Show Regarding the Impact of this Humor Training Program?

I’ve said quite a few times over the past several months that the exciting thing about this Humor Training Program is that it works! Tests of the 7 Humor Habits Program have been completed in the USA, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Australia and positive outcomes have been consistently reported.  With a couple of exceptions, these studies were conducted by researchers in university setting with proper control groups.  IF you would like to receive a copy (via e-mail) of the actual research report from one of these studies (the one from Australia), just e-mail me with a request for it.  If you’re not used to reading research articles, it will be a tough read, but you’ll get a good sense of just how rigorously and carefully this program has been tested.

Here is a summary of the evidence obtained so far on the 7 Humor Habits Program.  All of this research is discussed (references included) in the Appendix of Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World.  Remember, that these findings are based on participants going through the Program on a systematic basis, as outlined in the manual for the Program.  If you mainly listened to the radio broadcasts, but did not actively engage yourself in doing the exercises suggested to build the key Humor Habits, your gains can be expected to be reduced.

However, IT’S NOT TOO LATE TOO GET YOUR OWN COPY OF THE BOOK CONTAINING THE PROGRAM SO THAT YOU CAN GET THIS FULL LIST OF BENEFITS YOURSELF.

Research-Documented Impact of the 7 Humor Habits Program

1)   Improved scores on McGhee’s Sense of Humor Test

2)   Improved scores on other measures of using humor to cope

3)   Improved ability to cope with life stress

4)   Stronger playful attitude

5)   Increased positive mood, optimism, life satisfaction and “trait cheerfulness”

6)   Increased perceived control over one’s emotional state (the ability to control one’s emotional state—and the emotions of others if you’re a manager/boss—a key part of emotional intelligence)

7)   Reduced stress

8)   Reduced depression

9)   Reduced anxiety

It is very clear that your sense of humor is a powerful tool for boosting your emotional resilience.  This is your biological heritage.  If you’re not using this tool effectively in your own life, the 7 Humor Habits Program shows you the path for learning to do so.  So I hope you’ll join with the many others who have been learning to lighten up in their daily life.

Remember, “They who laugh, last!”  Have fun as you go through the Program.  Be sure to have a partner go through it with you if you can.  People who do this make greater gains.

Copyright owned by Paul McGhee.  This article may not be reproduced without written permission granted by Paul McGhee.

“Were it not for my little jokes, I could not bear the burdens of this office.”   (Abraham Lincoln)

“I have seen what a laugh can do.  It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.”  (Bob Hope)

There is great wisdom in these words from one of this country’s greatest Presidents and comedy performers.  There is now an enormous amount of research (discussed in my book, Humor: The Lighter Path to Resilience and Health) that documents the power of humor to help cope with the most difficult burdens in our daily lives.  Examples in natural disasters also bear out many people’s ability to laugh in the midst of tragedy.  Why is it that some people joke about the tornados or hurricanes that have destroyed their homes?

“Compact Car.”  (Sign on a car flattened by a tree following a tornado.)

“House for Sale.  Half Off.”  (Sign in front of what was left of a house following a California mud slide.)

“House for Sale.  Some assembly required.”  (Sign in front of a house after a hurricane.)

Why do nurses, doctors, police, firemen and others who work regularly in situations that exposed them to death and dying have such a strong (and sometimes “sick”) sense of humor?  Because they learn that they could emotionally survive the demands of their jobs otherwise.  They know from personal experience the power of humor to help them cope.

There’s just one problem with all of this evidence (from research, as well as personal experience) that our sense of humor is such a powerful coping tool; most of us find that our sense of humor abandons us right when we need it the most—when we’re under stress!  It doesn’t matter where this stress comes from.  These days, most of us are under more stress because of the sour economy, the rising cost of health care, uncertainty about our jobs, and more.  If you’re lucky enough to still have a job, it’s almost certain that there’s greater demands imposed on you in your work than there used to be.

So how do you go about keeping your sense of humor when you’re having your personal version of a bad day?  If you’ve been making the effort to do the Habit-building humor exercises and activities suggested in both these articles and on the radio (the archives of those early broadcasts are now accessible), you’ve already build up the basic humor habits required to use humor to cope with stress.  So the key now is to just KEEP DOING THE SAME THINGS YOU’VE BEEN DOING . . . even when you’re having a bad day.

The basic rationale for this entire Humor Training Program is to build up key Humor Habits on your good days—when you’re not under stress—and then focus on doing the same things on the tough days.  Two additional specific suggestions are provided here to get you started building this Habit.  See Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World for more guidelines for reaping the full benefits of this final week of the 7 Humor Habits Program.

How to Build the Habit of Using Humor to Cope

1. Start with common/predictable stressors that often come up on your job or elsewhere in your daily life.

It’s hard to keep your sense of humor under stress because stress generates tension, anxiety, anger, or depression within you—all of which are incompatible with the frame of mind where humor thrives.  So have a planned light response of some kind to fall back on when the stressful situation comes up.  Put up a reminder (on your desk, your refrigerator at home, etc.) in a place where you’re sure to see it when the tough situation comes up.  This reminder could be your favorite cartoon (especially one which draws attention to the source of stress—e.g., a Dilbert cartoon related to some aspect of your job), a pair of Groucho glasses, the simple words “OK, what’s funny about this?” or anything else that reminds you of the specific funny thing you planned in advance to do or say.

