Did you know that the average person laughs 7 times a day at work? For me, that is a gross underestimate – I get the giggles closer to 20-30 times every day! So I’ve been asking around, and it seems that the original number is pretty close, but, here’s the rub, for only those friends who work in jobs where using their imagination isn’t as much of a necessity.
It got me thinking on the role of laughter in the creative process, and after having a dig around there’s references to it everywhere. Aristotle, one of the greatest minds of all time, was a great proponent of laughter, saying it was the only thing that seperated us from animals. An old Yiddish saying states “what soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul”. There is a field of scientific research devoted to the effect of laughter on the brain. The process of laughing changes the state of your brain, and free it to come up with new ideas. Here at ?What If! we teach clients about our “creative behaviours” to enable them to be more original in their approach to thinking, one of which we call “Playfulness”. Over the years we’ve realised many things, and the concept of Playfulness has always shown us that laughter and happiness releases bounds of creative energy.
OK, so now what? Well, I think it is high time you find a way to make yourself or a colleague laugh after reading this post – share the last joke that made you laugh out loud, retell a time you’ve embarrased yourself, or try using some external tidbits ….