George Gilbert’s Motivational Humor

“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.” Victor Hugo

“If I have caused just one person to wipe away a tear of laughter, that’s my reward.” Victor Borge

Making people laugh is very therapeutic. I used to criticize would be comics for getting up on open mike night and using stage time for therapy. And I still do. When they aren’t even trying to be funny. I would see people get up and tell these awful stories about their lives that should be reserved for a psychologists couch. These stories weren’t funny. There was no real attempt at writing a joke, it was just a chance for someone to get up and tell the world their problems. I call it the “Jerry Springer effect.”

But making people laugh can get you out of your doldrums. The other night I appeared at an event. This was the first event I had performed at since my mother had surgery for lung cancer. I have been using laughter therapy on her and myself to overcome the stress of her illness. But the last few days I found myself not as positive as I normally am. Even moments before getting up on stage I wasn’t in the mood to speak. As soon as I was introduced I found myself getting that positive feeling back. I stepped on to the podium, stood up in front of the audience, and I found myself shedding away all negative feelings. The laughter from the audience made me feel good about myself again. I have been doing stand-up comedy since the age of 12 and making people laugh is not only my career it’s my mission. Becoming a motivational humorist has been most rewarding for me. Being able to make people laugh and then expounding on the benefits of humor and laughter has given new meaning to my life. When I can make an audience laugh, I know I have made them forget about their problems even if it’s just for a few minutes.  Milton Berle said, “Laughter is an instant vacation.” Laughter is a vacation from the stresses we put on our selves. Like going on a vacation we go to get away from our every day problems.  

Over the past several years not only do I get the instant reward of an audience’s laughter, but the extra benefit of members in the audience coming up to me to tell me their experiences with laughter therapy. I gave a presentation at the Bellagio in Las Vegas last year to the International Association of Building Contractors. As I was collecting my props several people came up to me. They wanted to share their stories with me. One lady told me about her son, who was a police officer in the town where she lived. One night while on patrol he accidentally came across a pipe bomb. The bomb blew up in his hand. This is not something you would think would be something discussed in the same topic with humor. The lady told me that her son was in pretty good spirits about the incident and one of the reasons was many of the family members started making humorous comments about it. At first she was mortified that they would joke about her son losing his fingers in front of him until she realized that he was laughing and that it was a way of coping with the loss of most of his fingers. In order to cope sometimes we laugh at very morbid subjects. Subjects that others would be offended by. Even though they probably didn’t realize it, joking about the accident was also a way that family members used to cope with this near tragedy and they felt better making him laugh.

You don’t have to get up on stage to reap the benefits of making people laugh. Share humor with a friend or group of friends. Call someone up, especially someone you know going through a challenging time, and tell them a joke. Send a friend a humorous card, let them know you are thinking of them. Clip out a funny article or cartoon from the paper and put it up on the bulletin board at work. You will immediately feel the positive effect of your mental state by making someone laugh. Making someone laugh is a win-win situation. What I have found is that sharing humor with the audience is your gift to them and their laughter is their gift to you.  

We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can. –Will Rogers

“Death has had a lot of bad press. Many hours are spent in dread of this great mystery. …Our society is so uncomfortable with death that despite the incredible concern about it, few people are willing to discuss it openly as a stimulating topic of conversation.” – Patch Adams M.D.

Art Buchwald who recently had his leg amputated at the age of 80 and is now living in a hospice recently appeared on the today show on NBC. Tom Brokaw asked him about his life lessons and how he was coping with living in a hospice. For many this would be a depressing time, but for Art Buchwald who has been a humorist for most of his professional life it was an opportunity to say good buy to his friends and family. Despite the fact that his health is failing he has been able to maintain his sense of humor helping cope with impending death. When Tom Brokaw asked him about friends visiting him he joked that “people when they visit you at a in a place like this they feel they have to bring you food. I don’t know what I am going to do with another bag of bagels.” He laughed and said he has had about 10 pastrami sandwiches since he has been in the hospice.