2. Look for a light side of stressful situations in your past.

It’s always easier to see the funny side of things the next day or week.  We’re not so caught up in the stress of the moment, so we can distance ourselves from the situation and see a way in which it really was funny.  You may even have said to yourself at some point in the past, “Some day we’ll look back at this and laugh.”  Why wait!

3. Look for a light side of others’ problems.

Again, this is easier because you can see the stress the other person, but it doesn’t affect you personally.  This is a perfect opportunity to practice thinking what funny remark you could make if it were you.  By doing this with others’ problems, you’ll soon build up the ability to do it with your own problems.  The key here is to not tell the other person how funny the situation is—if only they could see it.  Keep you funny insights to yourself.  Of course, it’s good practice to share them with others later on.

[Note: If you are new to this website or to my series of radio broadcasts on improving your sense of humor, go back to the February 10 article under “Radio Humor Training Exercises” and to the February 10 radio broadcast (just click on the radio).  You should pursue the suggestions made in this article only after reading the other articles.]

Copyright owned by Paul McGhee.  This article may not be reproduced without written permission granted by Paul McGhee.

“You don’t grow up until you have your first good laugh at yourself.”  (Eleanor Roosevelt)

There is great wisdom in these words of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wife.  But why is it so difficult to laugh at your own mistakes, blunders and awkward moments?  You’ll recall from earlier articles and radio broadcasts on the 7 Humor Habits Program that I’ve consistently emphasized of a playful frame of mind for enjoying and initiating any kind of humor.

Let’s say there’s a special project that you’ve been working on for the past three months.  The final report is due today.  The report (in special binding) is sitting on your desk as you sit to talk about the report with a colleague.  You offer her a cup of coffee as you discuss anything that might have been left out.  You make the mistake of handing it to her right above the report.  The cup slips out of her hand . . . and you know the rest!

So how do you react in this kind of situation?  Do you get all bent out of shape emotionally and react as if it’s the worst crisis you’ve ever been in?  Or do you quickly see the absurdity of the timing of this (realizing that you’ve never once spilled coffee on the job before), have a chuckle at it and move on to getting another copy printed?

You’ve probably seen different people have each of these reactions to situations like this.  Both are in a serious frame of mind at the moment the big blunder occurs, but one person goes into full crisis mode like the world is about to end while the other initially reacts in disbelief but quickly reframes it as a funny situation.  One is able to immediately access the playful frame of mind required for humor, while the other cannot.  One feels embarrassed and inadequate while the other laughs it off and moves on.

If you’ve been cultivating all the Humor Habits we’ve discussed for the past two months both on the radio broadcasts and here at LaughterRemedy.com, you’re much more likely to react like the second person.  You will quickly see the craziness of the timing of this spill.  And having a good laugh at it leaves you in the best frame of mind to moving on to taking steps to resolve the problem (doing whatever is necessary to get another quality copy printed).

So How Can You Get Better at Laughing at Yourself?

My book, Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World: The 7 Humor Habits Program spells out the full program for strengthening this important Humor Habit, but here are four key things to get you moving in the right direction.  The general strategy is to take some key preliminary steps that enable you to gradually ease into being able to lighten up about your sensitive zones.

1) Make a list of your “sensitive areas” and things you don’t like about yourself.

We all have are sensitive areas.  It may be your weight, your pointy nose, the fact that you’re a slow reader, etc.  In my case, I was really skinny in high school and was very sensitive about my skinny appearance.  It was certainly hard to lighten up about it at the time.  But you’ll find that just making a list of these, putting them “up front” in your consciousness and admitting to yourself that you’re sensitive about them actually takes you that first step down the road toward being able to lighten up about them.

2) Share something from the list with someone else every day for a week or so. 

Don’t try to make it funny; just tell people that it’s a sensitive topic of you, and that you’re trying to learn to lighten up about it.  Alcoholics Anonymous learned long ago that there’s real power in saying publicly, “My name is Paul McGhee and I’m an alcoholic.”  This is the first step to the long road of overcoming your addiction to alcohol.  Similarly, just admitting to others the things you are personally very sensitive about is the first step toward lightening up about them.  This puts you one step closer to being able to laugh at the awkward or embarrassing things that happen related to those sensitize zones.

3) Learn a joke or two poking fun at your sensitive zones. 

This further eases you into being able to lighten up about them spontaneously when embarrassing incidents related to them occur.  For example, if you’re very self-conscious and embarrassed about your memory, which seems to not be as good as it use to be, you might consider a joke like this:

There’s this retired couple who are both feeling that their memory is getting worse.  They’re watching television and when a commercial comes on, the wife says, “Honey, I’m going to get some ice cream.  Do you want some?”  “Oh, I’d love some,” he says, “but you’d better write it down; you might forget.”  She says, “Oh, I can certainly remember that!”  Well, she’s gone for quite a while, and when she finally comes back she gives him a plate of eggs.  He looks at the eggs and looks up at her and says, “You see, I told you you’d forget the toast!”

4) Have a “generic” planned funny response ready for awkward or embarrassing incidents. 

This could include responses like “OK, we have a situation here; beam me up Scotty” (from the old Star Trek show), starting to talk like Porky Pig or Daffy Duck as you apologize for your blunder, etc.  Anything at all that is a light response can work here.  By thinking in advance of something you’re comfortable with, you’ll be able to rise to the occasion and joke about it even though you’re terribly embarrassed.  And remember, it is this embarrassment that keeps you from spontaneously coming up with a joking remark.  This is the very reason the 7 Humor Habits Program invites you to practice all of the key Humor Habits on the good days when everything is upbeat and positive.  That’s what gives you the ability to do this in the most awkward of circumstances.

