Want More Joy? Try Taking Yourself Less Seriously ft. Chris Duffy | The Happiness Lab Podcast

Key Takeaway

Today, practice the “new bathroom mindset” for 10 minutes: move through one familiar place as if you have never seen it before. Notice odd signs, tiny design choices, overheard phrases, or your own routines, and write down three things that seem strange, delightful, or absurd. You do not need to turn them into jokes. Training your attention to spot everyday weirdness builds presence, interrupts autopilot, and gives you more material for laughter and connection.

Episode Overview

Comedian and author Chris Duffy explains why humor is not about denying hardship or becoming a professional joke-teller. Drawing on research and comedy practice, he argues that people can cultivate more joy through noticing absurdity, laughing at their own imperfections with compassion, and taking small social risks. Laurie Santos also joins Duffy for an improv exercise that demonstrates how loosening self-criticism can unlock creativity and connection.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Want More Joy? Try Taking Yourself Less Seriously ft. Chris Duffy | The Happiness Lab Podcast from The Happiness Lab. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

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That's brilliant.org slash tutor. Pushkin. I've been trying to push myself to try new things on my sabbatical this semester, and one of the new things I've decided to try, much against my better judgment, is an improv comedy class. I assumed my natural talents as a beloved podcast host and professor would easily translate into the world of improv. Turns out, comedy is not just about improv, it's also about being creative. I absolutely adore my improv class, but it's taught me to have a lot of respect for the craft of comedy and for the people who naturally make everyone around them crack up, people like today's guest.

Hi, I'm Chris Duffy. I'm a comedian and the author of Humor Me, a new book about how to laugh more every day. Comedian Chris Duffy has written jokes for celebrities like Ted Danson and Jeff Goldblum. He also hosts the hit podcast, How to Be a Better Human. I was a young, recently graduated person who wanted to be a journalist and had applied to pretty much every newspaper in the country. And they'd all said, we are not hiring journalists. In fact, we are firing them and we've gone out of business.

Chris graduated from college during the Great Recession, a time when many young people were having difficulty finding work in their chosen fields. And so he pivoted. I said, OK, I've always wanted to be a journalist. I've always wanted to be a comedian. I've always wanted to be a writer. And so he pivoted. And I said, OK, I've also always loved teaching. Let me work as a teacher and I'll be this inspiring figure where I change young people's lives. But that didn't go as planned either. I got to the classroom and I realized, oh, no, I am not changing people's lives on day one.

In fact, they are in control of the classroom and I need to learn the most basic things, like how to get people to sit in their seats and listen to what I'm saying. And it was so much harder than I expected it to be. And I was so much worse at it than I had been in my imagined version. And I just felt really bad. And so Chris did what many motivated young people decide to do when things in their career aren't going well. I had this idea that was like the only solution is for me to just work harder to take away the things that are fun in my life.

So like stop doing hobbies, stop hanging out with friends and just like focus everything on the problem. And the problem in this moment was that I'm not a good enough teacher. And what I found is that I really quickly started burning out. I was becoming a worse teacher because now I was getting frustrated all the time. I didn't have any sources of joy and pleasure that could connect me to the kids and to my other teachers. And one day I was just like riding home on the bus and it was dark outside and I had gotten to work when it was dark outside and it was cold and wet and dreary, you know, classic New England winter.

And I just thought, like, this is awful. I haven't laughed in so long. And my life is so not fun. It was at that moment that Chris, depressed and burnt out and in dire need of a little joy, started browsing through his school's student newspaper. One of the students in the class that I actually was struggling with the most, a kid who I really had trouble connecting with, he started a column where he reviewed cafeteria food. And this kid, Gary, wrote the funniest food reviews I've ever read.

And he was just honestly reporting on what he thought about like chicken hot dogs. I read them on the bus and I was just laughing so hard. And that was such a cathartic moment. And it made me realize, oh, this is a thing that has been really missing from my life. And maybe if I don't try and force myself to be as serious as possible, but instead bring in some humor and some lightness and allow myself to have that joy again, maybe that can help. Do you remember any of those lunchtime reviews?

There is never a moment in my life where Gary's reviews are more than a ten second grab away. Would you like me to read you one verbatim? Sure. They are truly on my desktop and also not just on my desktop. It's printed out, folded up in my backpack so that when I travel, I have them. OK, so the headline here is, um, pizza or cardboard. Brooks, food critic, takes on the daily lunches by Gary, sixth grade, whole wheat, two cheese pizza with spinach and fresh fruit.

This dish, originally from Italy, looks like cardboard when it is served. You can't taste the sauce or the cheese. The least they could do is put some pepperoni on top. Real pizza is pizza where you get to choose your toppings and it contains lots of sauce and cheese. The smell of real pizza is like the smell when you've just come out of the shower and used your sister's shampoo. It's so good. On the plus side, the pizza arrived at our table warm and the fruit actually looked fresh.

Overall, I give this lunch two out of five stars. Well, first of all, that's a tough critic that that meal only got two stars. I also love that he describes pizza as a dish originally from Italy. I have so many questions about what brand of shampoo his sister was using that it smells like fresh pizza to him. But gosh, I love that so much. It might seem odd to place so much importance on a sixth graders cafeteria column. But Chris looks back on that particular bus ride as a major turning point in his life.

