Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
A practical guide to using laughter and humour as a thinking skill to feel better and communicate more effectively. This book will explain simple techniques that will improve the reader's ability to gain a more positive perspective in difficult situations and increase their happiness through adopting the techniques from the Laughology model.The key subjects covered are What is laughter;What is humour; The psychological connection;
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 214
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
PRAISE FOR LAUGHOLOGY
Well written and funny … Stephanie Davies has created a toolkit for helping us to positively reframe our daily lives and for putting laughter at the heart of who we are.
Dr David Perrin, Centre for Work Related Studies, University of Chester
Laughology is a wonderful idea and gives people the tools to live life to the full by linking humour, emotion, psychology and health.
Professor Richard Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire, author of 59 Seconds
It is too tempting not to say it – go on, you’re pulling my leg. Someone flogging a book about laughter! Tell me another one (all said, of course, in a Cockney accent, preferably whilst wearing a John Bull bowler hat and quaffing manfully from a pint glass). How surprised was I to open the pages of this book and find a deeply compassionate exploration of the human condition through the medium of Laughology – the technique of life enhancement through laughter. This is too superficial a description however. Stephanie has taken one of the simplest and most generic of human emotional expressions – the laugh – and, with insight and intelligence, dug deep beneath its public face (my brain is playing old Frankie Howerd footage as I write) to find explanations in surprising places.
As a neurobiologist I am very aware of the effects of emotional states on the brain, but Stephanie expands and develops on this in a beautifully constructed piece of work that is understandable to anyone. Ultimately life is about finding ways to reframe the bad, not to ignore it but to make it manageable, to allow your brain the space to deal with the crap. As Stephanie so brilliantly points out in this book, actually that reframing can as easily be done with a smile or a laugh as with any over-earnest or deep exploration of areas that you would rather leave alone. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Maybe, though there is so much political correctness out there now it’s sometimes hard to know when you can laugh. But you can certainly adopt Stephanie’s approach – laugh and your internal world may learn to laugh with you. That sounds like a good result.
Andrew Curran, practising paediatric neurologist and neurobiologist, author of The Little Book of Big Stuff about the Brain and Get Off the Sofa
You’d have to be agelastic, or even misogelastic, to keep a straight face through this playful and practical guide.
Dr Jon Sutton, chartered psychologist and managing editor of The Psychologist
To all the people I have had the privilege of working with and helping over the years – you have all helped me as much as I have hopefully helped you. To the wonderful children, young people and carers at Claire House Hospice in Merseyside who continue to inspire me every day. But most of all this is to my family who are all brilliant and funny.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank all the services that have believed in and used the Laughology model through the years and who continue to use it to improve lives and potential.
I would also like to thank Caroline Lenton who believed in Laughology, the book, and the team at Crown House for giving me the opportunity to write it.
My mum who has been a supporter and promoter of Laughology from the beginning. My dad, who always has made me laugh and encouraged me to believe I can be and do anything. My step-mum Marian, Aunt Michele, Susie, Paul and cousin Alex who tirelessly drove me to gigs and events and listened to my comedy material before it was funny, but supported me and clapped as if it was. My brother Daniel and sisters Ruth, Fiona and Beth and step-brother Paul who all make me laugh and have believed in me from the very beginning and have supported me through the triumphs and tribulations of running a business which hasn’t seemed so funny at times. All my nieces and nephews who continue to remind me of the importance of having a young outlook, playing and having fun: Ryan, Jade, Jack, Ben, Max, Holly and Thomas. My wonderful partner Nick Harding who has been the main ingredient for my happiness and who took the time to cast his experienced eye over my humble writings, and Millie and Lucas who sat patiently and played while he did.
To all my wonderful friends, I cannot name them all, but each is important and has supported me and constantly asked, ‘So when is the book out again?’, making sure I did actually finish it.
And a huge thank you to the brilliant Laughology team, Kerry Leigh, Juliette Yardley, Alan Matthews, David Keeling and Maurice De Castro, who continue to promote and build Laughology and without whom I wouldn’t have been able to spend time writing this book.
Thank you all.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
PART ONE:Story, Context, Science, Practical Application, Points to Remember
Chapter 1 What is Laughter?
Chapter 2 Your Laughter Triggers
Chapter 3 Happy People
Chapter 4 The Power of Laughter
Chapter 5 What is Humour?
