April 30, 2014 by John Andrew Williams
Today’s Thought: Laughing (and creating laughter) is good for your health
I couldn’t tell you how thrilled I was to see Humor make it into Peterson and Seligman’s Character Strengths and Virtues. I was equally thrilled that after reading positive psychologists take on humor that they didn’t ruin comedy for me. In fact, I think they may have made it even better, which is a minor miracle considering how stupor inducing the text is at points.
Let’s get the dry facts out the way first and see if we can pin down a technical definition of humor and funny and maybe even get a nuance here and there.
Then let’s see if I can throw down a challenge for these next two weeks to follow. (I think I have one cooked up, based on a previous stand-up class that I took from Alex Falcone, who will be making an appearance on the blog – finger’s crossed! – .)
But first, the dirty deeds of funny from the driest possible source: positive psychologists.
Fun Facts about Funny:
And just to be super clear there are two main channels of study when it comes to funny.
#1 Studying “humorous products” like jokes or sketches
#2 Studying people who appreciates and generates humor
Character Strengths and Virtues spends the chapter focused on the latter, and so will I in these next two weeks. (Although I can’t promise that I’ll break down a few jokes and sketches here and there.) Now that we’ve at least got a brief history and a definition, let’s look at a doable two-week challenge. Mine (and yours if you so choose to accept it as well) is to come up with a minute worth of stand-up material.
The first step – and I’m taking this directly from my comic teacher Alex Falcone’s stand-up class – is to simply write observations about yourself or something that’s important to you. For instance, typing on computers is fun. A sound of a keyboard sounds a lot like rain. Sometimes it’s faster to retype rather than cut and paste. I never use my left thumb when typing. Etc. You get the idea.
For the next week, I’m going to devote 30 minutes a day to simply logging observations.
Join me?
Also read: Truth, Pain, and Emotion
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To provide life coach training that changes lives, launches careers, and promotes human flourishing.
contact@academiclifecoaching.com
PO Box 2021
Hood River, Oregon 97031
To provide life coach training that changes lives, launches careers, and promotes human flourishing.
contact@academiclifecoaching.com
PO Box 2021
Hood River, Oregon 97031
This website is powered by