“From there to here and here to there, funny things are everywhere.”     (Dr. Seuss)

Last week’s broadcast and accompanying article at this website offered guidelines for learning to create your own spontaneous puns and other verbal humor.  A separate article offered guidelines to help non-native speakers of English improve their skills at creating verbal humor in English.

The Fifth Humor Habit is to start actively looking for the funny things going on in YOUR everyday life.  People often tell me, “If I had you life, I’d be laughing too; nothing funny every happens in my life!”  I’m convinced that this is not true.  The people who say this simply have not cultivated the habit of looking for the unexpected, bizarre, incongruous or ironic things that happen to all of us from time to time.  For example, how could I not laugh when I saw the sign in front of a Presbyterian Church in New Jersey (announcing the title of the sermon for the upcoming week), which said

Sermon at 9 a.m. – Jesus walks on water,

Sermon at 11 a.m. – Searching for Jesus

How could I not laugh when I saw a guy backing up in a traffic circle because he missed his turn?  I mean, it’s a circle, right?  It’s pretty easy to just go around again.  Even Public Television offers opportunities for a chuckle.  A few years ago a PBS broadcast on the history of psychiatric approaches to treating “Madness” ended with “Madness is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the support of viewers like you.”

Seeing the Funny Stuff vs. Sharing it with Others

The goal of this Humor Habit is to learn to see the funny side of things as they are happening.  (Reminder: As we noted in connection with telling long stories in connection with the Fourth Humor Habit, the key thing to remember when you share with others the humor you encounter is to not drag it out and make it a “shaggy dog” story.  Just say the key parts that make it funny . . . and also remember that sometimes “you had to be there,” and no matter how you describe it, it won’t be as funny as it was to you at the time.

The boxer Evander Hollyfield’s trainer made the following statement years ago about an upcoming fight with Mike Tyson: “It’s not a matter of life and death; it’s more important than that.”

So How do You Get Started Noticing the Funny Things?

The full set of guidelines for cultivating the ability to find the funny stuff in your life is provided in Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World: The 7 Humor Habits Program.  However, here are some basic strategies to get you started.

1) Start reflecting about what it means to have a humorous perspective on life.  Talk to your friends and colleagues about what this means.  These conversations alone will help sensitize you to seeing the funny stuff that’s been there all along.

2) Set yourself a specific goal of finding FIVE funny things every day for the next week (or two).  If I were to pay you $500 for every funny thing you noticed in the day, you know you’d find plenty of things to laugh at—because you’re be actively looking for them.  They’re there waiting for you.  Just put looking for them on the “front burner” for one week and see what happens.

3) Look for humor in signs, ads and newspaper headlines.

“Dog for sale.  Eats anything.  Especially fond of children.”

“Bras half off.”  (Sale sign in department store.)

“We skid you not.”  (In an ad for tires.)

“Deluxe Dry Cleaners.  25 years at the same spot.”  (Sign in front of the store.)

“A recent report indicated that some college graduates cannot read or right.”  (Newspaper editorial.)

4) Pretend you’re Alan Funt (of Candid Camera fame).  Steve Allen once said, “Nothing is funnier than the unintended humor of reality.”   Alan Funt kept a generation laughing every week by creating crazy, unexpected situations in order to watch people’s reactions to them.  The humor in that case came from watching the innocent onlooker’s reactions to these situations.  But there are also real weird, nonsensical things that come up in your own life.  So spend a week pretending that Alan Funt has set these situations up for you to enjoy.  Your job is to just find them.

5) Write down the essence of the funny thing that happened as soon as you can.  Writing it down strengthens the habit of noticing it.

Copyright owned by Paul McGhee.  This article may not be reproduced without written permission granted by Paul McGhee.

When I provide programs on improving your sense of humor in the English language to an international audience, there is always an obstacle with the 4^th Humor Habit because I can only demonstrate it in English.  Since playing with the language system itself is always the last thing mastered when learning a second language, my approach is to use English word play examples as a model and then ask people in my audience who are fluent in two languages to think of an analogous word-play joke in the other language (e.g., German or Swedish).  This helps communicate what needs to be done to improve this part of one’s sense of humor in the audience’s own native language.

The Impact of Using English as the International Language for Business upon YOUR Sense of Humor

As English increasingly became the international language used in connection with the increasing globalization of all kinds of business, it became very clear to me that a tool was needed to help employees of international companies develop a key skill that has almost always been lacking—the ability to understand and create jokes in English.  I have seen endless numbers of international employees (for whom English is a second language) who have achieved a high level of mastery of English and can meet all of the basics demands of communication required for their job—except one!

What is lacking is the ability to engage in informal “bantering” and joking around within English.  This leads them to be judged as very serious and formal people—even though they may not be like this at all when speaking their native language.  I have discovered that two tools—which I actually initially developed for native English speakers—turn out to be especially effective in building the (language-based) humor skills of noon0native speakers of English.

