Find Your Funny!

Hint: look in the trash can of your 6th grade gym class

I just came from the Erma Bombeck Writers Conference, where I found SO MUCH FUNNY. Who remembers Erma? She started writing during her mid-life, in the 1970s, and helped millions of moms find their funny bones.

In Erma’s honor, and because we have lots of new subscribers, here’s what I wrote about finding our funny about a year ago…

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A sense of humor is a precious thing. Not precious like a Tiffany lamp…more like an antibiotic when you’ve just been diagnosed with flesh-eating bacteria. Sometimes laughing is truly our only medicine.

Sadly, some of us have misplaced our prescription…and some of us let bullies steal it in grade school when we were trying to figure out how to be our safest selves.

That might just be me.

I was a serious kid, which I blame on being the oldest girl in a family with four feral brothers. Somebody had to be serious. Also, I had buck teeth and a gangly too-tall body, so when I heard somebody laughing, I did a quick foot check to see if I was dragging toilet paper or wearing two different shoes. I was too busy to laugh because I was worrying about being laughed AT.

But I grew up fine…with just a little bit of a resting b!#@h face…until teenaged daughters became my flesh-eating bacteria. If I hadn’t found a way to find the funny in those days, I would have been consumed. Thankfully laughter, twisted sarcasm and a tiny art studio became my miracle meds.

Kids and laundry inspire creativity.

When something seems too good to be true, I usually try to ruin it by researching it. Here’s what I learned about laughter and creativity in four years of search engine diving, while researching my book, Start More Than You Can Finish:

1. Laughter and creativity have a lot in common.

• They both have many of the same health and happiness benefits – they both can reduce stress and anxiety, improve mental functions, keep us in the moment, help with depression, boost immunity, and relieve pain.

• They’re both under appreciated and misunderstood.

• They have common enemies: PSAT tests and bullies.

Take this quiz to see what you know about laughter. I promise a few surprises.

2. Laughing makes us feel better and look better. I know, I sound like a Cosmo article, but I have the receipts: Laughter makes us feel better for all kinds of reasons, but the big one: it decreases cortisal and increases endorphins. And none of the serious scientists will go out on a limb like I will, but I’m going to say it: laughing can make us look better. Yes, we’re all more attractive when we’re laughing. And…

   Can laughter make your hair grow? Maybe.

   Can it tighten saggy jowls? Probably.

   Can it help you lose weight? Absolutely. (Laughing just 15 minutes a day could burn enough calories to lose up to 4.5 pounds in a year)

   Let’s all test these hypotheses before we shoot them down.

3. Laughing helps us create, and creativity helps us laugh.

Research proves it. Creativity and humor are not two separate mental processes.

When we laugh, we activate both sides of the brain. That’s the key to increasing neural connections and improving cognitive function. The act of laughing stimulates the brain in ways that can fuel creative thinking. In fact, humor is actually used as an indicator to evaluate the potential of creativity. Find your Laughter Quotient with THIS QUIZ.

4. Every day, you can find ways to use laughter to improve creativity and problem solving:

   • Binge watch cat videos and Kathleen Madigan.

   • Hang out with people who laugh a lot.

   • Hang out with people who YOU find funny – they don’t have to be laughing, as long as you are.

   • Take a laughing yoga class. It’s a THING, friends.

   • Subscribe to funny newsletters and columns, and read funny books. My faves: McSweeneys, the New Yorker Humor and the book that my husband won’t let me read in bed anymore, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.

   • Go to live comedy shows. (If you’re in Kansas City, come to my show, The Ladies Laugh Lounge on April 24 & 25, 2024.)

I think of laughter the way I think about stARTing and creating. If we leave them to chance, they may not happen. We have to take proactive measures.

I can hear you whining…”Why should I work so hard to find laughs? I’m good. I’ll just get my laughs the way God intended…from the novices at the self checkout lane in the grocery store.”

Well. Okay. I guess.

In case it helps, Here’s Erma Bombeck’s definition of laughter: