Laugh With Not At

its better to laugh with someone than to laugh at someone. I’m not perfect I occasionally catch myself laughing at someone, but then I realize how would I feel if someone was laughing at me. I would feel embarrassed, I would get defensive and my self-esteem would be lower.

Laughing with someone can help strengthen your relationship with that person. when you laugh with someone you create a bond with them. You are in agreement and you are sharing a moment together.

So remember don’t laugh at, laugh with.

Can you laugh at Yourself?

Do you take yourself too serious? Can you laugh at yourself? Every day I see people that don’t know how to lighten up. They take themselves way to serious, so much so that when they make a mistake they just mentally beat themselves up for it. No one is perfect and even though we all want to do the best we can we have to understand that we will make mistakes, but when we take ourselves so serious and over react to the smaller mistakes we are allowing ourselves to stress out and this will lead to making bigger mistakes.

I realize that we cant laugh off every mistake but over reacting is just as harmful if not more to making more mistakes.

Alowing yourself to find your in your imperfections will allow you to recover faster from your mistakes and will also ingretiate yourselves to your co-workers.

Using Humor to Receive Better Service

Humor can break down barriers. The other day I had to return an item to the store. Because it was a chainsaw they wanted to make sure their was something actually wrong with it I had to wait for someone in tools to come and take a look for it. We were waiting their for several minutes and still no one came to inspect it. We were still patient with the store clerk in returns and kinda joking with him. He told me that since I was exchange it with the same model I could just go get a new one while I was waiting. I went and pick a new one out and by the time I got back the employee to inspect the broken chainsaw still hadn’t come to the exchange booth. While I was gone my neighbor was making small talk and joking with the guy. When I returned the clerk said, I’m not going to make you wait any longer and let me go without any paper work.

Had we been rude and impatient the clerk would have made us wait but because we were nice and kept it light by using humor the clerk wanted to help us and let us exchange the saw without having to show what wrong with it.

If you want good customer service smile, be pleasant and use a little humor.

Friday’s Jokes & Quotes – Baseball

“If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.” Dave Barry

“Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.” Ted Williams

“A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.” Humphrey Bogart

“When they start the game, they don’t yell, “Work ball.” They say, “Play ball.” Willie Stargell

“When we played softball, I’d steal second base, feel guilty and go back.” Woody Allen

“Nolan Ryan is pitching much better now that he has his curve ball straightened out.” Joe Garagiola

“It’s hard to win a pennant, but it’s harder losing one.” Chuck Tanner

“No matter how good you are, you’re going to lose one-third of your games. No matter how bad you are you’re going to win one-third of your games. It’s the other third that makes the difference.” Tommy Lasorda

“I was such a dangerous hitter I even got intentional walks in batting practice.” Casey Stengel, 1967

“Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.”  Warren Spahn

The Joy of Uncluttering

My goal last year was to enjoy my Sunday’s relaxing around the house watching football. Even though I did watch football, I think I only had one Sunday where I saw two games from start to finish without working on some project. It seemed every weekend there were so many things that needed to be done on the to-do list that I couldn’t just sit there and enjoy the games. The irony of it was that many of the chores still never seemed to get done. With so many big projects, like distributing 9 tons of rock in the yard or cutting down a tree, I would ignore the not so important projects like cleaning out and organizing the guest room – which was more like a storage unit than a guest room. In fact the more big projects I had, the more cluttered the guest room and other areas would become, to the point that they now became one of my big projects.

As I finally tackled (pardon the football terminology) my tool shed (see my recent post “There’s Nothing Funny About Clutter”) I began to realize why taking care of all the clutter can help reduce the stress of every day and help getting the big projects accomplished. Now I look forward to coming home in the evenings and organizing my stuff. I find myself feeling a sense of accomplishment when I am purging myself of items that I don’t need or will use. One of the biggest burdens we put on ourselves is holding on to material things we no longer have a use for and will never use, but for some reason whether sentimental or whatever, we can’t seem to let go of it. Last night I let go of some dishes that were taking up space in my cupboards. They weren’t fancy dishes, they were probably bought at a dime store many years ago. I never used them because they are under the dishes I use everyday and they are so old they aren’t microwavable. For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them until last night. These nondescript dishes had a hold on me because I have been eating off of them all my life. I felt that if I got rid of them I would be losing a little bit of my past. I finally realized that i have so many more important and meaningful items that have real value to not only my past but future. Mom’s paintings, pictures, her good china, etc. I don’t need to hold on to every little thing to keep memories alive.

