Laughing at what we do, not who we are

Laughter is a very powerful tool, yet often discounted as 'silly' and unimportant. When we laugh and challenge our negative thoughts and feelings, we can lighten our mood and impact positively on others. I'm not talking about cruel laughter. Laughing at someone or putting them (or ourselves) down is diminishing, hurtful and mean spirited. Humiliation is not funny. It's immensely damaging when we laugh at ourselves (or others) for being who we are. This is very different to laughing at what we do.

An example of laughing at what we do and not who we are can be summed up in an experience I had the other day. I was filling my car with petrol at a garage. I put my purse on the car roof whilst unscrewing the petrol cap, attempting to manipulate the fuel pipe (which had a mind of it's own), and struggling to point the nozzle into the tank. Without warning, my purse slid off the car roof and splashed into a surprisingly deep puddle of rainwater. My first reaction was to say a few expletives under my breath. As I stood holding on to the wild, wayward pipe my poor purse sat in the puddle waiting to be rescued. In this moment, I recognized I had a choice. I could either get angry or I could laugh. I acknowledged to myself I was rushing and not focusing on what I was doing at the time - and recognized this was an old pattern.

I deliberately chose to laugh and chuckled to myself as I thought about the comedy in the situation. I pictured myself in the scene and laughed at the ridiculousness of it all - wrestling with the fuel pipe coming out of the pump as if it were a massive snake! In this example I am not laughing at myself for who I am. My laughter was about what I did and the situation. Had I got angry, I would have gone through a familiar sequence of old, out-dated feelings - of getting angry, probably feeling ashamed for 'being so foolish' followed by feeling sad. This domino effect of starting with one thought/feeling and ending up with a negative 'payoff' of feeling bad in some way would not have helped me or my soggy purse. Laughing in this situation meant I got over it far quicker than if I had got angry and instead of the situation getting me down, I used it to lift me up.