Chapter 6 The Mechanics of Humour
Chapter 7 Young at Heart
Chapter 8 Improve your Life with Laughology
PART TWO:Laughology – Your Humour Toolkit: FLIP
Chapter 9 Your Humour Toolkit: F is for Focus
Chapter 10 Your Humour Toolkit: L is for Language
Chapter 11 Your Humour Toolkit: I is for Imagination
Chapter 12 Your Humour Toolkit: P is for Pattern Breaking
PART THREE:Five Steps of SMILE
Chapter 13 The Power of a SMILE
Epilogue
Appendix: Frequently Asked Questions
Bibliography
Index
Copyright
PROLOGUE
LAUGHOLOGY: A WORKBOOK FOR A NEW MODEL OF LIVING
At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.
Jean Houston
At 14 I was lucky enough to get the chance to work with one of the greatest comics of the 21st century: the late Norman Wisdom. Norman professed to have had an unhappy childhood. ‘All my boyhood all I ever wanted was to be loved’, he told me. In later life, not only did Norman use humour and laughter to entertain, he also used them as a way to help himself through difficult times. One day on set we were talking about his childhood and I mentioned some difficulties I was going through, as teenagers do. Norman’s words seemed to make more sense to me than any advice I had been given before: ‘Stephanie, laughter truly is the best medicine; if you can laugh and make others laugh you’ll always get by.’
I remember thinking he was right; it was simple, laughter really does lift your spirits. I love laughing; I don’t know anyone who doesn’t (unless you have asthma, in which case laughter isn’t always the best medicine – Ventolin is). It was at this point that I decided I wanted to make people laugh too, much to the disappointment of my teachers. I started to become more aware of my own sense of humour and how laughter made me feel, how I used it and how others used it – family, friends and people on TV. I learnt my humour skills from a variety of places, mainly my dad who was always a joker and managed to create laughter even in the most difficult circumstances. I quickly learned to use laughter as a coping mechanism for the ups and downs of adolescence. My school report read: ‘Stephanie is always the class joker and does well when she has centre stage, though she needs to learn that joking and clowning around is not a career option.’
During my final year of university I started writing and performing comedy. After being offered an open mic spot at a local comedy club, I realised I had found my forte and became a working comedian – making a living ‘joking and clowning around’.
While learning my stage-craft, the words of Norman Wisdom resonated in mind. I realised he was right: laughter and humour are the key to getting by in life. Not only were they providing me with earnings, they were helping me to see life clearly, gain perspective and become a more resilient, confident and happier human being. There is no other place you need to be more resilient than as a woman in a comedy club on a Friday or Saturday night.
As my career as a comedian took off, my sense of humour developed further and I looked to my own life and the world around me for observations I could use to twist and turn into comedy routines. The more I did this the more I found my perspective on life changed, and more often than not a problem would become potential for a routine. Once I had flipped the situation on its head and found the ‘humour perspective’ I would feel better about the issue, and when I felt better it would be easier for me to move forward and solve the problem.
So that is what this book is about: the choices we make that enable us to see life in different ways and the tools and techniques that allow us to do this.
In the past 12 years my comedy career has evolved into a vocation, which is still based in laughter and humour but is now more person-focused. My passion remains laughter and humour but now that passion goes deeper than standing on a stage and hoping people find me funny. Nowadays my work is about helping others to be happy, to achieve more and to think, feel and work better.
Since starting a career in the laughter business in 2001, I’ve been developing ways to help others use laughter and humour as a personal development tool – I call this technique Laughology. It has been built on my understanding of humour and laughter as a comedian and also from a psychology point of view. More recently I have been lucky enough to study for an MA at the University of Chester, making links between humour, laughter, psychology and health, while also practising these techniques in specialist mental health units.
I have been fortunate to work in a variety of settings with individuals and groups with mild to moderate and acute mental health issues. Laughology has been delivered successfully in small and large organisations to encourage thinking skills, positive engagement, organisational development and great leadership, as well as to enhance health and well-being in many different settings – from schools and hospitals to some of the top blue-chip companies in the world.
Some of the greatest comedians have lived with disorders including depression and bipolar. It seems that if you peer behind the laughter and smiles you will sometimes find someone who has faced many challenges in life. Humour, laughter and comedy can be a way to cope with these challenges: they are survival tools that we can all tap into.
It is an ancient truism that ‘laughter is the best medicine’ and for aeons humans have enjoyed a good giggle. The pleasure and joy that a good laugh can bring to individuals and groups is of immeasurable worth, although it can be dismissed too easily as simplistic or not sufficiently scientific to be considered as a tool for coping. Not only is humour quite rightly regarded as a positive emotion – a pleasant thing to share with friends and something you look for in a partner (must have a GSOH) – but its outward manifestation, laughter, is a universal currency. No matter where in the world you are, the slightest hint of a smile can immediately connect strangers, no matter what the language and cultural barriers may be.
