Did you grow up in a humourless household? Was laughter or acting a little goofy frowned upon? If so, you may have failed to develop emotional protection we all need. Having a healthy sense of humour provides a cushion between you and the hard knocks life. 
Laughter helps take the edge of your nervousness before a job interview, for example. Or, if you find something extremely funny before giving a speech, you won’t get half as nervous.
Without humour, you will also have lots of stress within your relationships.
“My fraternity brothers had to really work on me,” says a businessman we’ll call Fred who lives in East Tennessee. “I was so solemn when I first pledged the fraternity.
I would laugh a little here and there, but my sense of humour was basically zero.”
One of Fred’s fraternity brothers sat down to have a serious talk with him.
“He graciously explained to me that humour was ointment for the pressures of college life,” Fred explains. “He really went out of his way to tell me I was going to snap if I didn’t lighten up. It took time, but I learned to give and take humour quite well.”
Humour is not something you can master in a week, of course.
Many of us have used it so sparingly or forgotten how to laugh that we need a refresher course.
Keep in mind that humour is often used best in an outrageous situation, such as dropping a bag of groceries in the store parking lot.
And, if you don’t practice making a joke of such bad luck incidents, you can’t crack a joke properly.
Consider a woman we’ll call Mariah. “My husband, Ted, was so sombre and obsessive-compulsive that he’d make a backyard cookout a painful event.
If you burned his steak, he’d kill you!” laughs Mariah.
They spent 14 torturous years together before Mariah started using outrageous hyperbole to make Ted lighten up.
This started a couple of years ago.
“I began by making outrageous claims about how good looking he is,” says Mariah. “You have to get people used to your new, fun self. I went slowly with Ted.
“I wanted him to laugh when I told him he is better looking than Brad Pitt in a hot tub. My husband had never heard me joke around like this, so I had 14 years of catching up to do.”
Mariah paid her husband a few compliments to get him to laugh. Next, she started threatening to grill him on the grill if he didn’t lighten up about the steaks.
“My husband was so deadly serious about the doneness of all our steaks, we’d be ready to cry by the time we sat down to eat,” Mariah explains. “I told Ted I’d grill certain body parts of his if he didn’t lighten up. Then, I explained I’d take his picture and post it on Facebook.”
Ted has been serious throughout his life, Mariah told us. So, his laughter lessons didn’t catch fire overnight. But, he knew Mariah was no longer willing to live such a humourless lifestyle.
“Recently we stayed at a high-rise hotel,” says Mariah. “I told Ted I was going to parade him naked in front of the windows if he didn’t shut up about the time I was spending on my mascara.
He did laugh, thank God, because I was ready to push him out of the window! Ted has even started joking back, which is a darned miracle!”


lJudi Light Hopson is the executive director of the stress management website USA Wellness Cafe at 
www.usawellnesscafe.com   Emma Hopson is an author and a nurse educator. Ted Hagen is a family psychologist.