Healing with Humor: Those Who Laugh, Last
A hearty chuckle can be good for your health and might even make you better at your job.
Dec. 5, 2008
By Michael Castleman
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"Once you find the humor in a situation, you can survive it." — Bill Cosby
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“Life is too serious to be taken too seriously.” — Joel Goodman
When Joel Goodman, a New York organizational consultant, learned that his father had a life-threatening aneurysm, he flew to Houston to be with him. Every morning, Goodman took a van from his hotel to the hospital. “The driver was a comedian,” Goodman recalls. “I was rigid with fear, but on the drive to the hospital, he told jokes. He made me laugh. For a few moments, I relaxed.”
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When Allen Klein’s wife, Ellen, was dying of cancer, somehow, a copy of Playgirl magazine found its way to her hospital room. She asked her husband to tape the male nude centerfold to the wall.
“Someone might object,” Allen said.
“Well,” his wife replied, “Take a leaf from that plant and tape it over the genitals.”
The leaf worked for two days, but by day three it had begun to shrivel — and slowly revealed what it was supposed to conceal.“Whenever we glanced at that dried-up leaf, we laughed,” Klein recalls. “It made our troubles easier to bear.”
“A sense of humor makes a person healthy, wealthy and wisecracking.” — Henny Youngman
Eventually, Goodman got serious about humor, and launched The Humor Project, an organization that has helped more than 500,000 businesspeople laugh in the face of life’s challenges.
"Humor fit right into my work,” he says. “Organizations run better, and people solve problems more creatively when they don’t take things too seriously.”
The Humor Project is not a school for comedians. It encourages people to see the comedy all around them. “When you look for humor, you find it. You enjoy life more — and become more productive.”
After his wife’s death, Klein went to work for a hospice. He was struck by the way the residents appreciated humor — and were able to laugh despite the fact that the Grim Reaper hovered so close. Klein became a self-styled “jollytologist,” and eventually wrote The Healing Power of Humor and The Courage to Laugh.
The Emotional Benefits of Humor
“God gave us humor to compensate for the law of gravity.” — Henny Youngman
Take a moment and smile. Not the tight grin you might give a coworker who touts a dumb idea, but a big, toothy grin.
How does that smile make you feel? Probably a little better. Why? Because mental health is a two-way street. Smiling is not just a result of happiness. It also causes happiness. It coaxes the brain toward positive emotions.
“Humor keeps us balanced,” Klein says. “It offers a refuge from negative emotions before we become desperate. Once we can see the comedy in our chaos, we are no longer so caught up in it. Our problems become less of a burden.”
The Physical Benefits of Humor
“A merry heart doeth like a good medicine.” — Proverbs 17:22
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