By Resilience Speaker, Jamie Mason Cohen
While doing research for my book, LIVE FROM YOUR CLASS, Everything I Learned About Teaching, I Learned from Working at Saturday Night Live, I spoke with my friend, renowned body language and communication expert, Mark Bowden about the value of incorporating more humour into learning environments to boost productivity, improve culture and social bonds, meaningfully acknowledge another person and positively impact relationship dynamics.
It was Mark who said, “when you’re laughing, you’re learning”, in quoting his friend, comedian and speaker, Jack Milner that turned out to be the pithy distillation of my book’s main theme.
Humour is restorative. It lowers stress and blood pressure. It increases the feel-good hormones and is a feeling that is contagious to everyone around you.
It’s not about telling jokes, it’s showing up with a cheerful, glass-half-full approach, an adaptable presence that makes people want to be around you in an unforced way.
It may be one of the keys to creating a learning mindset culture, in which people learn and grow from mistakes, jolt out of analysis paralysis into creative exploration, and have more fun.