The Tools Non-Native English Speakers Need to Build English Verbal Humor Skills

These tools are presented in my books, Stumble Bees and Pelephones and Small Medium at Large.  (See “Books by Dr. McGhee” for ordering information.)  Each book is designed to build skills at playing with the English Language.  The former was actually written for seven- to eleven-year-olds, while the latter was written for teenagers and adults.  After writing the book for children, I recalled that during my years living in Paris, puns in French (jeux de mots) were actually much funnier to me than the same kind of pun in English.  My own early research with children established that the amount of mental challenge required to “get” a joke played an important role in determining its funniness.  Jokes are funniest (other things being equal) when they’re neither too easy nor too difficult to understand—somewhere in the middle, so that they pose a bit of a mental challenge to understand.  Puns in your native language aren’t very funny, because they’re just too easy to get; we process them too quickly.  Put the same kind of joke into your second language and it becomes funnier because you have to work just a bit harder to get it.

So if you are a non-native speaker of English, you can expect the kinds of puns you find in children’s humor to be funnier than they would be in your native language.  This is important, because I have learned that this is exactly where you need to begin to boost your ability to play with the language system in English.  Among adults who have English as a second language, and who have used each of these two books to build their verbal humor skills, the outcome is always better when the children’s humor book is used first.

Just as you learned to enjoy and create basic puns in your native language before moving on to more sophisticated forms of verbal humor, learning to create the same kind of basic puns in English (as a second language) is the stepping stone you need to then move on to building skills at other kinds of (adult) verbal humor in English.  A few examples from each book are provided below to show you how this program works.

The biggest obstacle with any new language and culture is having the knowledge required to get the joke.  These two books presume that you do have the required knowledge.  In some cases, however, this will not be true for you; you will lack a key piece of information required to get the joke.  But even when you DO have the knowledge needed to understand the punch line, the problem is that you don’t have the HABIT IN ENGLISH of quickly moving back and forth in your mind between the two meanings of the key word that forms the pun (or other ambiguous phrase).  What Stumble Bees and Pelephones does for you is build that habit is quickly accessing both related meanings of the key word or phrase.  And, quite simply, the more often you do this with many different words and phrases, the more accustomed your brain gets to accessing the necessary information in English.

Completing the children’s jokes and riddles prepares you to then move on to the adult-level jokes in Small Medium at Large.  After completing the 500 jokes in that book, you’ll be well on your way to spontaneously playing with the English language.  You will find yourself actually thinking of puns and coming up with other types of verbal humor in the midst of spontaneous conversations in English.

Building Skills at Playing with English: The Basic Approach

The basic concept behind the programs for developing both children’s and adults verbal humor skills is the same; namely leaving out a key word or phrase in the punch line of a joke and then providing one or more clues to get you thinking in the right direction without giving you’re the answer.

For the children’s riddles and jokes, three clues are given, getting you a little closer with each clue to the “ah ha” insight that occurs when you understand the joke (which, in turn, leads to the “ha ha”).  For this to work as a skill-building tool, you must be sure to cover up the next clue in each case so that you are obliged to search your mind anew with each clue.  This helps develop the quick and automatic brain search of the information you already have in your head.  This is well developed and happens automatically in your native language, but must be actively cultivated in English.

For the adult jokes in Small Medium at Large, only one clue is give to get you thinking in the right direction.  For both the children’s and adult jokes, it is essential to always make the effort to think of a joking answer yourself before checking the joking answer provided at the end of the book.

Children’s Jokes and Riddles

[Remember, these are jokes for seven- to nine-year-olds.  Don’t worry about how funny they are to you.  The goal here is to build the mental habit of having all the extra meanings associated with an English word quickly pop into your mind.  Doing several hundred of these does just that.  For the jokes below, be sure to cover the answer to # 2 when you check the answer for #1, etc.]

1. (A simple kids’ joke)  What boats can you always buy at a reduced price?  _____ boats.  (Answers to all jokes are given below.)

First clue: These boats have no motor.

Second clue: What do you call it when a store lowers its price for an item?

Third clue: These boats are powered by the wind.

2. (A medium-difficulty kids’ joke)  Mary: “You’ve had a headache all day.  You should take something for it.”

John: “OK, I’ll take ______.”

First clue: It’s not a medicine.

Second clue: Focus on an extra meaning of the word “take.”

Third clue: How much is it worth?

3. (A more complex kids’ joke)  There was a man who loved only two things in life, baseball and poetry.  But he was terrible at both.  No matter how hard he tried, he went from _____ to _____.

First clue: If you understand baseball, use the first word to swing.

Second clue: The first word is also a flying mammal.

Third clue: The second word is another word for poetry. 

Adult Jokes

4. (An easier adult joke)  Why are surgeons funnier than other doctors?  Because they keep their patients __________.

Clue: Another way to say they keep their patients laughing.  (This joke is very culture-bound.)

5. An elderly woman, assumed to be unconscious, is wheeled into the emergency room.  The paramedic says, “She’s critical!”  The woman opens her eyes and says, “_________!  __________!”

Clue: How might she react to the other meaning of “critical?”

Answers to jokes:

1. Sail (sale)
2. $20 (or any other amount of money)
3. bat / verse (a familiar phrase in English is to go “from bad to worse”)
4. in stitches
5. I am not!  You’re doing fine!

Final reminder: If you get either of these two books, be sure to use an index card (or something similar) to cover the item you’ll be working on next.  Otherwise, you’ll accidentally see the answer to the next joke, and this will rob you of the chance to use it as a skill-building exercise.

Copyright owned by Paul McGhee.  This article may not be reproduced without written permission granted by Paul McGhee.

