The Enriching Effects of Humor as a Habit

I have a challenge for you: think back on all of the books, articles, and keynote speeches about self-improvement and growth you’ve consumed through the years. Now think of as many things as possible that they’ve identified as key traits for being successful.

Go.

Okay, stop. What did your list look like? Something like this, I imagine:

Optimism, resilience, grit, curiosity, emotional intelligence, empathy, passion, drive, listening….and so on.

Those are all valuable traits to have, for sure. But there is one tool that I think gets talked about less than it needs to be as an important part of the toolkit for success: a sense of humor.

Why do I think this? Well first, let me define what I mean by a sense of humor. A sense of humor involves a few things:

1. The ability to stop — for an extended period of time — taking yourself seriously.
2. The disposition to see people, events, actions, and institutions as imperfect, and subject to being laughed at when they present themselves otherwise.
3. An appreciation for when the expected or desired order of things is not followed or is disrupted.

This is not a complete definition of a sense of humor, but it captures what I feel are the main components of it.

So why is a sense of humor important for success? Well, as a knock-on effect of merely realizing the above 3 things, you acknowledge the imperfection of both yourself, others, and various social constructs — like a company, industry, or government. When you realize the imperfection of yourself or something else, you are in a better position to make it better.

Beyond that, there are a few things that come with having a sense of humor that make success in life more easier to come by:

If you can laugh about it, you cannot be defeated by it

Things will go wrong for you at some time. You will make plans, and those plans will fall apart. You will come to rely on people or things, and they will fail to come through. It is part of life.

Stoicism has become popular recently thanks to its suggestion that we build a distance between things that happen to us and our reactions to them. What often makes us so emotionally distraught when things don’t go our way is our emotional attachment to certain outcomes. When they don’t happen, we are devastated.

Being able to laugh when things don’t go your way means detaching from your desires and dependencies just enough so that they don’t decimate you. It’s about a strategic emotional distance. Humor provides that distance, and maintains it.

A Sense of humor is a mark of intelligence

There is a decent set of research that shows a positive correlation between humor and intelligence. People who are able to make jokes about things tend to have a wider array of knowledge, and have made more connections between various areas in academia and business.

Caveat Emptor: Humor is Not Hurtful

A sense of humor does not mean getting a laugh at the expense of others. Everyone knows someone like this — the person who exploits social dynamics, insecurities, and pain of others for a laugh.

These people also tend to oversimplify nuanced things like psychological disorders or cultural beliefs in order to get easy laughs. Jokes that rely on those things are not indicators of a sense of humor, but rather a sign of intellectual laziness.

How to Make Humor a Habit

So how do you cultivate a sense of humor in daily life? I use a simple exercise: I think about myself and others as children on a playground, trying to do all the things children do on a playground: find a toy that’s fun to play with, find a person to play with you, dig in the dirt, go exploring, etc. Essentially, I think of every action and reaction as that of a young child on a crowded playground, just trying to make the most of things.

When I remember to adopt that view, the anger and the tantrums of others, as well as my own, become easier to laugh at a little. We get so frustrated sometimes, and we lash out — exactly like children fighting over a toy truck, or throwing sand because it’s not we enough to pack into a sand castle.

This isn’t to say that I minimize tragedy or misfortune. I wouldn’t do that to a child either. My 3 year-old daughter has breakdowns about things like blocks falling over, and I comfort her, and tell her “it’s all right. Blocks fall down all the time. We can rebuild, and it will be fun.”

But though I want to help her feel better, it is much easier to do that when I am not taking everything so seriously myself.

And that is the key. When you stop taking things so seriously, it’s the key to serious growth.

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