I went to see one of my favourite comedians, Stewart Lee, this week at the Lowry in Salford. I have always liked comedy. Doubtless this interest was stoked by growing up on a diet of Carry-On Films, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Not The Nine O’clock News, The Young Ones, and The Two Ronnies. Not to forget the stand-up of Dave Allen, Jasper Carrot, and Billy Connolly. All of this has left me with a deep-seated sense that one of the most important aspects of life is humour.
Life is a rich tapestry of activities and emotional content. Sometimes we love, sometimes we cry, and sometimes we laugh until we cry. Even in our darkest times we humans can find things which are comic. Comedy is a leveller, it can be used to highlight the pompous, arrogant, or hypocritical nature of people around us, especially those who think of themselves as powerful or important. Though comedy is often used purely for entertainment, when it is used to look at ourselves in the mirror is where I think its greatest value lies.
Most often comedians hit the headlines when they are deemed to have overstepped the boundaries of established good taste. But for me sometimes that is the point. There should be no place where humour cannot go, as we explore life’s many experiences. But we should also temper that point with a sense of humanity and balance. To quote writer Terry Pratchett “Satire is meant to ridicule power. If you are laughing at people who are hurting, it’s not satire, it’s bullying”. There are times when a comedian’s greatest strength is silence.
Reframing in NLP is about finding different ways to perceive things. No experience anyone has comes with a built-in meaning. Events in our lives mean what we choose them to mean. This ‘choosing’ is often unconscious, and will be based on our values, beliefs, past experiences, and future expectations. Nevertheless, because no experience comes with a meaning setting it is possible for us to change the meaning. This process of reframing is used in politics, in marketing and advertising, and in comedy. In comedy, the change of perspective that the comedian presents allows you to see something differently, and when you do the thing you saw changes. In NLP we use this idea of reframing to loosen people’s thinking, so that they no longer hold quite so tightly to their problems. To be able to reframe you need to be flexible in your thinking, so that you can see a perspective that others have heretofore not seen. Also, when people can laugh at their problems the effort of letting them go is diminished.
Emotional Intelligence, often called EQ, short for Emotion Quotient, is important for development through life. To quote American writer Nancy Gibbs, “IQ gets you hired, but EQ gets you promoted.” One of the four quadrants of EQ is self-awareness, and an important aspect of self-awareness is not taking yourself too seriously. If you do this, it means that you can look at your development needs with an uncritical eye. You can see that your good here and there, and that this other aspect of self could be improved. But at the same time, you don’t get too carried away with either your good or your bad points. You see yourself in the process of becoming rather than simply being as you are forever. In fact, one way to look at the idea of enlightenment is simply to be able to lighten up on yourself, stop taking yourself too seriously.
One thing Stewart Lee is known for is breaking down the structure of what he is doing in his comedy. This is another area where I see overlap between NLP and humour. NLP studies the structure of human experience. Comedy gets you to laugh first and then asks you what is it about this that makes it funny. Answering that question tells us a lot about ourselves and the world we live in.
Of course, it would be remiss of me to finish this without a couple of jokes. So here goes.
I went to the gym recently, and I said to my trainer, “Can you teach me to do the splits?” He said, “How flexible are you?” I said, “I can make Tuesdays.”
I have a friend who’s North Korean. I said, “How’s things?” He said, “Can’t complain.”
I recently lost my thesaurus…I still can’t find the words to describe how upset I am.
Thank you and good night.
“Humour is mankind’s greatest blessing.” Mark Twain
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