Later Tom Brokaw joked about receiving an invitation to eulogize Art at his memorial service. In the invitation it said something to the effect that Art Buchwald has invited you to speak as his memorial. This is an opportunity to say something nice about Art in his presence. Please keep it about three minutes.

What a positive way to cope with the end of your life. I realize that many don’t have the opportunity to celebrate their life at the end, but to use and share humor with friends and family is a wonderful way of helping those around cope with your death.

Before my mother went in for her cancer surgery earlier this year not only did we use laughter therapy to cope with this serious illness, but she gave me strict instructions not to waste too much money on a big funeral but to invest that expenditure into a big party in her honor. Rather than mourn the loss, celebrate her life with humor and joy. After hearing Art Buchwald’s interview she said, “I don’t want you to wait until I’m gone to have the party. I want to enjoy it and hear what people are saying about me.” I joked are you sure you really want to hear what people are saying about you?”

Obviously no one wants to succumb to the inevitable, but maintaining your humor can help ease the grief by your loved ones. In an earlier article, entitled “Laughter and Bereavement”, I talked about how the late Morey Amsterdam from the old Dick Van Dyke Show taught me about keeping a sense of humor while morning the loss of a loved one. I have had several people come up to me after speaking to their organization on “laughter as a wellness program” entitled “Take Two Laughs and Call Me In the Morning” to tell me how they coped with the loss of a loved one using humor and laughter therapy. One lady and her daughter said, “When my husband died my daughter and I sat around and shared funny stories about my husband. It really helped us cope and get over the bereavement period much sooner than my two sons who thought is was inappropriate to laugh at such a time. It took them much longer to get over the loss of their father than it took my daughter and me.”

While doing a workshop for the Nevada Donor Network a couple of years ago. I talked about maintaining humor while dealing with the loss of loved ones. They have the challenge of having to deal with death on a daily basis while trying to give life to others. This can be very stressful. One of the employees shared with the group that she used humor to cope with the loss of her brother. He was always telling jokes. At the funeral during the eulogy rather that tell a sad story she told his favorite joke. Everyone laughed.

I admit that keeping a sense of humor during times like these is difficult. We have been conditioned to mourn and weep and at times been made to feel guilty when using humor when losing a loved one. But the fact is I would rather remember a loved one with the humor and laughter that we shared than to have my last thoughts of them as sick and failing. Laughter has long been used as a coping mechanism while under stress. The loss of a loved is one of the most stressful times. Why not use humor to overcome the stress of losing friends and family.

Here are some humorous quotes about death and dying.

“Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.”  -Yogi Berra.

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.”
- Woody Allen
 

“Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult.”
- Edmund Gwenn
 

“Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.”
- Redd Foxx
 

“The report of my death was an exaggeration.” (New York Journal, June 1897)
- Mark Twain

“If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the up button.”
- Sam Levenson

With the exception of the 15th, April is my favorite month. Two very important things in my life take place in April. It’s National Humor Month and National Donate Life Month. Both of these causes play a very significant role in my life. As a motivational humorist I not only speak on the importance and benefits of humor in our lives, but since my  ex-wife Dori’s kidney/pancreas transplant, I often speak to inspire organ and tissue donation. To medical personnel in that field I speak from the patient’s point of view and how we used humor to deal with such a serious illness. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could combine the two! For instance, if a person is lacking a sense of humor, we could give that person a transplant of a funny bone or a humorous.
 

If it weren’t for her kidney/pancreas transplant Dori would probably not be here today or at least not enjoy the quality of life she enjoys today. Needing and waiting for a transplant can be a very traumatic and painful experience, but humor helped to alleviate some of that trauma and stress. This does not mean we didn’t have our pity parties but laughter kept those pity parties from developing into a major depression.
 