This summer my goal is to have all the clutter organized, donated, or thrown away so that I can enjoy my pool. I realize that living in a house that is almost 50 years old there will always be projects around the house and I will probably be fixing things every weekend. But If the clutter is gone I will be able to enjoy the pool after I finish my weekend projects and not feel stressed and guilty that I should be cleaning out that room, closet, or shed.

April is National Humor Month

It should be no coincedence that April is National Stress Awareness Month and National Humor Awareness Month because humor and laughter can help us cope with stress. According to the Mayo Clinic laughter has short term and long term benefits to help reduce stress.

The Mayo Clinic says the short term benefits from laughter may:

• Stimulate many organs. Laughter enhances your intake of oxygen-rich air, stimulates your heart, lungs and muscles, and increases the endorphins that are released by your brain.
• Activate and relieve your stress response. A rollicking laugh fires up and then cools down your stress response and increases your heart rate and blood pressure. The result? A good, relaxed feeling.
• Soothe tension. Laughter can also stimulate circulation and aid muscle relaxation, both of which help reduce some of the physical symptoms of stress.

The May clinic goes on to mention the following long term benefits of laughter:

• Improve your immune system. Negative thoughts manifest into chemical reactions that can impact your body by bringing more stress into your system and decreasing your immunity. In contrast, positive thoughts actually release neuropeptides that help fight stress and potentially more-serious illnesses.
• Relieve pain. Laughter may ease pain by causing the body to produce its own natural painkillers. Laughter may also break the pain-spasm cycle common to some muscle disorders.
• Increase personal satisfaction. Laughter can also make it easier to cope with difficult situations. It also helps you connect with other people.

Remember just because April is National stress awareness month that stress doesn’t just occur during the month of April but the other elevin months can be just as stressful it is important to incorporate humor year round to help relieve your stress.

Humor and Change

I was working on a project trying to schedule guest speakers to come in to present to some new hires. Trying to schedule them with their busy schedules was a nightmare and just when I had the agenda set, I got a call saying they wanted the new hires to meet with the VP’s before the speakers. Now the stress level was rising even more. I had first try to schedule the VP’s then rearrange the schedule of the guest speakers after I spent the entire previous day figuring out their schedules.

Maintaining a sense of humor when change occurs is vital to being able to cope with the sudden unexpected disruptions from the normal daily activities. My assistant and I looked at each other and then started to laugh. We joked that we should have know something like this was going to happen. It always does why would this time be any different.

Confucius said, “Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.” I guess I am somewhere in between it seems just when I get comfortable with a something it changes. The only constant is if I didn’t find a little humor in change I would have a tougher time dealing with the disruptions.

Don’t Be an April Fool

April is a fun month, not only do we start the month off with April Fools but April is also National Humor Month. The entire month is dedicated to humor. Take this month to dedicating yourself to putting more humor in your life. It will help you reduce stress and live a healthier life, but don’t end your quest of putting humor in your life with the month of April make it a year-long, actually a life long quest to incorporate more humor in our lives.

April is a good month to reinvigorate your humor, the days are getting longer, flowers are starting to bloom and despite a few April showers the weather is a little bit warmer. This is also a good time for Spring Cleaning, clean out your closets and get rid of those things you no longer need. By purging yourself of unwanted clutter you will also feel a sense of accomplishment reducing your stress and therefore making it easier to find time to find humorous things to do.

I enjoy entertaining friends for BBQ’s and pool parties but my house and yard have been so cluttered with stuff the stress of cleaning up before guests arrived and having to move my things from room to room and still have clutter always hampered my ability to completely enjoy my get togethers because I was tired from shuffling my stuff and embarrassed because I still had a mess. This year I decided to get organized and I can’t wait for my gatherings. The back yard is organized so that there isn’t anything out-of-place. A friend was over and asked me what I had done to the yard. I have done a lot around the yard but the most notable thing is that you don’t find things just randomly placed. everything has its place and makes the backyard much more welcoming.

Now I can enjoy my spring with friends and share the laughs not having to feel like I have to apologize for the mess.

Celebrate National Humor month and combine it with some spring cleaning and you will reap the benefits of combining the two.