George Gilbert’s Motivational Humor

“Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine” Lord Byron

Even though we are still waiting for more tests to be scheduled so, that we can proceed with the proper medical treatment for my mother’s lung cancer. We are not sitting around waiting to get started with her laughter therapy. That’s right, I said, laughter therapy. I hooked up a VCR for her so that she could watch our old comedy videos that we don’t have on DVD. Videos from old time comedies like Laurel and Hardy to the English comedy of Benny Hill. These are some of her favorite comedians. No matter how many times she watches Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy get into “another fine mess!” or Benny Hill and his bawdy humor, they make her laugh.  The goal for watching the humor videos at this point is to keep mom in the proper frame of mind. The last thing I want her to do especially at this stage, when we don’t have enough information about how serious her condition is or what steps we have to take for treatment is to be sick with worry. Incorporating laughter therapy to reduce the stress of the unknown can alleviate what I call the “woe is me” syndrome.

Whatever challenges you may be experiencing whether it’s an illness, psychological or, professional problem, humor can help you cope with the stress we put on ourselves keeping us from overcoming the challenge.

Everyone has their own sense of humor. Because mom was regarded as one of the funniest comedy/variety acts of her day she appreciates the old comedians and how hard they worked to perfect their craft. Many people don’t respect Benny Hill, they think he is corny, but he worked very hard to make his routines look easy. When I need some laughter therapy I may watch the old comedies or I may put in a new comedy. The other day I watched the “Wedding Crashers” with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. This movie is hilarious and I laughed out loud, but this isn’t the type of movie my mother would enjoy and therefore wouldn’t be therapeutic for her. When you need to apply laughter therapy put you favorite comedy in the DVD player or VCR and Laugh, Laugh, Laugh! Remember the old saying Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.

“If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.” -  John Cleese

Creating a fun working environment can lead to more creativity and productivity. When employees enjoy their job and aren’t all stressed out they are more apt to get things done.According to Dr. David Abramis at Cal State Long Beach “people who have fun at work are more creative, more productive, get along better with co-workers and are better decision makers. They also call in sick less often.”

When I worked for a company that didn’t encourage fun, there was more stress in the office, employees didn’t work as a team and I found myself less motivated to get things done. Others called in sick frequently. Getting out of bed in the morning was much more difficult because there was no incentive other than money to go to the office.  

Creating a fun work environment isn’t difficult. It starts with respect. Do you treat your employees with respect? Are you approachable? Do you create an environment where they can approach you with a problem without fear of negative consequences? When employees don’t feel they are respected the motivation to be productive plummets.

Humor and fun on the job don’t have to interfere with productivity. As long as the humor and fun are part of the subject at hand it helps motivate employees. A laugh now and then can help reduce the stress of a major project that gets bogged down, and change perspective. When the team is trying too hard and the mood is tense try lightening it up. Do a David Letterman’s “top ten” list on the project to break up the tension. Encourage the list to be outrageous. Not only will this reduce the stress, but when you look at the list there may be something on there that might inspire a solution to what was creating the tension in the first place.

“Outstanding leaders go out of the way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” –Sam Walton

Just because you have a title doesn’t mean you are a good leader. A good leader is someone who creates a fun and friendly work environment where people come together as a team to accomplish a goal or set of goals. I give workshops on teambuilding. These seminars are designed to help an organization create a fun and friendly environment to bring the employees together. Teambuilding may start at my workshop, but to be effective you must work at keeping the team together everyday. If you create an environment where employees are not happy, fearful of keeping their job, and don’t respect you, the long term results for your company is failure. Some managers/owners think getting everyone together for a pizza party will boost morale. Pizza parties are good if the employee’s are already happy. If morale is down because you don’t treat them with respect no amount of pizza or Krispy Cream donuts are going to be effective. They would rather be eating somewhere else with someone else. I have seen managers systematically try to break each member of their department by threatening them with unwarranted verbal attacks, trumped up accusations all because that department wasn’t doing well. Rather than take the responsibility for its problems they think they can motivate by fear. Motivation by fear may have short term success if at all.

Create a work environment where employees want to be. A proper work environment has trust, respect, fun, humor. If you have these elements in your work environment you will see much more successful results.   Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that’s assault, not leadership.”

The other day my mother, humorist Tulara Lee, was diagnosed with lung cancer. This took both of us by surprise. Mom never smoked a day in her life. She is in great shape for someone in her eighty’s, she walks a mile everyday weather permitting and had no obvious symptoms of the disease. Mom went to the doctor for a referral for a dermatologist and because she was running a slight fever, which turned out to be a bladder infection, the doctor ordered some tests. The X-ray came back with a spot on her lung. After the CT scan we found out it was lung cancer.

After hearing such depressing news one would not think I would be writing an article on humor, but humor therapy is exactly what we used to get over the shock. Upon leaving the Doctors office we went to the movies. No we weren’t in denial and acted as if nothing happened. We went to the movies so that we could immediately start the healing process. You may be thinking, how is going to the movies going to cure cancer. I’m not here to say that we went to the movies to cure her cancer, however studies are showing that laughter may help prevent cancer, but I don’t have enough evidence of that to write about it yet. We went to the movies to put our minds in the proper frame of mind. I took mom to Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” a musical comedy. It was just what the doctor ordered. Mom laughed for more than two hours. The laughter therapy worked she no longer felt hopeless. Laughter can be cathartic. Laughter can cleans the body of the negative emotions that put us into a state of feeling hopeless. Comedian Henny Youngman (the king of the one-liners) said, “The definition of a cure is what a doctor does to a disease while killing the patient” When dealing with a serious illness doctors quite often only concentrate on the disease and not the patient’s emotions. I think that is why drug companies and doctors distribute prescriptions that may cure the disease but leaves the patient with a multitude of other health and emotional problems. I believe it is as important to treat the disease as well as the patience attitude. Dr. Hunter “Patch” Adams said, “Our job is improving the quality of life, not just delaying death.” Patch Adams uses humor therapy to help his patients.  To learn more about Patch Adams I suggest the book “Gesundheit!” By Patch Adams with Maureen Mylander or the movie Patch Adams starring Robin Williams. On the way home from the movie mom needed to stop at the grocery store, while there we kept up with the laughter by using gallows humor. Mom picked up a carton of milk and started to put it into grocery cart. I laughingly said, “Just because you may have lung cancer doesn’t mean you still don’t have to check the expiration date on the carton.” She laughed and said, “I have so much confidence about surviving this I’m even going to by green bananas.” Laughter in whatever form can help you cope with life’s challenges. As a motivational humorist my goal is not to just educate others about the benefits of humor but to practice what I preach. Of course we are taking the illness seriously, but we are using humor to keep our spirits up and put her in the proper frame of mind so that if healing can begin it will. Mom will have her pity parties and I will have mine and sometimes we will have pity parties together, but laughter can help keep the pity parties from becoming depressions detrimental to her attitude and her health. This isn’t the first time we have used humor to cope with a serious illness in our family and it won’t be the last time.

Welcome to George Gilbert’s Motivational Humor Blog. The content on this blog is designed to motivate and inspire you to put more humor in your life. Whether in your personal life or your business life humor and laughter can play an important role in helping create a better, happier, and successful life. I believe laughter is a wellness program everyone can afford.