Humor and How To Defuse Stress in the Workplace
Transcription of interview with David Granirer on November 7, 2011
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
David Granirer is a counselor, a stand-up comic, and a speaker.
He is the author of The Happy Neurotic: How Fear and Angst Can Lead to Happiness and Success.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Granirer on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: Most people would probably agree that having a laugh here and there can
definitely make your working life much more pleasant, but some of us are in what we would
consider to be more serious professions, such as a psychiatric social worker, a grave digger
or a financial advisor.
How do you find humor in those situations?
David Granirer: I think there’s humor in every situation and sometimes the more dire
a situation is, the more we need to find the humor in it because that’s what happens
to survive.
There are some really interesting studies that find that humor actually protects us
from some of the stress and anxiety in some of these really dire situations.
Douglas Goldstein: Are human beings the only people who have the humor instinct?
David Granirer: There are studies that find that animals like to play, so they have that
sense of playfulness, but I’m not so sure if they actually have some sense of humor
that’s directed at the situation that they are in.
Douglas Goldstein: During my job as a financial advisor, a lot of the stress that people have
is related to money and I’m not so sure that they’ll be looking for humor in these
situations.
Do you think it’s appropriate for people to try and introduce that?
David Granirer: That’s a really tough call because on the one hand, people need the humor
and on the other hand, if they’re not ready for it, they can feel like you’re making
fun of them if you start to laugh about the situation.
I don’t know how this translates culturally but in North America, the rubber chicken is
always a source of fun.
Usually what I do as a humor test for my clients is just leave a rubber chicken sitting in
my office and not say anything about it, but just see if that person notices it.
Sometimes they do and that tells me a lot about who they are and how they deal with
stress.
Something like that, which is kind of passive and not too much in your face, is sometimes
a good strategy.
Douglas Goldstein: What sort of counselor are you?
What do you do?
David Granirer: I work with individuals and couples, looking at issues of self-esteem,
relationship issues, depression and things like that.
I also work in the mental health field, so I work with people who have mental illnesses
like depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, and that kind of thing.
Douglas Goldstein: Is humor a big part of it, or are you really more of a psychiatric
counselor at that point?
David Granirer: When I’m working in a session with people one on one, it’s not laughter
therapy.
We’re doing some serious stuff, but I think it really helps to have a sense of humor in
these situations.
Once again, I think what it requires is just being sensitive to the client and helping
them sometimes to use their own sense of humor to cope with things.
Douglas Goldstein: How do you help people to see that there really is some
humor there?
David Granirer: It’s funny because when people are under stress, especially if they’re
arguing or something like that, their ability, the part of their brain that’s able to appreciate
humor, essentially gets knocked out so in those situations, sometimes it’s very difficult
to introduce humor.
To understand humor, you need to be able to think abstractly because usually you’re
connecting things that are not necessarily related at first glance.
When someone is in the state of physiological arousal where they can’t make those connections,
sometimes using humor can be really difficult.
I find with people usually the best place to use humor is before they get to that point.
Douglas Goldstein: Is that why they say that when you give a speech, you should start with
a joke?
David Granirer: Yes, I think that helps.
I think it’s also great when we’re getting people’s attention, because everyone wants
to laugh and everyone likes to laugh.
If you can get in there and start out funny, I think you’ve got the audience more on
your side.
Douglas Goldstein: Can someone who is neurotic be happy?
David Granirer: Definitely.
The premise of my book is that you can be happy, productive, and well-adjusted while
remaining as neurotic as ever.
I think in actual fact, some people succeed because of their neurotic tendencies, because
they are driven.
I think fear is a wonderful motivator.
Fear will get you off your butt doing something about your situation.
I think some people are thinking, “I shouldn’t be feeling afraid, I should be feeling confident
right now,” but I don’t think so.
I think sometimes you’re meant to feel afraid, but that fear is meant to propel you to take
some sort
of action.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people find ways to lower their stress level so that they can
make more logical decisions?
David Granirer: First of all, there’s a really interesting study done at the University
of North Carolina where they found that people with a good sense of humor were more accurately
able to appraise the amount of stress they had in their life.
So when you’re afraid or stressed, your mind does something called “mental filtering,”
where it filters out anything good and overacts essentially anything bad or anything that
could go wrong.
It seems a sense of humor restores your sense of perspective, so that’s really helpful.
I think it’s part of life balance because essentially you’re dealing with the market,
which is something you can’t control and having a sense of humor and being able to
take a time out to have humor in your life buffers you.
It won’t change what’s going on in the market, but it will help you cope better than
you would otherwise.
Douglas Goldstein: There’s a famous story about Norman Cousins, and how
he overcame serious heart disease and arthritis by watching the Marx brothers.
Is that a true story, and do you think that it really could happen for other people?
David Granirer: I’ve read his book and he had some sort of a disease with a long name,
a degenerative joint disease or something like that, just something awful.
In his book, he says that for every 10 minutes laughing, he got two hours of relief from
his pain or something like that.
I don’t know that laughter is the magic cure.
I think it was for him and he found a way to make it work for him.
I think part of the reason it worked for him is because he took something that he had never
done and he took a completely fresh approach to it and went somewhere where no one had
been before.
I don’t think there’s a formula, so I don’t think you can say that someone who
has cancer can just laugh for a minute a day and it will reverse the illness.
I would tend to be cautious and not to over promise anything because I know there are
people who would say, “It’s the miracle cure and it will cure anything.”
Once again, if you have a serious condition, I don’t know if it will cure it, but it
will certainly help you cope with it better than you would have without humor.
The whole point of humor is that it helps us to get through those difficult situations.
Douglas Goldstein: For
people who have perhaps forgotten how to laugh, is there a tool that you can suggest for how
they can bring it back to their life?
David Granirer: First of all, wanting and realizing that you need more laughter in your
life and making a conscious decision to get more laughter in your life.
I think the tools vary, and it obviously depends on the person.
Some people like to watch funny movies or go out to see some comedy.
I think it helps to make sure that you actually schedule time to do those sorts of things.
It doesn’t have to be a lot, but you can go out a couple of times a month and watch
a funny movie or some comedy.
I like those dumb little props that you get at novelty stores, like Groucho Marx glasses,
rubber chickens and silly stuff like that.
Even though it’s really corny, just seeing them makes people laugh and it just reminds
us of the lighter side of life.
I think these things can really be helpful.
Douglas Goldstein: How could people follow what you’re doing?
David Granirer: They can go to www.standupformentalhealth.com, which is about my work, teaching standup comedy
to people with mental illness and people who are going through really heavy things, or
to www.psychocomic.com, which is more about my humor in the workplace presentations.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel.
Securities offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA,
SIFMA.
Accounts carried by National Financial Services LLC.
Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
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