Last week’s broadcast offered guidelines for becoming a better joke teller.  This is an important skill to learn, but I am convinced that developing your ability to spontaneously create your own jokes or other forms of verbal humor is much more important than joke telling—at least in terms of the health and resilience-boosting benefits associated with humor.  The available research does not yet allow for a clear conclusion here, but my own educated guess is that the more you actively use your sense of humor, instead of just telling and re-telling memorized jokes, the greater the health and happiness-inducing benefits you’ll receive.

I’ve had many people tell me things like, “I’m just not quick enough to come up with my own jokes on the spot” or “I always get the double meaning when I hear a joke, but I can never think of them on my own” or  “I think you’re just born with that or you’re not.”  In fact, the people who you think must have been born with it have been doing it so long that it’s become built into the way they think.  They’ve just been cultivating the habit for a long time.  So you need to know that it’s a skill you can cultivate too, and it doesn’t take that long to build the habit of spontaneously playing with language.

Special Note for Non-Native Speakers of English

Playing with the language system itself is one of the last things you learn in learning a second language.  Since English has become the international language for most businesses across the entire planet, it has become important for non-native English speakers to somehow improve their ability to understand and create their own puns and other verbal jokes in English.  I’ve written a special article (also dated March 30, 2012) at this website to show these individuals how to use the two books referred to in this article to build this skill.  The impact of completing these exercises on their ability to finally “get”—and even create their own—jokes in English is striking.  See that article for details.

Building the Verbal Humor Habit

So how do you get past the telling of memorized jokes and stories to the point where you can create your own jokes spontaneously when talking to others?  I’ve learned that what works best is to start out with the most fundamental form of verbal humor—the form that we got so excited about when we were kids.  And that, of course, is the simple pun.

Everybody knows that we generally groan at puns.  And the reason we groan is that most puns are basically elementary school kids’ humor.  Kids first begin to understand puns at six of seven years of age (although they start telling them before they understand them; see my articles on children’s humor at this website for a discussion of this).  The important thing to realize here is that even though we generally don’t find puns very funny (because they are just too easy to understand), it is much more difficult to create your own pun than it is to understand it when someone else says it.  So the starting point for this critical component of the 4^th Humor Habit is to strengthen your ability to create your own puns.

The First Tool: Starting with Children’s Jokes

I have developed specific tools to systematically build your ability to generate your own spontaneous puns and other verbal humor.  For those who have never been spontaneous punsters, I start out by using elementary school children’s jokes and riddles to build a strong foundation habit of playing with word meanings.  The tool for doing this is my book, Stumble Bees and Pelephones, which is full of examples of children’s jokes (based mainly on puns, but on other techniques, as well) with a key part of the punch line missing.  A series of clues is given to get you thinking in the right direction without giving you the answer.  By the time you do this 200-300 times, you begin to find double meanings of words (the key to getting the punch line) just popping into your mind automatically, with no real effort on your part.

Two examples from this book are given below to show you how this works.  The basic idea here is to look at the clues one at a time and use as few as possible to figure out the punch line.  If you just look at the answer without trying to figure it out on your own, it will not work as a skill-building tool.  Answer given below.

1. What happens to little canoes when they’re bad?  They get ________.  

First clue: It’s a kind of spanking.                

Second clue: Find another word for “oar.”

2. If your dog is not allowed in the house, where does she have to stay?  In the ________ lot.

First clue: What do dogs do when they communicate or get scared or angry?

Second clue: It sounds like “marking.”

Third clue: You put your car in this lot.

These are admittedly not very funny to adults.  But that’s not the goal here.  The goal is to BUILD THE HAABIT OF QUICKLY THINKING OF EXTRA MEANINGS OF WORDS that can enable you to turn it into a joke right at the moment you think of it.  Even though these are kids’ jokes, I’ve learned over the years that going through this process with several hundred simple riddles and jokes like this lays a solid foundation for doing the same thing at a more sophisticated level with adult jokes.

The Second Tool: Adult Jokes

So after people improve their ability to generate funny punch lines with these kids’ jokes, they then move on to doing the same kind of thing with adult jokes.  My book, Small Medium at Large, contains over 500 jokes with a key part of the punch line missing.  In this case, however, only one clue is given.  A broad range of joking techniques is represented in the book, so by the time you’ve gone through the entire book, the habit of creating your own punch line becomes pretty firmly entrenched.  The skills generated in doing this over 500 times are then consolidated by letting the book sit for a couple of months and then going through it again.  You will have forgotten the answers to many of the jokes, and using the clue a second time to come up with the answer further strengthen the habit.

Here is an example from this book.

3. As two politicians discuss political strategies, the democrat says, “Whenever I take a cab, I give the driver a large tip and say, ‘Vote Democrat!’”  The republican says, “I have a similar approach.  Whenever I take a cab, I ________________ and say, ‘Vote Democrat!’”

Clue: Remember, this is a republican talking, so if he also says “Vote Democrat,” is he really doing the same thing with the cab driver?

Remember that in jokes like this, a good joke teller always switches the identities of the key characteristics in the joke depending on who will be hearing the joke.

Exercises to Build Spontaneous Verbal Humor Skills

In addition to working to generate your own punch line for all the jokes contained in the two books mentioned above, the following activities will further build your ability to use different joking techniques spontaneously.  Make an effort to do them as often as possible within the next week or two to maximize your benefits with this Humor Habit.

1.  Look for ambiguity in everyday conversations.

Certain words in many of our everyday conversations are potentially ambiguous.  For example if I invite you to my house for a holiday turkey dinner and I’m preparing ever tying in the kitchen, I might say to you at some point, “Ok the turkey is ready to eat.”  You have a ready-made opportunity for a joking remark.  I’m purposefully not providing possible joking comments you might make, but think of a couple on your own.

