How You Can Use Humor to Win at Life in the Face of Adversities

“A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.”

-William Arthur Ward

When you are starting out on a new path – may it be starting a new course, a new business, a new relationship – there are going to be difficulties at every corner. Just because your path is hurdled with obstacles doesn’t mean you give up. While people can keep pushing in order to achieve their dreams, it can often take a toll on their health – especially mental health.

Mental health anyway is not taken that seriously but when you don’t feel right in your mind even the mundane of tasks become utterly complicated in nature. One way to keep going through adversities without losing yourself is learning to laugh at yourself and your situation.

“Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don’t leave any of yourself safely onshore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.”

-Alan Alda

While laughing at yourself is important, you need to know the difference between finding humor in whatever is happening and being self-deprecating. Self-deprecation helps no one. It isn’t the good humor that helps you make light of things, it is the kind that will make you drown in self-pity and make you lose confidence in yourself.

You already have a lot of negative feelings surrounding you, you are already dealing with doubts that are related to your decisions, your chosen path, your abilities, you don’t need to add on to it by doubting your self, your determination, and your worth. For others to respect you, you need to learn to respect yourself.

“Laugh at yourself and at life. Not in the spirit of derision or whining self-pity, but as a remedy, a miracle drug, that will ease your pain, cure your depression, and help you to put in perspective that seemingly terrible defeat… Never take yourself too seriously.”

-Og Mandino

Learning to see humor in situations and developing humor as a habit is the best course of action to take if you are in a difficult phase and could use with not letting everything affect you to the core. 

There are two very basic things you can do to develop a sense of humor without going out of your way – observe people who can find humor in situations and observe situations you can find humor in.

Observe Funny People

An easy way to develop your humor is to observe people who are known to be funny. If you have a friend who is incredibly popular at work because of the way they crack jokes and make people laugh, tag along and learn the tricks of the trade. 

Look at them and identify situations when they make a joke, the way they present it, and so on. And when you spend some time with such people, you are sure to imbibe some of their qualities.

When developing your humor sense, be careful of distinguishing between being funny and mean. Remember to never crack jokes at someone’s expense, making them a butt of jokes in front of others will creating animosity rather than a good-natured bond.

“To laugh at others is egoistic; to laugh at oneself is very humble. Learn to laugh at yourself – about your seriousness and things like that. You can get serious about seriousness. Then instead of one, you have created two diseases. Then you can get serious about that also, and you can go on and on. There is no end to it; it can go on AD NAUSEAM.”

-Rajneesh

It will only make you a despicable figure. Plus, only make jokes in appropriate situations. Blindly joking around won’t get you anywhere. You need to balance the serious stuff in your life with humorous aspects. And when you achieve a perfect balance between the two, your life will open itself to new experiences, and you will lead a fuller, better life with new and deeper relationships.

Observe Everything From a Humorous Perspective

Most people usually don’t observe things around them in their daily lives. Instead, they are busy being engrossed in their desires and fears. And this is quite sad since you will start seeing an entirely different world if you take the time to watch and observe the things around you.

“Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.”

-Bill Cosby

You might start seeing a quirky habit of the roadside vendor you pass every day but never bother to look at. You will ride the taxi as usual, but see that the owner has a picture of a funny quote right in front of the dashboard. And during the travel, you might see that an elderly man, who was buying flowers from a young woman, was trying to flirt with her in a rather comedic but sweet way.

All these observations will come in handy when you try to make a joke among friends and co-workers. If you observe most people who are funny, they are able to draw from their experiences and present them in a humorous manner. It is basically storytelling in the heart of it. This is why it is very important that you start observing the things happening around you. The more you see, the more material you will get to use in your jokes.

Final Thoughts

There’s no point in taking yourself seriously when your life is already full of seriousness. You might not have time to enjoy yourself because you are busy building your dreams, you might have to give up a lot of things, you might even stop working on your hobbies – these things are common in the building phases of people’s careers – but what you have to remember to not give up is laughter.

“A sense of humor… is needed armor. Joy in one’s heart and some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.”

-Hugh Sidey

Laughter will get you through even the darkest of days. When you seem like there is nothing going your way, laughter will be there to accompany you learning from your failures and not breaking down to not apply the learnings one more time to achieve success. Learn to find laughter in what you can, you keep you going in the race of life.