I’m busy reading a fantastic book: “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” by Daniel Pink. Right-brain-driven thinking involves the ability to think holistically and see the “big picture”, to notice the relationships between objects in a system, the ability to think creatively, intuitively and tangentially, the ability to recognise patterns and to understand metaphors, and the ability to interpret other people’s emotions and express your own emotions. Pink does a great job or laying out the changes that are taking place globally in the world of work, and explaining why Right-brain-driven thinking is becoming a success necessity instead of a “nice-to-have.”

One of the facets of Right-brain-driven thinking is play and humour. Apart from the fact that it’s now widely accepted that laughter strengthens the immune system and improves health, increases longevity, elevates general mood over time, and facilitates social bonding, researchers have found clear evidence that people who are having fun are more productive in the workplace, and that humour dramatically improves management success. Practicing humour appears to improve creativity and problem-solving ability – probably because it switches us out of our stress response, which opens up our thinking (with the side-benefit that if you don’t come up with a solution, you’re likely to at least recognise that it’s gonna make a great story!)

Yet, in spite of this evidence, we still take ourselves incredibly seriously – especially in the workplace. For most of us, we were conditioned throughout our schooling, that laughing means you’re being naughty and unproductive, so to be successful, we need to be very serious. I’ve known about the neurological benefits of laughter for sometime, yet I haven’t quite appreciated how it opens up your thinking. Recently, I had an experience that helped me to “get it”.

I’d been in the process of developing a new program and found myself stuck. I just couldn’t see my next steps and there were a bunch of obstacles I couldn’t get my head around. So, in my procrastination, I found myself entering a comedy “world’s worst life coach” video competition run by Martha Beck. To my surprise, I got some massive shifts in thinking as a result of focusing on laughing at myself for just 30 minutes. After making the video, I was in high spirits, full of energy, and I sat down and thrashed out solutions and a clear plan for progressing the project I’d previously felt stuck with that very afternoon.

Here’s my “world’s worst life coach” video:

and you can find the other entries here.

The cool thing about laughing that researchers have discovered is that you don’t even need to have a good reason to laugh, in order to enjoy the benefits of laughter, because the body doesn’t know the difference between real and fake laughter. Laughter Yoga is a movement that’s sprung up out of this realisation, and now has groups of people getting together all over the world, to practice laughing together. Check out this video about it:

While you could just act like you’re laughing to get the benefits of laughter, laughing at stuff you find genuinely funny is so much fun, so here are a few resources to get you started:

The Fail Blog

Flight of the Concordes

xkcd comics

And, to remind you how natural laughter is, and how you used to laugh as a child, before you learned that laughing is unproductive:

Enjoy laughing your way to success!

P.S. Drop a note in the comments below and share some of your funny resources too!

P.P.S. I’m looking forward to sharing more about Pink’s insights with you through the Bottom-line Bookclub in the next few months!

Photo by Harvey Dogson

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