I know it's like the classic nonfiction story of like, and that moment led to this book and changed my life. But it really did transform the way that I saw the world and led to the career that I've had and to the book that I wrote. Chris's new book is called Humor Me, how laughing more can make you present, creative, connected and happy. It's packed with behavioral science research, entertaining stories and practical advice. And in this episode of our back to school book series, Chris breaks down some of my favorite takeaways so that we can all learn to incorporate a little more laughter and delight into our lives, especially during the moments we need it most.

Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy, but what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction. You're listening to The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos. So your book makes the strong claim that any tough situation in life has room for humor. Tell me what you mean there.

I think in some ways to me, humor is kind of like the opposite of toxic positivity, which is that, you know, in every dark cloud, there's a silver lining and anything you're going through, there's a bright side. And I really don't believe that. So to be clear, I'm not saying that. Instead, I'm saying that humor can often be a way of acknowledging the reality of a situation, which means that sometimes the laughter comes from how bad it is, that it's just like, I thought this couldn't get worse and it got even worse.

And I think the biggest disclaimer I'll say, because I do believe that you can find humor in any situation, you can't always find it in any situation in the moment. There's a thing that a lot of comedians talk about is a formula that's comedy is tragedy plus time. Sometimes we need the time to see the comedic elements, the absurd, the bizarre things that happened in that experience. But, you know, things like grief, like suffering, these are universal human experiences and the things that are universal are often the ones that we can laugh about and connect on because it's a place where we have all been.

Another question I have is, can we build our sense of humor? I'm curious what you used to think when you first started teaching comedy and what you think now. I originally kind of believed that there are funny people and there are not funny people, that you're kind of born with it or you're not. And now I think about it more like athletic ability, which is to say that I can swim as much as I want and I'm never going to beat Katie Ledecky in a swim race.

Right. I'm not going to become an Olympic gold medal swimmer, but that doesn't mean that I can't get better at swimming and more comfortable in the water and enjoy the pool more because I used to not know how to swim and I used to not like swimming. And now I really love swimming. So I think humor is like that. The more that we practice it, the more that we use it as a skill and think of it as something we pay attention to, the more we notice things that are funny to us.

And teaching comedy and also just performing comedy and being around comedians, I've seen so many people go from kind of like C plus at best funny to A plus funny. And even more than the performance side, I think I've seen a lot of people go from seeing the world as just like dark and depressing and scary to acknowledging that is real. But there also are these constant sources of absurdity and joy and delight. And I think that is the biggest thing that I think you can train yourself to see more of.

And so this idea that you're going to be building your humor means that you have to have some idea about what humor is and what it means, recognizing that the irony of asking you for a definition of humor is about the most unfunny thing I could ask. How are you defining humor? Well, that's certainly true that often like defining humor is one of the least funny things you can do. And, you know, there's that classic E.B. White quote that is like talking about a joke is like dissecting a frog.

No one particularly enjoys it. And the frog dies afterwards. I would say that for my purposes, I think of humor as being able to recognize the absurdity and delight in the world and in yourself and to laugh at it. And I draw a distinction between comedy, which is like the professional practice of humor and humor, which I think is something that everyone should have in their lives, because I actually don't really think that everyone should be a professional comedian. And I also don't really think that it's very important to be like able to tell a joke or to be the person who at a party you can stand in the center of the circle and everyone's hanging on your every word as you tell a story and everyone's laughing at it.

What I care about is if I was to put it in professional comedian terms, it's like how do you find the material? So how do you walk through the world and see the things to notice them and then think, oh, that's strange. And then think about what makes that funny to you and to make yourself laugh. So that's really where I draw the line is like humor is the ability to do those things, but not necessarily to perform it publicly. So when we think about humor, I think one of the things we often get wrong is that it's about like ignoring the bad stuff.

And on the show, we talk a lot about feeling your negative emotions, not pushing your negative emotions aside. I think people worry that humor does just that thing that we're telling people not to do, that it's a form of kind of ignoring the bad stuff. Explain to me why that's wrong. Well, I'm not sure that it is wrong, to be honest. I think that like humor is a double edged sword. You can certainly use humor to push people away and to deflect from what's real and authentic.

That's certainly a way that people use humor all the time. I think that if you're using it in the way that I am encouraging you to, you're doing less of the deflection because it is more of the observing and appreciating the humor that I want to celebrate is the kind where we are laughing with another person and they go, that is so true or I never thought about it that way. Or I think everyone has had this experience, which is you're with a friend or a family member, someone you've known for a long time and you say something or they say something and you are just laughing so hard that you're holding your sides and tears are streaming down your face.

And it's really hard afterwards to even explain what was funny about that. But in that moment, you are so locked in 100 percent present and in the moment. And that is, I think these days, very unfortunately rare to have that complete 100 percent presence with another person where they're not like half on their phone or half thinking about something else. So that's the kind that I want, the present, generous, authentic humor. And so that gets to some of the benefits of humor psychologically. Walk me through some of the ones that you've talked about in your book.

Yeah. So this is where like you are an actual researcher and academic. I can do thumbs up or thumbs down, depending on the evidence. I'm a buffoon. So like I'm citing other people's research, not my own. And so I just want to be clear that I'm the clown in the room. There were a few different psychological studies about when you present yourself with humor and how that can affect how other people view you. One of them was looking at people in job interviews, and they found that when someone acknowledged their shortcomings with humor, they were rated as more competent and more desirable as an employee than if they didn't acknowledge them or if they acknowledge them without humor.

