Sometimes the easiest way to see it differently is to find something funny about it.
It’s Not Funny. Or Is It?
Some people are experts at finding the humor in situations that just aren’t funny. These people annoy me. Hahaha. But if I’m honest when I am feeling grounded and calm and at my best it’s pretty easy for me to find the fun too. Finding the humor in any situation is very much like finding gratitude in any situation. They are both practices of perspective-shifting or reframing.
The number one rule of reframing is that we do it for ourselves not for other people. For example, imagine that someone is having some difficult emotions dealing with the loss of having their car stolen. We shouldn’t tell them what they should be grateful for or make jokes so that they can find the humor in the situation. It is very dismissive to paint over their picture of the situation with our own version. It’s always best to be compassionate and validate their feelings. After we have really heard them and validated their feelings we may choose to invite them to consider another perspective by asking them what they are grateful for or asking them if there has been any unexpected humor that has emerged.
The best way to reframe is to do it for ourselves. For instance about a month ago I was in a car crash and my car was totaled. It didn’t take me long to find gratitude for no one being hurt. So I was already reframing it for myself through gratitude. But after a couple of days I began to find the humor in the experience, telling people a version of the story that made me laugh. The car crash was my fault and I had been caught in a loop of shaming myself. But telling this humorous version of the story helped me break free of this other story of me being a bad person for causing the accident.
Maybe there is humor to be found in any situation and we just need to be open to the possibility that it is there. Just like gratitude. Maybe humor can be the gateway to gratitude or gratitude can be the gateway to humor. Either one can help us find the good which might be just the hope we need to move forward.
There’s something funny in everything.
~Louis Brenner
What are your grateful to find the fun in?
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