Worth a Giggle

The Power of Laughter

You had to be there…

I planned to write about something completely different this week, but laughter ambushed me on the bus this morning in the form of two little girls. No one knew what they were giggling about; it kept catching in their throats and bursting again to fill the bus. Everyone was chuckling and smiling when I got off at my stop. Such a nice change to the glum looks, mobile phone zombies and huffing and puffing at having to move bags from seats meant for bums. Laughter is contagious.

Years ago, when I first started coaching, I had a client who asked me to come to her home for one of our sessions, as circumstances meant she couldn’t make our usual meeting point. I agreed, as a one-off, to avoid delaying her progress. Above the table where we were seated was a photo of a woman about the same age as my client, possibly a relative. She’d never mentioned a sister, and, as the photo was in quite a prominent place, I asked who it was. “It’s me,” she replied. “Oh, um, I didn’t recognise you,” I mumbled, but what I said next was a clanger, “You’re smiling.”

I’m not immune to the occasional private foot-in-mouth, but, as a coach, I’ve always thought my responses through. The striking difference between the photo and the woman opposite threw me. I scrambled to retract my words. Luckily, my client laughed and suddenly looked like the woman in the photo. It took her a while to stop, and she said, “I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that.” My client decided on a different goal from the one she’d intended when booking the session, and she opened up like she never had before. Her overarching goal had been her re-entry to the job market, and she went at it like her life depended on it – she was tense. I can’t say that session changed everything, but she made massive progress in the coming weeks and found a role she loved that matched her qualifications. Laughter can lighten the load and open us up.

Before I was lucky enough to be a mummy, I had a miscarriage. I was floored by the loss and scared that I wouldn’t be able to carry a baby full-term in the future. The waiting room at the hospital for the examination was a cruel experience – they didn’t have a separate area for people like me away from the glowing, expectant mothers. I noticed only one other tear-stained face across from me. While waiting, a loud woman came in with her teenage daughter, huffing and puffing about being sent to the wrong department by “useless hospital staff”. The receptionist wasn’t amused and checked her documents. As the woman was still complaining loudly, the receptionist had to shout over her, “No, you’re in the right place – your daughter hasn’t got appendicitis as you suspected. She’s pregnant.” There was a ripple of laughter through the waiting room, which I didn’t join in with; my head was ringing with words like “unfair”, “irresponsible” and “poor baby”. The mum was stunned into silence, but the teenager let out an “Oops!”. Even tear-stained-face laughed at that, and I joined in. My husband, sensing we might be alright, giggled too and cuddled me. Laughter can heal.

My career has been a bit of a rollercoaster of late. We’re very open about everything in our house, and my children knew that my last job made me unhappy. I didn’t want my kids to get the wrong impression about the world of work – and end up unemployed and living with us until their late 40s – so I consciously pointed out examples of people who love their jobs. Fortunately, although my husband’s job is stressful, he regularly belly-laughs with his colleagues on the phone. It seems to keep him going. It’s loud enough for the kids (probably the neighbours, too) to hear when he’s working from home. Laughter can de-stress.

However, I have to confess to a slight problem with laughter – it either ruins my eye makeup or I wet myself. The latter has only happened to me a couple of times and was more mortifying for the people I was with than for me. One time was when my flatmate and I had spent all our money on going out and decided to nurse our hangovers with a visit to Blockbusters (a video shop for those not familiar – and for those who don’t know what a video is, this bracket isn’t big enough 😉). “Ooh, look, if we get the video back by 5pm, we get half the money back,” my flatmate said. “Yeah, but we’ll only be able to watch half the film then,” I pointed out. She tried to convince me that this was a small price to pay, and I wet myself laughing at the ridiculousness of her suggestion after our overly extravagant weekend. She made me leave the shop in shame, and we saved money that way.

Another incident was when my contractions caused me to squeal on a busy shopping street; my husband tried to shush me, and with each shush, I cried with laughter until some wee came out. He hurried me home to change, then rushed me to the hospital. The mucked-up eye makeup reaction is preferable. Laughter can take on a life of its own.

They (whoever “they” are) say we laugh less as we age. As a student, I got to stay with the most generous host family on earth during my exchange year. They would often let my friends come at the weekend – there were five of us there once. We laughed so hard in the garden that we fell off our sun loungers, and the dad said, “Some people don’t laugh as much in a lifetime as those lot do in a weekend.”

I’m older now; I don’t go around peeing my pants and letting my mascara stream down my face daily. However, if I realise I haven’t laughed for a while, I do something about it: I watch a series, read my favourite funny column or chat with a friend I know will make me chuckle. I always feel better after.

And if feeling better and lightening up enough to think differently about a matter isn’t enough to convince you – laughter is supposed to be good for your heart, according to the British Heart Foundation.

Find something that makes you chuckle, then attempt that challenge with a lighter heart and an open mind. If you’re like me, maybe ensure you’re near a toilet first 😂.