George Gilbert’s Motivational Humor

“The most thoroughly wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.” - Chamfort

Experts tell us that as children we used to laugh on the average of 150 times a day, up to 400 times a day, but by the age of thirty-five we laugh on the average of 15 to 17 times a day. What has happened? We take laughter for granted. Doctor Albert Schweitzer didn’t take laughter for granted. When Albert Schweitzer had his hospital in the middle of the African jungle, he made a point of having dinner with his staff every night so that he could tell them a joke or a humorous story. Something to make them laugh because he knew if he could make his staff laugh they could handle the stress of working under such terrible conditions, day after day, with so many sick people. Albert Schwitzer said, “Laughter is the nutrient of the spirit.”

I don’t have to go to the African jungle to find stress, But I do understand the importance of laughter. I suggest you make a point of finding more humor in your life so that you don’t waste another day.

Don’t talk too fast. The audience needs time to process what you are saying. This is especially true when delivering a humorous speech. Not only does the audience need to process the information but they also need to process the humor. The audience will not laugh if they are too busy trying to understand what you are saying. This doesn’t mean to talk so slow that you sound like you are talking down to the audience. It just means that you should speak at a natural conversational rate so the audience can pick up the nuances of the humor. Also, when you speak too fast it can give the audience the impression that you are nervous and want to get through your speech and off the stage as fast as you can.

I recently spoke at the National ADP convention at the Venetian. One of the questions that came up was, “How do I get a co-worker with no sense of humor to laugh?” Someone in the audience suggested it starts with a smile. They are absolutely correct. Victor Borge once said “A smile is the closest distance between two people.” Before you try and make them laugh, see if you can get them to smile. Start by smiling at them. If they smile back you have made the first step. Second, ask them questions that will trigger a positive response. When my grandfather was in a retirement home my mother would go and visit. She would ask many of the residents, “How are you today?” They would reply, “I don’t feel well” or “My arthritis is acting up.” So my mother changed her questions to something positive, “Don’t you look beautiful today.” They would then smile and respond in a positive way, “Thank you, I just had my hair done.”

So start asking questions that will get a positive response and put that person in a good mood. Once they are answering questions positively it will be easier to inject humor into the conversation. It is also important to remember that everyone has their own sense of humor and what might make you laugh will not seem funny to someone else. Try to find out what the other person’s interests are and then it will be easier to find out what they find funny. When we say someone doesn’t have a sense of humor it usually means they don’t laugh at our jokes or find funny what we find funny, but there are also those who don’t want to laugh. The most important thing to remember is to keep your sense of humor. Don’t let those around you get you down. Just because they don’t want to enjoy life doesn’t mean you don’t have to.

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“It’s bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down and spreads your hips.” - Fred Allen

Actually laughter is a form of exercise. Noman Cousins called laughter “internal jogging” because when we laugh (good belly laughs) we exercise our muscles from our hips to our shoulders. We get bad air out of our lungs, lower our heart rate, lower our blood pressure and get oxygen in the blood system. Sounds like an aerobic exercise to me.

I am not saying for you to give up exercise for laughter, but think of it as a complement to exercise. Some experts tell us that 100 belly laughs are the equivalent to 10 minutes of aerobic exercise. If you physically can’t exercise this could be a healthy alternative.

I recently spoke to a group and afterward a gentlemen came up to me and said that he had been to see a comedian who performed for almost three hours. The gentleman laughed the entire time and had sore stomach muscles the next day. I explained to him that what he was doing was exercise and just like doing sit- ups or some other form of exercise, when you use muscles that you haven’t used for a while, they are going to be sore. So remember if you haven’t laughed very much lately it is important to start exercising your laugh muscles. Start out gradually and work your way up to a marathon of “Three Stooges movies.”

A speakers introduction can make or break a speech, especially a humorous speech. If the person delivering the introduction doesn’t deliver your intro well (as unfair as this may seem) the audience will react to your speech negatively. That is why it is important to get a copy of your introduction to the Master of Ceremonies, or chair-person, or whomever will be responsible for introducing you in advance. Ask them to rehearse it several times before they give it. Make sure they understand exactly how you want them to present it. This is a script and it should be followed. Quite often the content of your speech will refer back to the introduction and if they don’t follow the script it may leave you referring to something that was left out. I once had someone introduce me by starting out saying, “This is what George wrote about himself..” that wasn’t in the script and now it sounded like I was boasting. I had to use some self-deprecating humor to win the audience back. Another example, the MC made a comment about something in the introduction and again this underminds the credibility of the speaker. If this happens try to laugh it off and use self-deprecating humor to get the audience back where you want them. Never point out a bad introduction. You do not want to embarrass them as that might create a negative reaction from the audience.

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What makes a company a great company to work for? Is it great health benefits? Is it a good 401k plan? Is it the salary? You can have all of this for your employees and they still may not be happy working for you if you don’t treat them right. If you have the attitude of, “Well you ingrates I pay you enough so do your job and don’t expect to be thanked”, chances are you are going to have disgruntled employees. Fortune Magazine recently came out with their top 100 companies to work for and J.M. Smucker’s was rated number one. The Co-CEO’s Tim and Richard Smuckers live by the code that their father Paul Smucker set for the company, “Listen with your full attention, look for the good in others, have a sense of humor, and say thank you for a job well done.” I think that would make a great mission statement for any company to follow. It’s so simple and yet so effective. Listen to your customers and employees and they will listen to you. Find the positive in others and they will respond. Find the humor in the situations around you. Don’t take yourself so seriously and be sure to show others you appreciate them. Maybe that’s why they say, “With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good.”