So the example they gave in this paper was like asked about their math skills. They said, I'm good at addition and subtraction, but I draw the line at division. It's like, OK, well, if you're not actually able to divide, that may not be the right job for you. But the fact that you were able to laugh about it and to say like this is not my strongest suit, but it's not a no go area of discussion that actually does indicate that you're someone who's willing to take feedback and probably able to learn.

And so they were actually rated more highly. And then my favorite job interview one is there was an experiment where they had people evaluate job candidates and they didn't know that they were actually evaluated. research assistants. And so, of course, everyone evaluated candidates who were qualified for the job more highly than people who were unqualified for the job. But one set of candidates pretended to have spilled a cup of coffee on their shirt right before they walked into the room. And so they came in and they said, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.

I just poured coffee all over my shirt. I am so sorry. And then they did the interview. And those people, the people who had spilled the coffee on their shirt were rated more highly than the competent people who hadn't spilled coffee on their shirt. And I think that to me hits at like one of the things that I love the most about humor, which is that we all as humans want to connect with other people. And it's easier to connect with someone if they're willing to be a little bit of a mess and laugh about it.

We still want them to be competent and able to do their job. But if you meet someone who's totally perfect, they're actually intimidating and you probably don't really like them and connect with them. So I think humor, especially about ourselves, can be a way for us to connect with other people. It also has all of these physical benefits that we don't expect. Tell me about the study on the assisted living facility in Hong Kong that you talked about in your book. When I was thinking about like I want to write about humor and its relationship with health.

One of the first things that I wanted to say was people who say laughter is the best medicine. That is obviously wrong. Chemotherapy is the best medicine for cancer. Certainly way better than laughter. Like if you go in and you're diagnosed with cancer and then they go, I got great news. We have just a hilarious doctor here for you. You'd be like, I don't care that he's hilarious or she's hilarious. Can I please have like the most qualified, the most effective doctor is really what I want, not someone who's going to deliver the best punchlines.

So I was thinking about that and I was like, well, what is actually the role of humor in medicine and health? And I talked to this researcher who worked at a nursing home in Hong Kong, Mimi Tse, and she was looking at ways to improve outcomes in nursing home residents. And they did this study where they looked at a group of nursing home residents and it gave them like a humor intervention. And so what they were supposed to do is find all the things that make you laugh, keep them in a folder, and then you share them with a group.

And so you'll come together and share these with other people and you'll all laugh. And they did this over a course of weeks and they were meeting and they were finding things that made them laugh and they were sharing them with each other and they were watching funny videos and things like that. And they found that at the end of this study, there were meaningful decreases in people's sense of isolation. There were meaningful increases in people's enjoyment of life and their experience of pain was actually lower than in the control group.

So this is one of the things that I think is actually like a really meaningful medical outcome is people who were laughing more and feeling more connected and having a better time. They needed fewer doses of painkillers, which have all these negative side effects as well. So it's not like it cured them. It didn't make them magically able to live independently or not need to be in an assisted living facility, but it made their lives better. And when I talked to a lot of doctors, they said that if you can change the way that we are experiencing a medical situation, that is actually a really profound medical outcome.

And I think humor is really powerful at that. So embracing humor not only improves our mental and emotional well-being, it can also help us nail a job interview, make our flaws seem more endearing, and even affect the way we experience pain. But how can we get better at bringing more laughter into our lives, especially at a time when we're increasingly choosing our phones over real human connection? Chris will share what he's learned when the Happiness Lab returns from the break. Before you jump back in, you know that feeling when feedback, notes, and data are coming in from every direction?

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It's the way insurance should be. Amica, we're your priority number one. Visit amica.com and get a quote today. I'm speaking with comedian Chris Duffy about his new book, Humor Me. Now, you might think that having a good sense of humor is all about naturally being funny, knowing how to crack a joke or deliver a solid punchline. But Chris argues that humor stems from a set of skills that anyone can develop. I think there's three pillars to good humor. The first pillar is noticing things, being present and noticing the funny and absurd in the world.

The second pillar is laughing at yourself, noticing the absurd and strange and delightful in yourself and being willing to laugh at it. And then the third is putting yourself out there, taking social risks to try to break out of your everyday routine and also to risk being laughed at, to maybe celebrate being laughed at and to share it with other people. And so we're going to go through each of these pillars one by one, starting with this idea of simply noticing. And if I'm going to be honest, this one sounds easy, sounds easy, but I feel like in the modern day is super hard.

There's so many distractions from the normal technology stuff like our phones and so on, but also just being like busy and having this capitalist mindset all the time of like, I got to work, I got to get stuff done. It just feels like there's not time to just simply notice. And you and your book share this one solution to simply notice more that I loved. You've called it the new bathroom mindset. What is that? I think that one of the biggest reasons why we don't notice funny things or strange things or interesting things, the reason why we don't notice things, period, is that we often start to kind of blur the background.

We just go through our day and we're not actually noticing the actual details of things around us. And so the way that I think about this the most is the first time you go to a friend's house and you go to their bathroom, you notice everything about their bathroom. You notice where do they keep the toilet paper? Is the roll going over the top? Is their toilet seat like one of those soft, squishy ones that is like meant to sit on for a really long time?

