Use humour

When did you last find yourself in a situation where humour just emerged between the lines? Or when did you last have a laugh so deep you could feel it deep inside yourself? Humour not only lifts your mood momentarily, it is also a powerful enabler of your overall psychological capacity at home and at work as well.

What do we know about humour and resilience from science?

We know that our response to humour consists of two components–a cognitive component when we understand it, and an emotional component when we enjoy it and find it fun (Southwick and Charney, 2012). Thus, humour activates different areas of our brain and thereby broadens the kind of attention that leads to exploration, creativity and flexibility in our thinking. This is so, because humour broadens our momentary thought-action repertoire (Fredrickson, 1998).

At the same time, humour builds enduring personal resources that suit situations in our private life as well as organisational situations. Humour incorporates resilience mechanisms such as cognitive reappraisal, active problem-focussed coping and infusion of positive meaning into ordinary events. As Viktor Frankl (1963), Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, remarked on humour in his search for meaning, it is “another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation” and the “ability to rise above any situation, even if for a few seconds”. I believe these seconds can be very important to create the capacity to generate alternative approaches and solutions to problems when we get lost or stuck. For example, humour can help us face our fears, reducing stress hormones and neurotransmitters, such as cortisol, norepinephrine (noradrenaline) and epinephrine (adrenaline), by presenting the positive and negative at once. This way of refining things is associated with optimism and positive psychological mental health (Reivich and Shatté, 2003).

Professor Ann Graber (2004) said that humour combines optimism with a “realistic look at the tragic” by confronting, reframing and sometimes transforming the tragic. This is an important component of resilience (thriving, learning and growing despite adversity) because it helps us confront and cope with things we fear or find painful, while at the same time being exposed to it in the right amount of passivity. We are still psychologically safe because of the distance and the control created by humour in itself. Frankl noted (1986) that through humour “we make use of the specifically human capacity for self-detachment inherent in a sense of humour”.

A “fun” way to survive or not, humour is associated with the ability to tolerate stressful situations (Martin et al., 2003). We do this by reducing tensions and psychological discomfort, but also by attracting support from others. This addresses a relational perspective. Let me unfold this with an example from my work as a leadership consultant.