Change, uncertainty, the unknown. These words can cause one to stress out. Whether in your professional life or your personal life the fear of the unknown can create stress. This is when we need to keep our sense of humor most. It is easy to laugh when everything is cheery, but it is self-preserving to be able to laugh when the feelings of fear start to take effect. Abraham Lincoln understood the importance of laughter and coping when he said, “With the fearful strain that is one night and day; if I did not laugh I should die.”

Laughter can help us cope with the tension of not knowing what is next. Maintaining a sense of humor can help put the situation in perspective. Next time you are starting to stress out about the unknown ask yourself or those around you that are starting to stress out “What is the worst that can happen?” and give as many outrageous or ridiculous answers as you can come up with. Pretty soon you will be laughing at the outlandish responses. Quite often it is our anticipation of the unknown that causes anxiety rather than the actual occurrence. Dr. David B Posen, author of “Staying Afloat When the Water Gets Rough: How to Live in a Rapidly Changing World” said, “Humor isn’t about changing what happens. It’s about changing our reaction to what happens. And those who use humor as a coping strategy are generally more resilient and adaptable when faced with change.”

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I recently rejoined an athletic club. I moved and let my membership expire. When I rejoined as part of my membership I was given 5 free sessions with a personal trainer. I didn’t realize how out of shape I was until I started working with my new trainer. Rather than start slow and work up to a rigorous routine she had me doing exercises that I had never attempted before. After my first work-out I expected to not be able to move the next day. I went home and started watching humorous videos. Videos that I knew would make me laugh a lot.

The next day I was sore, but not as sore as I had expected. I believe the humorous videos had a part in relaxing my muscles. Studies show that when we laugh the muscles that are involved in the laughter start to relax and the muscles that are directly involved with laughter start to relax after we stop laughing. Laughter is said to produce endorphins, a painkilling drug like substance, produced naturally when we laugh. I have heard that marathon runners also produce endorphins when they run marathons helping them to continue through the pain.

Laughter also helps get more oxygen into the blood system, get bad air out of our lungs and some experts suggest that 100 belly laughs is equal to 10 minutes of aerobic exercise. I suggest that you make laughter part of your fitness program.

Have you ever seen someone perform and said, “I can do that!”? Sometimes we say that when a performance is so bad (like some of the American Idol auditions) you think you can do better and probably can, but sometimes someone performs so well and they make it look so easy that we say, “I can do that!” But in reality we cant. Some of the great comedians didn’t get the credit they deserved because they made it look easy.

Most people don’t credit the Three Stooges for their talent. It was just silly slapstick humor. Three people always beating themselves up. I guarantee you, if you or I tried that we would kill ourselves. The Three Stooges worked very hard to make it look easy. Many of the routines you saw in the movies they had been doing for years on the vaudeville stage. Even though they had done them over and over they continued to rehearse them to make it look natural and unrehearsed. According to the book “Mixed Nuts” by Lawrence J. Epstein:

The stooges loved to ad-lib, and they were good at it. They had mastered their own characters so well that they knew when a scripted line sounded false or wasn’t funny enough. But they still took preparation seriously. Thought their career, the Three Stooges believed in rehearsal. Like an Abbott and Costello verbal routine, they physical movements of the Stooges required each to know exactly what the other was going to be doing at any given moment.
 

Eric Lamond, Larry Fine’s (Larry one of the Original Stooges) grandson, assisted them late in their careers and recalled that they still rehearsed routines they had done many times before. They made intricate, difficult simultaneous physical movements look natural and spontaneous. That professionalism and ability set them apart from other physical comedians. Emil Sitka observed, “Moe was all business and wanted the best performance possible from everyone. He was very particular about how fans were treated and how the gags were performed.”
   

When giving a presentation the goal is to make it look so easy that people say “I can do that!” many people get so nervous it looks like you are struggling to say the right thing. The best way to make a speech look easy is to prepare. Write and rewrite the speech. Rehearse and rehearse. Know you presentation so well that you can add your personality to it. Know it so well that you can concentrate on the delivery of it and not worry about just trying to say the next line. Try recording it and listening to yourself. This is a good way to perfect your presentation you can tell what sound good and what needs more work. Too bad some of those auditioning for American Idol didn’t do that they wouldn’t have embarrassed themselves in front of millions of viewers.

When I am giving my motivational humor speeches I prepare weeks in advance so that I know exactly what I am going to say and I can concentrate on my delivery. I rehearse and rehearse and depending on the audience I even take it to a test audience to make sure the humor will work. Much of the material is material I use over and over, but I want to make sure that the material is right for the audience I will be speaking to and any new material intended specifically for that particular audience fits in to the presentation.

Many people don’t like to memorize their speeches or rehearse too much because they are afraid that it will start to sound rehearsed. This is true if you are just attempting to memorize you presentation, but if you are always working to enhance the delivery it won’t sound stale when you give it. The better you know your presentation the easier it will be to “ad lib” a line here and there creating a spontaneous feel to it. Work hard preparing your speech so that it is so good people will say, “I can do that!”