Mental Strength Tip #136: Humor and Personal Success

Welcome back to another Mental Strength Tip!

Living a life of power, purpose and passion….with perseverance is walking the path of the Awakened Warrior.  This path encompasses physical, emotional, spiritual and mental.  The mental requires a mental strength mindset of empowering beliefs that will instill the feeling of empowerment.

Reaching your personal goals, achieving personal success and exceeding your human potential starts in your mind…and finishes with taking inspired and massive action.

This is one in a series of virtual personal coaching and mental strength tips to help kick-start your week.  It is intended to create self-empowerment and inspire you to take action so that you can reach your personal goals and personal success.

I take one mental strength tips and run though a brief overview of it, then ask some very direct coaching questions.  The intention of this virtual personal coaching session is for you to write and answer these questions in your success journal and then reflect on them to gain insight on yourself, your dreams and what’s holding you back.

These series of posts are for YOU!

If I’m not able to be your live personal coach, then I highly recommend picking up a copy of “Develop the Mental Strength of a Warrior.” It’s a book that will take you through the exact process to take back control of your thoughts so that you can live a life a power, purpose and passion with perseverance!

You can grab your copy now by going HERE.

Objective of this Mental Strength Tip:

To persuade you to your sense of humor as a strategy to achieve personal success

Let’s Get Started:

“Did you hear the one about the manager who got a bigger bonus because he had a great sense of humor?”

You probably haven’t heard this one making the rounds at the water cooler, because it’s not a joke. It’s actually one finding from a study by researcher Fabio Sala—a consultant with the Hay Group’s McClelland Centre for Research and Innovation—who found a positive correlation between the size of executives’ bonuses and their use of humor. The study also found that outstanding executives use humor more than twice as often as the so-called average executives.

Studies like this point to a growing consensus that if you are serious about your career, then sometimes it pays to not be serious. At least, not too serious. Not when a healthy sense of humor can help you manage stress, spark creativity, build relationships, communicate more effectively, and stand out from the herd – not to mention earn you a bigger bonus or more income.

Questions to Uncover Beliefs about Mental Strength Thinking:

• Is there any connection between humor and personal success?
• Is there any connection between humor and happiness?
• Is there a place for humor in business?

Unsupportive Beliefs about Humor

• There’s nothing humorous about the trying to achieve personal success.
• Humor has no place in success.
• Humor make you appear shallow and frivolous in achieving personal success.

Mental Strength Beliefs about Humor

• Humor reduces stress.
• Humor increases creativity.
• Humor creates connection with people.

Outrageous Questions:

• Do you use humor as a performance strategy?
• If you used humor more often would you be more successful?
• If you used humor more often would be you happier?

Reflective Questions:

• Is it possible to overuse humor in the pursuit of personal success?
• Could humor help reduce your everyday stress?
• What would you have to let go of on order to use humor more often in the pursuit of your personal goals?

Mental Strength Coaching:

So does all this suggest you need to sign up for a stand-up comedy class or turn into the office joker? Not at all. Demonstrating a healthy sense of humor is rarely about telling jokes, and it certainly isn’t about becoming the class clown. In fact, misusing humor is also a terrific way to get yourself noticed (and not in a good way).

They key is to practice “safe humor”: humor that builds rather than divides relationships, humor that laughs with people, not at people. For as much as humor can be a beneficial career skill, we all learn at an early age that humor is also a powerful weapon—a favorite of schoolyard bullies.

Therefore, offensive humor—such as sexist or racist jokes—is strictly off-limits during work hours. Sarcastic or bullying humor can also be career-damaging, and many practical jokes have resulted in lawsuits (as in the case of the employee who brought laxative-filled brownies to the office) or outright dismissal.

Final Thought

Once your foot is in the door, a well-flexed funny bone can also help maintain a thriving career. Humor is an important social lubricant, bonding tool and trust builder. A healthy sense of humor is also one of the most effective stress busters available, helping people distance themselves from their workplace stressors, maintain a more balanced perspective and overcome obstacles.

Moreover, humor is one of the best catalysts for creative thinking, which makes sense, given that both humor and creativity are about combining unrelated ideas and looking at something in a new and different light. All these benefits are likely why a survey by Robert Half International found that 84% of the CEO’s and H.R. directors believe people with a good sense of humor do a better job.

And as the Sala study points out, a sense of humor is even becoming an essential skill for senior executives. As humorist Bob Ross observed, “A leader without a sense of humor is like a lawn mower at a cemetery—they both have lots of people underneath them, but no one is paying them any attention.

Get started today on creating this shift and request your Introductory Consultation by going HERE.