The context almost always makes the intended meaning of such statements clear, but you can make a joke out of these situations if you develop the habit of seeing the ambiguity as the word is spoken.  Putting this on the “front burner” for a week or so builds the habit of seeing such ambiguity automatically, with no effort on your part.

2.  Look for ambiguity on public signs and newspaper headlines.

Surely you’ve seen the plumbers’ trucks that say, “A flush is better than a full house” or “We’re #1 in the #2 business.”  Or perhaps you’ve seen “Trees can break wind” as a newspaper headline.  Many businesses and newspapers purposefully use funny ambiguous words to get you to pay attention to them.  Start actively looking for these when you’re driving or reading your newspaper.  Also read the menu of your favorite ethnic restaurant when the restaurant owners came from a country where English was not their native language.

See the manual for the 7 Humor Habits Program (contained in Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World) for the full set of activities designed to strengthen this Humor Habit.

Joke Answers: 1 = paddled.            2 = barking.         3. don’t give a tip at all.

Copyright owned by Paul McGhee.  This article may not be reproduced without written permission granted by Paul McGhee.

A four-year-old girl got very sick after swallowing a nickel, two dimes and three pennies.  The doctors treated her for weeks, but there was no ______.  [Answer given at end of the article.  Clue: she didn’t improve.]

This simple joke is just one among over 500 (more difficult) jokes presented in my book Small Medium at Large.  The key part of the punch line is missing so that you use the available information to generate your own funny answer.  Doing this repeatedly BUILDS YOUR SKILL at thinking of your own spontaneous jokes.  If you need some help, the clue gets you started thinking in the right direction without giving you the answer.  After doing this several hundred times, you gradually build the habit of having different kinds of joke techniques pop into your head with no effort at all.  The important thing at this point is to see that YOU CAN DEVELOP THIS SKILL.  It just takes practice, and Small Medium at Large gives you that practice.

The ultimate goal of the Fourth Humor Habit is to be able to create your own jokes or other verbal humor spontaneously in the midst of any conversation.  But what I’ve learned works best to get you to that point is to first spend a week or so just focusing on learning, remembering (especially the punch line!) and telling jokes.  This is especially true if you’ve never been much of a joke teller.  So the March 23 radio broadcast and article here focused only on telling and remembering jokes.

A few basic joke-telling guidelines are offered here.  You’ll find a full list and a detailed discussion of this Humor Habit in my book, Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World: The 7 Humor Habits Program.

Remembering Jokes

How many times have you heard people say, I don’t know what it is, I just can’t remember jokes.  Luckily, this is not a permanent condition.  Here are some basic starting ideas to start boosting you memory of jokes now.

1) Make sure you think it’s funny.  You’re much more likely to forget a joke that wasn’t funny to begin with (and why would you want to retell it anyway?).

2) Repeat the joke to the person who just told it to you (e.g., “Wait let’s see if I’ve got it; there’s a rabbi, a preacher and a priest who . . .”).  Repeating it immediately helps put it into long-term memory.  And the person who just told it to you will correct you if you get it wrong.

3) Write down the punch line and a few basic features of the joke at your first opportunity.  This helps put it into long-term memory.

Following these and other guidelines provided in my book will help you avoid the plight of the young preacher in the following story.

There’s this older and younger preacher who are having a conversation about preaching, and the older guy’s giving him some ad vice.  He says, “Some days, you’ll notice some people nodding off in the middle of your sermon.  But I’ve learned the perfect thing to do when that happens.  I just lean over the pulpit and say, ‘Last night, I held a woman in my arms who was not my wife!’  And that really perks them up.  Then I hesitate a bit and say, ‘It was my dear, sweet mother.’”

The young preacher says, “That’s great.  Maybe I can use that some time.”  And sure enough, during his very first sermon, he looks out at his congregation and notices a lot of people nodding off on him.  He remembered what the old preacher told him, so he stood up tall behind the pulpit and said, “Last night I held in my arms a man who was not my wife.”  Then he hesitated and finally said, “But I can’t remember who she was.”

In this case, forgetting the joke is what makes it work.  But when you forget a key part of one, it won’t be funny.  So be sure you’ve got the joke memorized before trying to tell it.

Telling Jokes

1) Cardinal rule: don’t ever tell jokes putting down another racial, ethnic or other group in the presence of people you don’t know.  You’re sure to offend someone. You may be able to ease up on this rule in the presence of people who know you well–and know that the joke does not reflect your true feelings about the “butt” of the joke.

2) If you must tell put-down jokes, poke fun at yourself.

3) Know your audience. You’ll often want to change key details in the joke to make them more salient to the person(s) you’re speaking to.

4) Be sure you can repeat the joke in your own mind before trying to tell it to someone else.

5) Don’t laugh at your own joke (especially in advance).

6) Don’t announce, “I’m not very good at telling jokes, but here goes . . .”

7) Don’t drag it out.  Remember, brevity is the soul of wit.

Exercises to Build-Joke-Telling Habits and Skills

1) Learn and tell one new joke each day.  Rehearse it and then tell the same joke to as many people as you can.

2) Watch DVDs of you favorite comedians.  Note as many details as you can about their delivery and copy their style.  Be on the look out for a style of delivery that works for you.

3) By the end of a week or two, make it a point to tell all your jokes to good friends (anyone who will be supportive—and who you think has a good sense of humor).  Ask for their feedback on how you could do better.  Then move on to telling them to others.

