I’m serious, get a sense of humor for goodness sake! – Good-Humored G Factor
About 5 years ago I was invited to speak to a group of over 100 people in job transition and boy was it ever a situation requiring good humor. If you have ever been in “transition,” you know it is a time when your confidence is unsteady already. I did not help the confidence of one man in particular.
After sharing a brainstorming topic, I asked each table group to discuss. As they discussed, I unpacked my apple-sized bean bag football. (My plan – throw it into the audience and the person who catches it becomes the spokesperson for their table.) I called the room to attention, lifted my arm in the air, pulled back, scanned the room, then released the football into the air …. The football sailed through the room toward a gentleman in a shirt and tie and made direct contact with his coffee cup sans lid. Over the coffee cup went and out went the coffee directly onto his pants. He stood up quickly with his arms out and looked down at his wet nether region. Oh. My. Goodness.
Full disclosure – I had a moment of embarrassment and panic. Then my Good-humored G Factor kicked in. I was able to shift my thinking from, “This is terrible, absolutely terrible, and I am so embarrassed and sorry” to “Well, that happened and I have 45 minutes still to go so, be a big girl, deal with it and shake it off.”
After getting the audience back into table discussions, I approached the gentleman I had dumped coffee on. I apologized and asked him, “What can I do? I am happy to pay for your dry cleaning!” He had his own sense of humor and responded, “Get me another cup of coffee?”
Moral of the story: if I had taken myself so seriously, I would not have recovered and been able to move on to provide valuable tips for the audience. It was not the end of the world.
No matter how serious a person’s work is, having a sense-of-humor can go a long way. Sometimes it is laughter that brings levity to an unusually difficult situation or cheerfulness that picks another person’s outlook up so they can keep moving forward.
Did you know this?
“Laughter is a way for us to express joy and happiness, not to mention amusement. ‘The psychological effects of laughter relate primarily to both its use as a coping mechanism and … its enhancement of interpersonal relationships.’
Cheerfulness promotes productivity. A 700-person study conducted in 2015 showed happy employees are approximately 12 percent more productive because employees who are happy make more of an effort.”
To learn more about Gratitude G Factor, buy your copy today of G Factor: 8 Secrets to Increasing Your Gravitational Pull at Work.
Leave A Comment