Five Ways to Sharpen Your Sense of Humor and Improve Your
Relationships
Humor has long been considered one of the most
effective tools to judge the quality of any relationship and
this applies, as well, to the speaker/audience relationship.
If there is laughter present you can be sure the relationship
you have with your audience is a great one. When the laughter
ceases so does audience attention. I always say that what
people learn laughing they remember. If you want to have a
more positive, fulfilling relationship with your audience you
might want to consider sharpening your sense of humor as a
great place to start.
Here are five ways to improve your sense of humor and improve
your relationships in the process.
1. Begin to cultivate an atmosphere of humor and laughter
in your relationships by focussing on the funny things in
life and enjoying the laughter they evoke. Soon you will be
seeing humor all over and enjoying it fully.
2. If you don ’t laugh as much as you used to and want to
correct the situation start associating with humorous, fun
loving people and avoid the downers.
3. Learn to laugh at yourself. If you don’t you leave the job
to others. So many people are unable to laugh at themselves
because of their own insecurities and fears. We are afraid to
look foolish in the eyes of others and appear to be
incompetent. It is important to realize that we all make
mistakes and when we do a good laugh makes the mistake seem
trivial and human.
4. Collect cartoons and jokes and put them on display on the
fridge or the bulletin board for all to see and enjoy. Make
sure to avoid racist, sexist or filthy humor. There is plenty
of good clean humor to go around without resorting to these.
Remember that there is a difference between dirty and earthy
humor. I personally like earthy humor. I don’t appreciate
dirty material.
5. Use humor to neutralize conflict in your relationships.
When things get tense use self deprecating humor to lighten
things up. I remember one evening having an argument with my
wife, Carol. In the heat of the moment she said something
totally out of character. She said something hurtful. In my
surprise I looked at her and said, “ Carol, when you say
things like that you stoop to my level.” She started to laugh
and so did I. It wasn’t long before things were back to normal.
Remember that a sense of humor is learned, not
inherited. You can sharpen your sense of humor if you really
want to. When you do, you will find that your relationships
become richer and more rewarding and that people find you more
attractive and fun to be with. This alone makes improving
your sense of humor worth the effort.
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