Not long after the transplant, while she was still in the hospital, I knew healthwise Dori was feeling better because she started to worry about her looks instead of her health. I came into her hospital room one morning and she was looking in the mirror. “I look terrible,” she said, “I have all these staples down my front.” I joked, “You look beautiful! Just like a Playboy Centerfold, and even they have staples down the front.” A little bit of humor can ease the mental anguish of dealing with a serious illness or situation. Laughter can put a different perspective on a stressful situation.

What simple step can you take to relieve stress, lower blood pressure, boost your immune system, and enjoy an overall feeling of well being? Laugh more. There is even evidence that laughter makes the heart grow stronger. Michael Miller, M.D., F.A.C.C., director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland says, “We don’t know yet why laughing protects the heart but we know that mental stress is associated with impairment of the endothelium, the protective barrier lining our blood vessels. This can cause a series of inflammatory reactions that lead to fat and cholesterol build-up in the coronary arteries and ultimately to a heart attack.” Elbert Hubbard said “Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.” Maybe the phrase “I died laughing” should be changed to “I died because I didn’t laugh.”

Have you ever heard someone say, “It hurts to laugh”? Actually laughter can ease pain. When you laugh you release a natural pain-killing drug in your system called endorphins. Endorphins are much like morphine but with no bad side effects. Norman Cousins, author of “Anatomy of an Illness”, who suffered from a chronic painful illness, found that if he could laugh for ten minutes he could get two hours of pain free sleep.

Mirth is God’s medicine.  Everybody ought to bathe in it.  ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Thank you for all the email, cards and good wishes in response to mom’s condition. On February 8 my mother Humorist Tulara Lee had a Lobe Ectomy to remove her upper left lung due to cancer. Like Dana Reeve mom never smoked. She is expected to make a full recovery.

Along with your thoughts and prayers laughter helped us get through her surgery and recovery. Using laughter therapy immediately before surgery put mom at ease in such a stressful situation. We were telling jokes and laughing right up until the time the surgical staff wheeled her into the operating room.

I broke out into an adlib stand-up monologue about doctors nurses and hospitals. Making up jokes on anything I could to put us both at ease. I said, “the reason they give you those gowns that open in the back is because even Doctors need a laugh.” Much of the humor we can’t remember now because I was making it up as we went along, but I know that if I tried to do it on stage I wouldn’t get a laugh, but at the time it was funny and somewhat appropriate.

Even the doctor bought into the humor. He also joked with us about the surgery. The doctor asked mom a question. And Mom responded by saying to the doctor, “you’re the expert.” And the doctor said, “No I’ve never done this before, but I have a how to book. May be you could hold it for me while I’m operating on you.”  Making us laugh.

After the surgery she was in intensive care for awhile but that didn’t stop us from finding humor and laughter in the recovery. I joked that, “some humor is dead pan while hers is bed pan.”  When it came time to remove a tube mom asked the doctor, “will it hurt?” the doctor responded by saying, “I have been doing this for over thirty years and it hasn’t hurt me yet.”

After leaving the hospital it was important to keep our spirits up by watching humorous videos and DVD’s while she was recuperating. She watched reruns of television show like “Everybody Loves Raymond” the old “Flip Wilson” comedy show, “Andy Griffith Show.” Shows that make her laugh.

I found myself handling the big things, but stressing over small unimportant things and had to remember to practice what I preach. One night I wasn’t in the best of moods, while channel surfing I came across a two-hour version of “Americas Funniest Home Video’s” I very seldom watch that show, but on this occasion it was just what the doctor ordered. The videos made me laugh out loud for most of the two hours and it was very cathartic.

Today mom is still recovering and is getting stronger every day. She is getting ready to join me on the speaking circuit again and looks forward to speaking with me in April. Laughter helped get us through her surgery

It is important to find humor while going through something as physically and emotionally challenging as surgery. Norman Cousins said: “Laughter is a powerful way to tap positive emotions”