And do they sit on the toilet seat for a really long time? Wait, do people still have those? Aren't they just like from the 70s? I mean, certainly my grandma has one. I guarantee you're going to hear from a listener who's like, I have one and I love it. I'm listening to this podcast on that padded toilet seat right now. But, you know, you find all these, do they have a pile of books in their bathroom? Are those books like weirdly wet and then dry? Like, how did they get wet?

And do you even want to know? What kind of soap do they use? What's out in the bathroom? What's hidden in the cabinets? These are all things that you notice the first time you go to a bathroom without trying to notice, right? It's just because it's new. We really notice that. And then if you visit that friend's house three or four times, you don't really see those things anymore. And so what I try and do and what I encourage people to do is to occasionally get into the new bathroom mindset where it's like, this is new.

I'm going to actually see what is on the floor. What are the knobs on the drawers in my house? What are the switches like? What's the tree outside? All of these things that you might not necessarily notice. That is where you can see strange and odd and kind of a little off things, which are often the seeds of things that can make you laugh or can make you think or make you question or make you curious. And I think the more that we can occasionally at least build that muscle of switching into that and really seeing things, the more that we can find delightful stuff all around us.

This is such a fabulous tip, and it's really similar to a tip that we heard from a former guest on The Happiness Lab, this poet Ross Gay, who wrote this book called The Book of Delights, where he decided that every day he would have to find one thing that was sort of delightful. And he kind of just had to start noticing the world in a new way to find like, where's the delightful stuff out there? He kind of opened up his delightfulness radar. And it seems like you're just doing this generally.

It's almost an absurdity radar of like, what's the weird stuff? What's the kind of smushy toilet seat that's out there? And then once you get that, you can use it as the material for humor. Totally. And I think this is the thing where, you know, what makes you laugh is not going to be the same thing that makes me laugh. It's very subjective. It's very personal. But the way that I think about this is. I watched a great I swear this is going somewhere. I watched a great documentary about birdwatching.

It's called Lister's. I watched it on YouTube. It was so funny and fun. And I was not a birder before. And I guess I'm probably still not a birder, but I hadn't really thought about birding. And then I watched this great documentary. And afterwards, I walked outside and I was astonished at how many birds I heard. It was like tweet, tweet, tweet, just birds around. Yeah. And then I was like, am I in the middle of some sort of special migration? Like, did they just show up?

And no, it was just those birds had always been there, but I had never noticed because I wasn't trying to notice them at all. I wasn't cued to notice them. And I really think that humor or delight, like Ross Gay was talking about, that these are kind of similar things where it is out there. But the more that you think about it, the more that you consciously look around for it, the more that you build the ability to see it and to know where to look for it.

And you start finding more and more of the particular thing that makes you laugh. And maybe it's for me. I love signs. I love like a weird handwritten sign. Like that person is putting up a sign for their like handmade shoe party. What a strange thing. I can't imagine what that would even be. And the more that I find that, the more that it just like leads to me finding more and more of them. And I think that's true for anyone is if you just tune into this stuff, you start to see that it actually is there.

Another thing you suggest we clue in on are weird facts about the world. How does this work and what are some examples of weird facts you've noticed recently? One of the people who makes me laugh the most in the entire world is as Annie Ruerta, who runs Depths of Wikipedia for people who are not familiar. She finds facts and articles on Wikipedia that are very funny and unusual or strange and then just kind of collects them and posts them publicly and sends them out in a newsletter.

And she does a live show where she shows them, too. And I interviewed Annie for the book. And I was like, I think you're one of the greatest comedians of our time. Like Depths of Wikipedia is so funny. And she's like, oh, I'm not a comedian. I'm like a librarian and archivist. I'm just looking at facts. And then I am delighted by the facts that I find. But I don't think of myself as a comedian at all. And I was actually amazed because I think she's so incredibly funny.

She said that the other day she had been correcting like a common comma error, grammatical comma error on Wikipedia and just like trying to fix as many of them as she could on the website. And it had led her to fixing a comma error on the Web page of a type of fish that was called Oreosomatidae. And she thought that's so funny that it has the word Oreo like the cookie in it. And then she looked at the fish and she said, its eye looks like an Oreo cookie.

Is that why it was named that? That alone really was delightful to her that there was Oreo cookie eye fish. And she said that's kind of a way that she finds things that make her laugh is to just be open to the idea that she's doing some really mundane, not funny task and something odd or strange can come up and she can find it. And this is related to another tip you had, which is this idea of celebrating the doll. Why is like really celebrating the doll so powerful?

One of the biggest objections that people have when I tell them like you can find something really funny everywhere, no matter where you are, is, well, I live somewhere really boring. And the example that I love to give them, because I think it's such a masterclass in finding comedy anywhere, is the Dull Men's Club, which has now been opened up to people of all genders worldwide. They call themselves Dullsters, like the opposite of hipsters. And they celebrate doing things like watching grass grow, watching paint dry, collecting paper clips.

They have a calendar that they release each year, which features 12 dull men doing dull things like correcting the paint on median parking strips, like those kinds of things. It's just a truly fantastic example of sometimes the humor comes from the fact that it is so exceptionally boring. It doesn't have to be interesting, funny. It can be so boring that it is in itself becomes really funny. So like if you are literally watching paint dry, I would argue that that has become hilarious and interesting. It's like next level comedy because it's so unfunny that it has now become funny.

