Have the Happiest Year of Your Life Part 4:
Don't Worry Be Happy – Your Health May Depend on it!

Change is Painful but Humor Can Help!

By Trina Hess, D.Ed. Author, Humorist Speaker

Everyone hates change. It's painful, unpleasant and not much fun. But if we look at change through the lens of humor, we can transform it into something tremendous and terrific. We can feel more in control over our lives and what happens to us.

Humor, laughter, smiling—they all help improve our health and well-being. They can be equally useful and powerful when we're going through transition situations like job changes, relationship changes, aging, and any surprise changes in our lives. The great news is that we can harness humor to heal our hurts, and make us a harbinger of a healthier harvest of happiness.

The benefits of humor aren't just to make us happier, though. There are specific physical responses that happen when we laugh. Our blood pressure lowers. Our breathing improves (once we stop laughing and catch our breath). Our resting heart rate slows, and we get an increase in killer T-cells. There are even chemical reactions that occur in the brain when we see, hear, or even anticipate something funny.

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?"

So why don't we use our humor skills to make our lives better, healthier, and happier? What stops us is our need to control. We want to control our image, and control what happens to us. We want to control the hurting and control how people think of us. During a transition or stressful situation, our need for control is intensified. During a transition, we feel our lives are out of our control, and we are unable to focus and make clear decisions.

But the only and best way to do this is, ironically, acceptance. Our best solution when we're in the deluge of despair is to loosen the reins and throw them off. We have to stop trying to control our transition situation, the pain it's causing us, and the perception others have of us. In my qualitative doctoral research on work transitions, control played a major role. What remedied this out-of-control feeling was humor, and the acceptance that characterizes humor. When participants laughed about their powerlessness, they felt less over-powered by their transition situation.

Paradoxically enough, if things are getting out-of-hand, if we will just let go, we can gain the upper hand! In my study, I found that humor gave people back their feeling of being in control of their lives. Not only that, but they gained a feeling of hope. Together, humor and hope propelled participants through their difficult transition, and cleared the way for purposeful decision-making.

Authors Nancy Schlossberg and Susan Porter Robinson in their book, "Going to Plan B: How you can cope, regroup, and start your life on a new path," suggest that coping implies a continuum of strategies, each one allowing us more room for hope. Humor can lead us toward hope by helping us to deflect our feelings of defeat. In addition, humor allows us to distance ourselves from the problem, enabling us to increase our self-confidence. Someone once said that everything is funny, given enough time.

Schlossberg and Robinson describe a four-part process for dealing with transitions. Humor enters in at the second, "easing", stage. Humor can not only ease us into the next phase of the transition process, it can also wake us up. For example, some therapists have found that humorous metaphors can drive home a point more effectively. Humor can help us acknowledge the futility of our situation and then seek effective solutions for ourselves.

Use it or Lose
One reason we don't utilize our natural and innate humor abilities is because humor has been hijacked by our culture. Either we are convinced humor has to be vulgar to be funny (witness any comedy club scene or Comedy Central special). Or, maybe worse, we are led to believe that all humor is supposed to be happy, healthy and healing. This leads us to think that if we aren't happy all the time, something is wrong with us. And so we put our humor skills in a corner until we feel happy enough to laugh and have fun.

We've got it all backwards! Humor is about the whole gamut of emotions. Humor draws on all our emotions because humor craves the truth. All our emotions are truthful, if we look honestly at them, and allow them out. Humor allows us that release. It lets the valve of negativity spew out its truth so that we can get on with our day. When we deny the unpleasant its expression in our lives, it finds an outlet in unhealthy ways. You kick the dog because you had a bad day at work. You scream at your family because they are in the vicinity.

The book, "The Positive Power of Negative Thinking", by Julie Norem, PhD, highlights a strategy that is useful for some people: imagining the worst-case scenario. From that imagining, we can devise coping strategies and form more effective plans. Humor can be part of that imagining. When we exaggerate beyond reality, we may not just laugh, but we can make better and more detailed plans.

Unfortunately, we resist the urge to imagine the worst because we have been taught that negativity is the culprit of all our displeasure. The real villain, though, is anxiety. Humor has the power to erase that anxiety and open the way for positive and happy feelings to emerge and thrive. It all comes back to telling your truth, your whole truth, both good and bad. And then settle into your acceptance and watch your stress subside.

Stress and Playing Second Fiddle
Happiness eludes us today like a mirage that we try to chase while running through quicksand. We see the speed up of technological life and we feel powerless to stop it, much less keep up with the pace it demands. We feel out of control of our lives, and so become filled to the brim with stress. Feeling happy becomes more and more difficult, because our natural inclination is to do the opposite: to embrace all the things that humor is designed to defeat. Mainly, perfectionism.

Perfectionism tricks us into thinking that we have to be perfect, we have to be in control, we have to stay competitive, and we have to be—above all—serious! The more we fight against change, the more we fear it. And the less funny we are, the less funny life it. And the less we laugh. And the more our stress builds. The remedy for all this misery is found in playing Second Fiddle.

When I started studying the violin, my aim wasn't to play in the symphony. Actually I did try out for the Junior Philharmonic. And I got a lot of laughs. But all I really wanted to do was to see what kinds of sounds I could make. And believe me I can make a lot of sounds. Before I could learn how to play the violin, though, I had to conquer perfectionism and the fear it breeds.

To counter this fear and move toward my goal of playing the violin, I had to learn acceptance. I accepted the fact that I was a total novice. I came to the conclusion that I didn't know a thing about the violin, and that I would have to start from scratch. I had to let go of wanting to sound good--or even presentable! Luckily I had a teacher who reminded me, "Play it wrong, play it strong!" And so I did, until the fear of not being perfect was replaced by the fun I was having from taking a risk and trying something new.

I didn't wait until I had a good violin, a proper neck rest, or even talent! After my first violin lesson, I was so proud of myself. Not only did I learn how to take the violin out of the case, I learned how to hold it! I thought I was the most brilliant person in the room.
Today, you can try something new, too. You can power through your life circumstances with the winds of humor. Humor is already there, it's in our daily life and in our soul. We just have to adjust our view and direct our sails toward health and happiness.
And then take our rightful place in the orchestra!

NEXT: List of Resources: Click Here

[Sign Up Now for the Happiness E-Zine]

Related E-Zine Topics

• Don't Worry Be Happy – Your Health May Depend on it!
• Discover Your Simple Power to Increase Happiness
• Change is Painful but Humor Can Help!
• List of Resources
• Dr Nancy's RxTV
• Coming Events
• Sign Up Now for the Happiness E-Zine