Copy right owned by Paul McGhee.  This article may not be reproduced without written permission granted by Paul McGhee.  For more details on joke telling, see the 7 Humor Habits book.

Answer to joke: “change.”

Laughter is the Best Medicine.

As noted in last week’s article, you’ve probably heard this phrase many times in your life.  I have no idea how long people have been saying it, but it seems to go back nearly a century in the USA.  Readers Digest, a longstanding series of published anthologies of articles for the general public, included a humor section for many decades throughout the 20^th century with this very heading.

The fact that you’re reading this article and listening to my ongoing radio shows on improving your sense of humor means that you’re probably already aware of the mushrooming growth of Laughter Clubs around the world these days.  We all know how to laugh, of course—it is our biological heritage, just as humor is.  But many of us are not good laughers because of our temperament.  If you’re not very emotionally expressive in general, you’re probably a more inhibited laughter, as well.

Also, many of us have lost our ability to have a real let-go belly laugh because of the difficult challenges we face in our daily lives.  Stress robs most of us of the ability to both find humor in our daily life and have a good laugh at some point in the day.  So laughter clubs get people together in (generally small) groups and cultivate the practice of “laughing for no reason.”

Chances are pretty good that there is some kind of laughter group meeting near where you live.  Try Googling “Laughter Clubs” in combination with your geographical area to see if one is meeting near you.  This will provide a powerful ally in learning to laugh more often and with a real hearty belly laugh.

Laughter Clubs vs. Laughing in Response to Humor

This is a good time to point out the difference between what laughter clubs offer and the benefits of the 7 Humor Habits Program that is the focus of this radio broadcast series.  Dr. Madan Kataria (in India) and laughter yoga proponents argue that there is real power in “laughing for no reason.”  That is, you can boost your mood and energy level, and feel better, by just forcing yourself to laugh—even if there’s nothing to laugh at when you first start.  Since Laughter Clubs do this in the presence of others, the social contagion of laughter soon takes over and the laughter begins to take on “a life of its own.”  It stops feeling artificial (for many, but not all participants) and becomes a genuine laughter experience at that point.

From my own vantage point, this shared laughter experience also quickly puts people in a more playful mood—which, as we’ve already seen is the key prerequisite for finding humor in a situation.  So the laughter causes a shift out of a serious mood into a more playful one, and at that point many people start finding genuinely funny things (e.g., the faces of the other laughers, or the unexpected funny things they start doing while laughing).  So this laughter, that starts out as forced laughter, may well activate the frame of mind where genuine humor lives—and this is one of the main goals of the 7HHP training.

A limitation of the Laughter Club approach is that—as you know from your own experience—it is not always appropriate to just start out laughing for no reason in many situations in your daily life.  You will get some strange reaction if you start out with laughter yoga’s familiar “Ho-ho, ha-ha-ha . . . ho-ho, ha-ha-ha.”  This will be especially awkward in many stressful situations.

But there are never any limitations to the social appropriateness of your thoughts.  There will never be any obstacles preventing you from seeing the absurdity, incongruity or any other funny aspect of the situation.  The key goal of the 7HHP is to cultivate your sense of humor to the point that the habit of finding the funny side of things is developed to the point that you can see a light side of things in the worst of situations.

There is virtually no research on the impact of “laughing for no reason” on health and well being at this point, but once this research is completed, I do expect it to show that laughter yoga exercises do a wonderful job of helping people manage their mood and keep a more positive focus in their daily life.  There is every reason to believe that when you combine humor with laughter—so that the laughter is in response to your mind’s ability to find things that are really funny to you—the benefits of laughter will be all the greater.

And remember, we have decades of research documenting the extraordinary power of humor in helping people cope, as well as a rapidly mounting body of research documenting the health benefits of humor, so why not cultivate the whole enchilada—humor and laughter!

In the coming week, then, keep on looking for opportunities to exaggerate your laughter when you find something funny in your daily life.  The habit of laughing more often and more heartily will gradually emerge as you push the envelope and laugh harder and longer than you normally would.  After a couple weeks of this, a naturally stronger laugh will emerge.

For a more detailed and systematic guidelines for boosting this Humor Habit, see the manual for the 7 Humor Habits Program in my book, Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World.

Copy right owned by Paul McGhee.  This article may not be reproduced without written permission granted by Paul McGhee.

“What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul.”  (Yiddish proverb)

If you’re new to this website, read the earlier articles under “Radio Humor Training Exercises” and then come back to this one.

The March 2 broadcast focused on the Second Humor Habit—cultivating a stronger playful attitude in your life.  If you followed my suggestions following that program and spent as much time as possible engaged in so me kind of physical play activity during the past week, you are almost certain to have noticed two things: you were laughing more often than you usually do and were also finding more funny things popping up in your daily life.   This playful frame of mind is where you sense of humor lives and blossoms; so you want to keep that in mind as we move on to develop other Humor Habits.  That playful attitude is much more important than you might guess—don’t neglect it!

Now you may be thinking, “Why is laughter included as one of the 7 key Humor Habits?  We all know how to laugh.  And besides, I thought this was about humor, not laughter.”  The main reason for including laughter in this Humor Training Program is that the present state of research does not allow a clear determination of which/how much of the health and resilience-building benefits of humor come from the mental experience of humor vs. the physical act of laughter.