And also like what could be more profoundly the opposite of losing three hours into the TikTok algorithm where it's like designed to be as stimulating as possible? What could be more of a powerful detox than like literally painting a wall and just watching it dry for three hours instead? Okay, so one of my favorite ridiculous things like this on the Internet, I'm not sure if you participated in this, was the rubber band on the watermelon Internet situation where folks were live streaming, slowly putting more and more rubber bands on a watermelon until it broke, which like the breaking of the watermelon is a wonderful moment.

But I think what was more funny was like you knew that this was going to take days, weeks maybe. And a lot of it was just like watching people put rubber bands on this watermelon. Mostly it was unfunny for a long time. Yeah, I think that stuff is incredible. I think there's a reason why. things like that take off. And I think it's because we are really entertained by the delightful and the odd. There's also something really counter-cultural about being like, we're going to celebrate the dull and the simple.

There are two big social and cultural messages that are really dangerous and damaging that I think humor can undercut. And the first one is you are supposed to be perfect. And I think humor can undercut that and make us celebrate the ways in which we are a mess and we are not perfect. And actually that is what connects us to other people is the fact that we're not perfect. So that's one. And then the second is that things need to be exciting all the time. If you want to have a meaningful experience, then it has to be exciting and different and new.

And in fact, if you and some friends get together and start putting rubber bands on a watermelon, you can build an incredible memory, a really meaningful bonding experience that you will think about for the rest of your life. And there is nothing exciting or profound or amazing about that, except for the fact that you're together and experiencing it. It doesn't have to be like we have thousands of dollars to go on a trip to Europe or we're going to make a music video that goes viral.

It could literally just be like we are going to see if we can bounce a ping pong ball into a cup. That's going to be the day and that's going to be an incredible thing for us. And so that's pillar number one. We need to notice stuff and especially notice the absurd stuff. Now we're going to turn to pillar number two, which is related to that perfectionism point. The second pillar of humor is this idea that we need to laugh at ourselves. Why is laughing at ourselves so beneficial psychologically?

I think it is exactly because of the idea that we should not be perfect, that in fact people like us more if we are not perfect and are relatable. So I think when you can laugh at yourself, when you can see your flaws as ways that other people can connect to you, things that are funny and things that are delightful rather than shameful, it one, takes all the pressure off you. And two, it actually is the way to connect with other people in a deeper way.

Let me give you an example. This is the one that I think about the most. And this is funny talking to you because Laurie, I think you do a really good job of being a person who is still able to be connected to even though you are a wildly successful and very impressive person. Even though I'm really important, is that what you're saying? Yeah, you're very important. You're very successful. I mean, you are. You're like, you are very smart and very successful and you have a lot of institutional power and all of these things.

And yet you are still able to be connected with. And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that you have you're generous with your laughter. I screw up all the time. And you're generous with that, though. And I think that's a good thing, not a negative thing. Like if you walk into a party and you see a person and they go, I make a million dollars a year. Both of my kids went to Harvard. I have a six-pack. I volunteer every single day.

And I'm changing people's lives. But also I'm going back to school to become a brain surgeon. I just developed a new technology that can save people every single day. And did I mention that also I drive an all-electric car and I compost all of my food and I don't waste anything? You would at best be really intimidated by that person, right? And at worst, you'd be like, I hate that guy. I never want to see that guy again. He's my least favorite person I've ever met because he makes me feel bad about myself.

The flip side is, if you meet a person who is like, hey, there's things that I'm good at and there's things that I'm bad at and I'm totally a mess. And I have to ask you a question. I know we just met, but is there a giant piece of spinach in my teeth? Because I'm pretty sure there's a giant piece of spinach in my teeth. You're so much more likely to like that person because they're relatable and they're able to be laughed at and laughed with.

But here's the thing that I think we often get wrong. We see that in other people, but then we think we should be the first. We're like, well, I should be as impressive as possible and I should be as perfect as possible and I should have as few flaws as possible. That's how other people will like me, even though we know we don't like that person. I walked outside the other day. I have two young kids and I was like saying hi to people in the street while I was walking my kids around and I came home and realized my hair is like truly standing straight up on end like I was electrocuted like I could not look more bizarre and unfit for public consumption.

I was wondering like, why are people giving me funny looks when they say hi back? And then I came back and I was like, oh, that's why. And I think that could be a really shameful moment. I could be like, I can't believe I went outside. I'll never be able to face the neighbors again. Or I can laugh and be like, yep, I got two kids and I woke up early and I forgot that it had been several hours and I still hadn't showered or combed my hair.

And laughing about it makes me feel better, but I guarantee you it also makes the neighbors feel more like they could talk to me and not like I'm some intimidating superhuman, which again, I don't think there's any risk of them thinking that, but that's the reality is that we connect to people through these flaws. And it seems like we also connect to ourselves better. You mentioned this idea of like I could have been shameful about the hair looking stupid. It seems like one thing humor helps us do is to laugh at ourselves with self-compassion.

It helps us feel less shameful. Is that the kind of thing that you've seen in some of your work? Yeah, I think the only reason I'm hesitating right now is because I don't want to say like we should laugh at ourselves and then not strive to be better. It's not like laugh and then you don't have to fix your glaring personality flaw. But I think that if we laugh about it, often the laughing is acknowledging that it's a thing. And when we acknowledge that it is a thing that maybe is like something that is not our finest moment or our strongest personality suit.

