Ways to distinguish yourself #153 – Use humor right!
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 18 Jul 2006, 11:12 PM - 5 Comments
It is fun to be around people who are humorous. Right?
Wrong. “Probably” is the right answer. It all depends on what kind of humor we are talking about. Humor when not used right can simply hurt someone or make them uncomfortable.
Since humor is typically related to people, the fundamental question to always ask is:
(Question courtesy: Michael Allosso)
The quick outcome of bad humor is alienation. Someone who is offended by your humor may retaliate in which case you can apologize and may be settle that matter. Alternately, the person may “write you off” and ignore you and worse he or she may not tell you that they are “ignoring” you. What is the loss for you? You would never know? Bad humor is an easy way to take a step towards losing your friends.
With that in mind, here are some basic rules to remember:
* no humor based on gender
* no humor based on ethnicity
* no humor based on physical appearance
* no humor based on age
So what is an easy way out? The safest option I can think of is to develop an ability to laugh at yourself. We all need to take our work seriously but never take ourselves seriously.
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Posted in the Distinguish yourself, Main Page category.
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Anonymous on July 19th, 2006
This was a really timely post as I picked up the latest issue of Psychology Today magazine yesterday and they had an article on the different ways to use/disuse humour.
Here’s the article:
Crack Me Up:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20060623-000002.xml
I think there are more ways to disuse humour than there are correct ways, although it all depends on the people involved and the situation.