Some undoubtedly come from the act of laughter itself.  For example, we know that a good belly laugh triggers muscle relaxation (the #1 goal of all stress management techniques), is energizing and just makes us feel good/better (humor and laughter activate known dopamine-based reward or pleasure centers in the b rain).  And many of us are just not good belly laughers—either because of our temperament or because we just have difficulty expressing emotion in general.  But you CAN learn to be a good belly laugher!

Many Zen Buddhists believe that if you start the day off with a laugh, the rest of the day will be just fine.  A long standing tradition in many areas of India includes laughter exercises (often in the context of yoga).  Dr. Madan Kataria has carried this tradition to the rest of the word over the past 15 years in supporting the development of laughter yoga clubs.  In the USA, we have long heard the phrase, “Laughter is the best medicine.”

As with all of the other Humor Habits discussed here and on the radio show, only very general guidelines are offered here for improving your sense of humor.  To get the maximum benefits from the 7 Humor Habits Program, you may want to go through the program in a systematic fashion, as discussed in the manual for the program, Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World.

How to Become a Better Belly Laugher

The main idea here is to do whatever you need to do to get yourself laughing more than you typically do.

1. Seek out situations where other people are laughing (parties, comedy clubs, etc.) and force yourself to laugh harder and longer than you normally do.  You’ll feel uncomfortable in doing this at first, but it will gradually become more natural.  The artificial “forced” laughter will gradually (over a week or two) begin to merge into genuine laughter.
2. Consider checking out a laughter yoga club.  These are now all over the world, so you may find one in your community.
3. Remember, the main emphasis of the 7 Humor Habits Program is on humor.  My own belief is that the benefits to your overall health and well being are stronger when you combine the experience of humor with the act of laughter.  Laughter “for no reason” will give you some of these benefits, but your world of joy, happiness and fun open up much more strongly when you cultivate your biological heritage of humor—playing with your mind.

Reminder: If you haven’t already done so, take the Sense of Humor test discussed in the February 3 article.

For more detailed and systematic guidelines for boosting this Humor Habit, see the manual for the 7 Humor Habits Program in my book, Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World.

Copyright owned by Paul McGhee.  This article may not be reproduced without written permission granted by Dr. McGhee.

“Life is too serious to be taken seriously.” (Oscar Wilde)

Our Feb. 10 and Feb. 17 broadcasts (there was no Feb 24 broadcast) were devoted to the First Humor Habit in Dr. McGhee’s 7 Humor Habits Humor Training Program. To listen to the archives (posted within about a week of the initial broadcast) of these and other past shows click on the radio image at this website or go to www.americanseniorgazette.org and click on “Paul McGhee on Humor.” Weekly postings of skill-building exercises related to these broadcasts will appear here for the duration of the radio series (Feb 3-May 25). These articles offer general guidelines for what you need to be doing throughout the week to strengthen each Humor Habit. The full manual (with additional skill-building exercises and a detailed discussion of the 7 Humor Habits Program is published in Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World. Use that resource for maximal impact of the Training Program.

If you’ve just now become aware of the Radio Humor Training series, and would like to complete the training yourself, be sure to go back to earlier broadcasts and weekly articles on humor-building exercises posted here before starting the 7 Humor Habits Program. Research documents the effectiveness of the Program in boosting your sense of humor, but in order for it to work best for you, it is essential that you complete the Program in the order in which the 7 Humor Habits are presented (and spend a week or two on each Habit).

Playing with Your Mind is Your Biological Heritage

So why is such a strong emphasis placed on becoming a more playful person in general before actually working on creating or finding your own humor in daily life? The reason is that—although you’ve probably never thought about it this way—your sense of humor is really a form of play. It is mental play or play with ideas. We are all born with a general predisposition to play. It’s your biological heritage. The problem is that the daily hassles and stress in our lives gradually erode this heritage and a gradual loss of our sense of humor is the inevitable result.

If you have children of your own, you’ve seen this strong drive to play in your kids from the end of infancy all the way through the childhood years. Much of their play is physical, but it also shows an increasingly strong mental component as they get older. And while some of this mental play is pretend/make-believe, a lot of it is humor (see my book Understanding and Promoting the Development of Children’s Humor for a discussion of the nature of children’s humor).

Throughout my career as a researcher studying humor and a designer of tools for strengthening one’s sense of humor, I have observed that people’s own natural sense of humor re-emerges when they get fully back in touch with that playful approach to life they had when they were kids. So this Habit is much more important that you might guess. That is why you should spend the next week bringing out your inner playful self (which may well have been hiding within you for many years—just waiting for an invitation to come out again), and just observe the impact it has on your daily sense of humor.

Skill-Building Exercises for the Second Humor Habit

The main goal for the coming week is to put play and a playful outlook on life on the “front burner” whenever you can. Here are some general guidelines, but also use your own initiative to come up with things to do that are fun for you.

1. Make a list of things you have FUN doing and do a couple of things from that list every day.

2. Make it a special point to engage in physical activities that are fun. Don’t be afraid to let a little silliness come out when you’re playing. (Do this with friends so you won’t be self-conscious about it.)

3. Spend some time watching young children playing. See if you can re-capture that contagious playfulness that comes so easily to them.

For more detailed and systematic guidelines for mapping out the nature of your sense of humor, see the manual for the 7 Humor Habits Program in my book, Humor as Survival Training for a Stressed-Out World: The 7 Humor Habits Program.

Copyright owned by Paul McGhee. This article may not be reproduced without written permission granted by Dr. McGhee.