If we laugh about it, I think that lets us acknowledge it in a way that actually allows us to work on it. You know, shame rarely leads to action. And so I think the fact that we can laugh and say like, oh boy, I have not showered as much as I would like to shower. Then you'd be like, okay, I'm going to try and find a time where I'm going to say, hey, can you watch the kids for one second while I jump in the shower?

Because I don't want to have a repeat of the electric shock hair thing. And that's a small like low stakes example, but I think there's way bigger, higher stakes examples that you can apply this to as well. So that's the power of acknowledging some of our imperfections. We notice them and want to do something. I worry sometimes we swing the pendulum too far in the other direction where we're not just acknowledging our flaws, but kind of bullying ourselves about our flaws. And so any advice for being able to laugh at ourselves and use self-deprecation without turning that into self-bullying?

I think you probably encountered this a lot on this podcast. And I know that I have encountered a lot of my work too, which is that often the most powerful advice, the things that are most impactful aren't universal. It's not like one size fits all. So I can't really say like, this is the way that you should laugh at yourself that will never be self-bullying. And this is the way that's always positive because it is going to vary from person to person. I can give you kind of like a framework of a way to think about testing it.

But I do think you need to realize that it's going to vary from how someone else does it. And it also might vary from how you do it today to how you do it tomorrow or in a year. We are more or less sensitive about certain things. We are more or less confident about certain things day to day. So the test that I would say is, are you laughing in a way that is creating an opportunity for connection? Or are you laughing at yourself in a way that is trying to say the mean thing before someone else can say it?

And are you doing it in a way that is like, if someone else said it to another person, would you think that they were being a bully? I'll give you an example. The comedian Aparna Nancherla told me that she used to open her comedy sets by saying, I know, I'm also surprised that I'm a comedian. And when Aparna said that, she told me she originally meant it as like, well, I'm a shy introvert. And that's what I mean. It's like, I'm surprised that I'm out here telling jokes because I'm a shy introvert.

But she realized that a lot of audiences were laughing because they were like, it's funny because you are a small Indian woman. And she didn't want to be making fun of herself in that way to say, I shouldn't be here because that's not what a comedian is supposed to be. And she also realized, maybe I don't even want to say I shouldn't be here because I'm an introvert. Maybe I want to just own the fact that I'm here. And so she stopped doing that joke. She stopped telling that joke because she realized it actually was creating a narrative and bullying herself in a way that she did not want to do.

And I think that's important to realize. So think about like, are you bringing people in? Or are you pushing people away from acknowledging the thing about yourself? It's time for another break. But when we return, Chris will break down the third and final pillar of good humor, taking social risks. And then it will be my turn to take a risk, as Chris puts me through a live improv comedy exercise. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. Before you jump back in, you know that feeling when feedback, notes, and data are coming in from every direction?

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It's the way insurance should be. Amica. We're your priority number one. Visit amica.com and get a quote today. Your book argues that humor is all about taking social risks. But why is humor so socially risky? And can you share some examples? I think this is probably one of the most cited things in your field. And I bet people bring up this all the time on this podcast, which is research that shows that if you talk to a stranger on the bus, you're going to have a better day.

And they'll have a better day too. Okay. Everyone hears that study and they go, that sounds good for you. There's no way I'm talking to a stranger on the bus. That's too weird. And yet it's true that you will have a better day if you do it. So that's a very clear example of taking a small social risk, talking to someone you wouldn't necessarily talk to. And I think one of the biggest things that can stop you from finding humor and from laughing more and from having delight in your life is just doing things that you always do, right?

Like you commute in the exact same way. You never see anything different. You always take the same train, you get off at the same stop, you walk the same way, or you always take the same road to the highway to the exit. It's just, you know it so well. And it is almost impossible for that to not totally blur into the background unless you're really, really fighting hard. And so the social risk that you might take might be the smallest social risk of all. It might be just doing things a little differently so that there's an element of novelty and adventure and excitement.

And that can often lead to sparking something funny or strange or delightful where you see something that you haven't seen before because you get off at a different stop and you're walking back and you go, has that been there all along? One thing that I try and do is if people invite me to a thing that sounds strange, then I'm like, I'm going to go to that. My friends invited me to a gathering of owners of golden doodles. It was called a doodle romp. And I do not own a golden doodle.

So my natural inclination would be to say, thank you so much. The social gathering that is exclusively for owners of this one particular type of dog probably not for me. I don't even own a dog at all. And instead I was like, I'm going to the doodle romp and I'm going to experience golden doodle culture. And I went and it was so funny and strange because to me it was just like all these identical dogs running and jumping around on each other and all the owners like apologizing that their dog was jumping on the other dog, even though all the dogs were jumping on each other and then talking about like doodle hair care tips and things like that.

And it was just such a strange, different world for me that everything about it kind of made me laugh. But for them, this was just like their normal social scene. So saying yes to something like that can be a real delight. Another time I moved to Los Angeles and I was looking for ways to meet new people and I didn't really know anyone in the city. And a friend said, I know this is really strange, but there's a group that meets at 7 a.m. They've been meeting for almost 100 years every Wednesday at 7 a.m.

