RE: At a circumstance when people are not ready to laugh, could you tell me how to make the connection to humour?
Great question! One of the key factors to the effectiveness of humor is “timing” (the other two being bond and environment—see blog at my website for more on those). There are many factors involved in why a person may not be ready to laugh. One of the primary ones is “emotional attachment.”In other words—many times humor comes from pain and the pain becomes funny when people are no longer feeling a personal emotional stake in the situation.
If the person isn’t ready to laugh because they are sad, sometimes they need to work through the sadness before they can laugh. Allow them more time to cry, to get over it. You can gently start introducing humor by using self-effacing humor, or by reminiscing about funnier, happier times.
Rather than try to “give” humor to the other person, try “receiving” the humor. In other words, ask them to share a funny story with you. Something like: “Has your little girl/daughter/granddaughter said anything funny lately?” Or “Crazy stuff happens where I work all the time” (share something), then ask, “Does anything like that ever happen where you work?”
If the person is receptive to ideas, ask them to start a list of fun things they like to do. They need to list no less than 10, and half of the ideas should be minimal to no cost (sometimes we’re unhappy because we have little money). Then encourage them, when they’re feeling unhappy, tired, irritable, etc. to make a commitment to do one thing on their list.
If the person is just a negative person, then you’re probably not going to change them. You have to accept the fact that they don’t appreciate humor and not let it squelch your own humor enjoyment.
I hope this answers your question. Let me know if I can further clarify. And like I said, if you cruise through the blog at www.humorx.com there is more commentary and there are also some articles that might be helpful.
Yours in laughter!
Karyn