Although we are all born with the capacity to process humorous circumstances, it is also a skill that can be improved and honed. We develop and evolve this ability throughout our lives – influenced by family, peers and experience – learning when and how to use it. But can humour be controlled? Can we consciously harness this innate ability and use it whenever we want to improve our communication and relationships, enhance our well-being and bring joy to others? The simple answer is yes – and, using the techniques developed by Laughology, this practical guide is going to show you how.
Laughology is about understanding how we process information from the outside world and then respond and react to these circumstances internally. It uses a flexible cognitive approach that is easy to learn, sustainable and adaptable to many situations. Laughology fundamentals are based in science and psychology but it is not rocket science. While, over the following pages, I will be explaining how humour and laughter affect us on a behavioural and biological level, you don’t need be a doctor or a psychologist to understand Laughology. It is simple and practical. You may even judge that many of the techniques I outline are common sense. You’d be right – they are. However, humour and laughter are often sadly neglected in many people’s lives. If something happens that makes us laugh we enjoy it but, as a rule, few of us are proactive when it comes to finding ways to introduce more laughter and humour into our lives. We might make sure we find time in our busy schedule to spend an hour at the gym every few days (for the record, that is a very good thing to do too), but how many of us take a few minutes each day to think about how we are going to laugh more, be happy and what makes us happy?
But Laughology is much more than just showing you ways to be happier. It provides you with a means to use humour and laughter to enhance thinking skills on every level for positive well-being, resilience and communication. To explain this further we need to think about how laughter and humour can fit into our emotional processing. As we absorb information from our external environment our emotions are affected. This, in turn, dictates our language and behaviour. The way we act and the things we say subsequently influence other’s reactions towards us, which again feeds into the way in which we subsequently behave.
Typically what happens is that an external event is processed through our internal mental mechanisms and we make an internal representation (IR) of that event. The IR, combined with the corresponding physiological response, creates a state. State is the internal emotional condition of an individual – happy, sad, motivated and so on.
An individual’s IR of a situation can be distorted by previous experience and by how we feel at that time, the other people involved and our personal history. These may cause us to interpret an event either negatively or positively. Our IR of any given situation will include pictures, sounds, dialogue and emotions; for example, whether we feel motivated, challenged, pleased or excited. A given state is the result of the combination of our IR and physiological reactions. Recognising that we communicate, perform and react better in a positive state, where we can engage our rational mind and perspective, enables us to develop a more affirmative methodology for controlling that state. This means we are in a stronger position to obtain the results we desire. Humour can be used as a way to process and change the IR of a situation, therefore gaining a different perspective and state.
This way of processing information is easy to see in some of the greatest comedians, some of whom have used their challenging life stories to provide comic material. They change their IR. Billy Connolly is a great practitioner of this technique. After surviving a difficult childhood of physical and mental abuse he rose to fame as a comedian, often using reinterpreted recollections of his past to entertain audiences.
Laughology is the study of this psychology and offers strategies for feeling better and enhancing living based on what humans do naturally as a coping mechanism. The model uses humour and laughter to encourage perspective in order to gain control over our emotions so we can move forward effectively, with better results and greater happiness.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Laughology is a tool to help you improve your life in every way, so this book has been written as a practical guide with exercises for you to do throughout. Use this book, write in it, underline bits you like, add your own notes in the work pages at the back and record your own thoughts.
The concepts and exercises presented in this book are particularly for those who want an alternative attitude and way of thinking for improving life and work. The benefits of using humour as a system for processing information will be shown in a practical and descriptive way. Do try to complete the exercises in each chapter in a separate notebook – this will help you to use the Laughology model, personalise the experience and think realistically about how you can apply Laughology in your life. Along the way there will be case studies (with names changed to protect identities). You will learn how real people have used Laughology, what worked for them and how you can benefit. If you follow the simple guidelines they’ll work for you too. Remember: this is a new way of thinking so you will have to practise and work at it. Like anything, the more you put in, the more you’ll get out of it. Each chapter also includes a summary of the key learning points.
Laughology is also based on my personal successes in improving the life and work of clients from many different backgrounds. Laughology has been used by thousands of people nationally and internationally in a variety of different settings: in blue-chip companies to boost staff morale and productivity, in retail businesses to improve customer service and in rehabilitation programmes to enhance recovery. It has also been used by public health bodies to help people with a range of mild to more severe mental health issues.