It's called the Los Angeles Breakfast Club and they sing a bunch of songs about how much they love breakfast food. And then they have a secret handshake that's like flipping a pancake and they eat eggs together. And I think it's maybe a cult, but it's like a very friendly cult. Would you like to come? And I said, absolutely. I will be up at 630 so that I can be at your breakfast cult at seven. And I went and it was so delightful and so memorable. And it changed the whole way I saw the world.

To know like there's 100 people that get together and sing songs about breakfast every Wednesday. It's been happening for almost 100 years. That's now like permanently ingrained in my understanding of L.A. So switching up your routine, going to things that are a little different, trying things that might lead to people going like, that's weird that you did that. I think those are the social risks that pay off the biggest. There are also the kinds of things that can connect us most with other people. You've talked a lot about how we can use humor as this shared lore, like using inside jokes.

to build up relationship capital. Explain what you mean there. Often the people you laugh with the most are the people you've known for the longest. And so much of that is because you develop this language with people, right? And everyone has some version of that. And it's actually not very funny to tell other people about your inside jokes. But what it does is it reinforces something with you and the other person. It builds that connection. It makes you laugh. And it creates other opportunities for like callbacks and ways for this thing to grow and expand.

Like my friend Sarah has a game that she plays where she goes to a diner and touches something on the diner table and then makes a pun about it. Like she'll touch the top of a salt shaker and say top of the morning to you. And then the other person will touch the handle of a mug and say, that's too much to handle. And so I know that if I send her a photo of something on a diner table and say a pun related to it, that she's going to get it.

And that it won't just be like a random text but it'll be something that makes her feel seen, makes her feel known and makes us feel connected. When I was talking to people about why humor evolved, I learned about a scientist at UCLA, Greg Bryant. And his theory is called encryption theory. And the idea is basically that when we are presented with something that is funny, it is only funny if the other person has the key to the lock that can unlock it and answer that riddle.

And then they laugh. And you would know that you two were in the same group. And if they didn't laugh or they fake laughed, you would know, oh, they're actually not part of my same group. And that that was very evolutionarily beneficial. And that's why we see humor across all cultures and why pretty much everyone is pretty good at detecting a fake laugh. So I think that sense that like, I can use humor as a way of telling you that you and I are connected, that we're in the same group and that I see you and that you're not alone.

To me, that is the big picture thing, is that it's a way of not feeling alone. Especially with this evolutionary argument that you're mentioning, it's almost like you're putting out these encrypted jokes and hoping that other people get it, but they might be like, why did you send me a picture of a salt shaker? Like what is going on? It feels pretty vulnerable. Totally. And so you've argued that we need to find ways to bypass our internal sensor and creativity, interestingly, can help us do this.

Tell me about some of the studies that have shown that. Oh, yeah. So this is really interesting, is that they put jazz improvisers in an MRI machine and they had them improvise. And what they found is that the parts of the brain that are like self-critical, the parts of the brain that monitor yourself, they were really, really deactivated. And the parts of the brain that were like working were the creative and affiliative ones. So like making connections and going from this note to that note, but they weren't really paying attention to what they were doing.

The like voice in their head that says, is what you're doing right? Is that cool? Is that good? Is that impressive? That was really shut down. And I think many of us who have experienced like flow and creativity, we found that you have these moments where you are at your most creative and you can't 100% remember what you did afterwards. And it's because you're not actually keeping track of it. And so I think the more that you can get past the side of yourself that says like, this might be bad, this might get rejected, the more that you can do the really funny, fun examples.

I can actually do an exercise with you that I used to do a lot with people when I taught improv. Please. Which I think just really basically gets us past this is if I ask you to say like some things in a category, like if I just say, Laurie, name as quick as you can without thinking, name a few different kinds of cereal. Cheerios, Captain Crunch, Count Chocula, Blueberry, Frankenberry. Great. So right there, like you can think that many ahead, right? Like you said, like some real reasonable answers.

But if I told you, I love that you think Frankenberry is a reasonable answer. Is Frankenberry not real? It sounds real. I totally believe that. It's real. It's just not, you know. But like if I say like now, don't worry if what you're saying is right or true or even like makes sense. You did like four or five. What if I say like, let's go to seven and we're going to do a different category. So you can't have already thought about it. But the point is, don't worry if like if I said types of cereal and at the end you'd said shoe, that's fine.

That's a totally good answer, right? The point is to get past what is the right quote unquote answers and the logical ones into something that is just like instinctive and honest and authentic. And that is often the most creative answer. So let's try it again. And maybe actually so that it's fair. And I'm not just putting you on the spot. First, you give me, say, Chris, give me seven different and then it can be any kind of category and I'll do it as fast as I can.

And all you have to do is after each thing I say, you say one all the way to seven. Chris, give me seven different pieces of clothing. Shirts. One. Pants. Two. Clothes. Three. Socks. Four. Earmuffs. Five. Earplugs. Six. Earwigs. Seven. Ding, ding, ding. Okay, so. Earwigs. Earwigs. Is I think an insect, not a type of clothes. But in my mind, it was like the little hair that you put in your ear to simulate your hair. So very weird. Not the most predictable normal one that I would have come up with.

Yeah. Ear-merkin came up creatively and like a strange thing that you do. You know, the point is not that like that's genius. The point is just like, it's interesting and different. It's not boring. And I think we can get past the boring answers when we just forget about like whether I'm going to look good, whether my answer is going to make sense to the podcast listeners and to you and just start doing it. So let me give it to you. Seven different things that you might find inside your car.