There’s a reason why Laughology has been and is so successful: it works, it’s simple, it makes you feel better and anyone can do it. More importantly, it’s sustainable because humour and laughter are coping skills that we all possess and have the ability to develop. This book is a simple guide to help you do this.
SIGNS AND SYMBOLS
This book has been written so it can be used as a practical guide; therefore I want to make it as easy as possible for you to use, dip in and out of, write in and refer to whenever and wherever you like.
The book follows a basic pattern with Part One structured in the following way:
Where you see these lines, complete the exercise in your notebook.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
PART ONE
STORY, CONTEXT, SCIENCE, PRACTICAL APPLICATION, POINTS TO REMEMBER
CHAPTER 1
WHAT IS LAUGHTER?
A TIME AND A PLAICE FOR LAUGHTER
While visiting a secure mental health hospital in West Virginia with Dr Hunter ‘Patch’ Adams and his team it struck me just how powerful laughter can be in helping to build relationships and communication with others.1 I had teamed up with some fabulous people from the Gesundheit! Institute and we had been to various centres and hospitals around the region using laughter and humour to help bring joy to a diverse range of patients.
As we were leaving the final hospital there was a room no one had entered. I peeked in and noticed a man, perhaps in his mid-forties, in a chair, rocking back and forth, making a noise and in a state with which I was unfamiliar. It was at this point that I questioned what I was doing. Was taking laughter into places like this beneficial or was I way out of my depth? I had never encountered a situation like this before and wondered whether to walk on, as most of the others had done, or to test my understanding of the power of laughter and step into the room.
Armed with nothing but my sense of fun and a plastic fish I decided this was it: I had to go in to either prove or disprove everything I had believed in up to this point. Could this individual’s life be improved with laughter, humour and a smile? Could I reach out to this person with something so simplistic when he seemed so far removed from this world? I was unsure how I would even start.
I entered the room and bent down by his side, smiling, trying to catch his eye, using the prop and the last ounce of energy I had. As he looked at me I could see that there was a way I could connect with him, so I did everything in my power to make him laugh. I waved my plastic fish, made some silly noises and told some funny stories about my day. All of a sudden the man let out a huge guffaw. I don’t know whether he was laughing at me or with me (perhaps he was thinking ‘it should be you in here!’), but whatever it was, we connected; we connected on a level that was wonderfully friendly, happy and equal. His laughter only lasted about ten seconds but afterwards his whole face had lifted and he made eye contact with me until we said our goodbyes.
At that moment it was confirmed to me that laughter is a powerful communication tool that can be used with anyone anywhere. Laughter knows no boundaries when it comes to age, race or gender. A laugh or a smile in Iceland is the same as a laugh or a smile in India or England – what a great level of communication to get by on!
THE FEEL-GOOD FACTOR
We have all been supplied with the ability to laugh. Research suggests that it is innate because, as Donald Brown points out in his book Human Universals, laughter is found in every society – even children who are deaf and blind, and can’t see or hear other people laughing, still laugh.2 Robert Provine, in his book Laughter: A Scientific Investigation, puts forward the theory that laughter is a form of communication, probably the first one in the human race, which later evolved, with the emancipation of the voice, into language.3
Research into why we laugh and where it comes from is still in its infancy, but what we do know is that it feels good. Laughter is a natural tonic and can have positive bodily effects. Biologically it produces happy hormones, known as endorphins, which help to create positive emotions and can change the chemical make-up in the brain to produce serotonin. As well as these chemical effects, laughter can give us a break from what we are thinking about or doing, especially when these are stressful or upsetting. How often have you been in a situation where you are highly stressed or anxious and something is said or done that makes you laugh, and all of a sudden you feel better or more comfortable about the situation and the people you are with?
Laughter helps us move forward, it empowers us and makes us feel better. So by understanding more about where, how and what encourages laughter, we can start to understand what behaviours, thoughts and situations promote more laughter. Therefore helping with a more rational way of thinking and behaving, resulting in a happier approach to life. Activities that cause stress can leave us stuck in situations or lead to recurring patterns in life and relationships which generate negative emotions, thoughts and behaviours, so understanding a strategy to move forward, using thinking techniques can be helpful.
SO, LAUGHTER …?
Laughter is about relationships, it’s not about jokes. It’s a form of communication.
Robert R. Provine
The Oxford English Dictionary