Charger. One. The little thingy that lights up cigarettes. Two. Old McDonald's wrappers. Three. Parking pass. Four. Keys. Five. My husband. Six. Random people that I'm taking on errands. Seven. Okay, great. I love that it was all that stuff. And then also it turns out your car is totally full of humans. Oh yeah, my husband's in the car too, yeah. Your husband and a bunch of people you're taking on errands. That's great. And I think like, again, that image that you just painted of like, there's the car charger and there's the cigarette lighter thing.

There's the old McDonald's wrappers, but there's also some strangers and your husband. That's such a vivid image that's like real and creative. And I think as an artist, right, there's a lot that we can do with that kind of specifics that's very ripe for art, but it's also ripe for comedy. And it seems to really build our social connection too. Like now we're kind of joking about it. We have the earwig joke and the McDonald's wrapper joke, and we will always have your Merc and Chris whenever we...

I'm going to get that on a t-shirt. That's for sure. I also think like this connects to like the most common way that people avoid taking a social risk, which is to just have the same conversation over and over, right? Hey, how are you doing? Where are you from? What do you do? Okay, nice to meet you. And this fits with another tip that you've talked about, the importance of adding in conversational doorknobs into your life. What do you mean by conversational doorknobs? Yeah, so this comes from Adam Mastroianni, an incredible writer and academic who studies how conversations end and whether people want them to end or not.

And he read about how one of the things that we can do in a conversation is create an affordance. So like a physical affordance would be something like a ramp that can help someone get into a building if they can't walk up the stairs. And a conversational affordance is a way that they can latch into the conversation and have something to talk about, even if they don't necessarily do it. And he talks about how if you say something that is interesting and unusual, it presents an opportunity for someone to turn that doorknob and open the conversation into a new room, right?

So if I say the other day, I had a soup that changed my life. That is so much more likely for the other person to be able to say something to you or to ask you questions than if you say, weather's been pretty wild lately, right? Like the most common thing that someone's going to say to that is, yeah, it has. And then you're fizzling out after maybe two more sentences. Whereas if you say the soup thing, they could go, where was it? Or, you know, I've always hated soup.

And then either way, you have stuff to talk about. So creating these like slight risks of talking about something that is not exactly the thing can create a conversational doorknob that can lead you into an unexpected room. And now you're more connected. It seems pretty similar to a comedy technique that you also talk about this idea of doing a yes and collaboration building. It seems like the conversational doorknob is a kind of, you're throwing it out there and somebody is going to pick it up and kind of go with it from there.

Is that right? Totally. I mean, yes and is like the basis of all improvised comedy. And it's that if I say to you like, Lori, we're on a spaceship, you don't go, no, we're not. Because then, OK, well, the scene's pretty much over. And obviously, we're not most of the time performing improvised comedy for an audience, but we are almost always improvising our conversations. And the idea that you would want to agree with the person and then build on it, and then that they would agree with you and build on what you said.

That is how you lead to a conversation that, as Adam Mastroianni puts it, feels like you're floating, like you're flying, like it's going somewhere and not crashing to the earth. And also the spirit of that is to make the other person look good, to not have it be about you adding your great genius anecdote, but instead to take what they said to view it as a gift and then to give them a gift back and allow them to use that. Well, Chris, thank you so much for giving my listeners the gift of helping them become more humorous.

Just one last question. Has remembering that humor is this muscle that you can build up over time helped you be happier? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think this happens to a lot of people who write a nonfiction book where I'm like, it turns out that I desperately needed this book. You know, I had a second kid in the course of writing this book. And as I've been promoting it, we're like in the newborn phase and I haven't been getting that much sleep. And it's so easy each day to just feel like I'm totally overwhelmed and that there's so many things that haven't done.

And when I'm able to get out of my self seriousness and to laugh about the things that are happening and to laugh about the fact that I'm, you know, trying to prep for a big, important interview and my child has just thrown up all over my face like that, when I can laugh about it, I have a much better day. If you'd like more of Chris's advice on how to bring more humor into your life, check out his new book, Humor Me. How laughing more can make you present, creative, connected and happy.

And you can hear more from Chris on his award-winning podcast, How to Be a Better Human. Next week, we'll wrap up our back to school book series with author Eric Wiener. He'll share his thoughts on what a 19th century philosopher who lived alone in the woods can teach us about shifting our perspective in the modern age. There was something odd about him. He had these piercing eyes that people find kind of scary, to be honest. He would just look at things for a long time with those eyes.

And he had this almost superhuman sense of smell and hearing. That's all next week on the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. On the Happiness Lab, there's a lot of conversation about how small, thoughtful gestures can have a real impact on wellbeing. Spoonful of Comfort is built around exactly that idea. It's a care package designed for moments when someone is going through a tough time, a transition, or just needs a little lift. Inside, there's homestyle soup, fresh-baked rolls, cookies, and thoughtful details like a keepsake ladle tied with a bow and a personal note.

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It's the way insurance should be. Amika, we're your priority number one. Visit amika.com and get a quote today. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know those little promises you make to your future self? Tomorrow, I'll put my phone away earlier or stop rehearsing arguments in the shower. Tomorrow, I'll stop saying yes to everything or stop overthinking that conversation. Most of us aren't trying to become completely different people. We're just hoping to feel a little better every day. That's what's great about BetterHelp. With them, better is personal.

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