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LULU Resources
Second Maxim - Loosen Up, Lighten Up
From 24/7 This! The Merry Method To Accelerate Success:
Some fun ways to loosen and lighten your mind -- and life.
Loosen Up Your Mind, Folks
The Comic Zone requires a fresh, loosened mind. Do not be afraid that you will lose your mind - just loosen it. The mind of the Drama Zone is judgmental, inflexible, fixed, and rigid. It thinks in locked-in ways. The adaptiveness and the creativity and the humor of the Comic Zone needs the loose mind. Only a loose mind can support the artistry and inventiveness of focusing on, and achieving, your wildest dreams.
We need to mix up the synapses in our brain, get rid of the old ruts and worn paths of unwanted thoughts and habits. Imagine all these pathways in our brain that have been etched in there by years of thinking the same thoughts, and performing in the same tired ways. We need to create new pathways, new tracks and trails, that lead to our happiness. Only by loosening up our mind can we do so.
The locked-in, rut-filled mind only leads to more of what we have had in the past. If you want to change what you have had in the past, that mind of yours needs to get loose. Unfetter your mind, untie it, release it, free it. We recommend three surefire ways to do this: have a sense of humor, question assumptions, and recognize your Judgment Jabber. We will discuss two of those now. First, a sense of humor.
A Joking Matter
Harvey Mindess in Laughter and Liberation makes suggestions for developing a sense of humor. Mindess says we need freedom from several states and these states include: conformity, inferiority, reason, redundancy, seriousness and egotism. That sounds like a darn good description of the Drama Zone. Conversely, a person in the Comic Zone is freed from these states and the freedom promotes the Comic Zone.
A key element of humor is the unexpected. Look at jokes. Jokes are often based on something called reversal. Reversal is an unexpected shift in the point of view of the person by whom the joke is heard. That person hearing the joke is led down a path by the person telling the joke and then all of a sudden the joke switches directions -- usually bringing about laughter in the listener. The listener thinks he or she knows the direction the joke is taking and all of a sudden the unexpected occurs.
Here are a couple of short jokes to illustrate:
This first one is a Garry Shandling joke: I sold my house this week. I thought I got a good price for it -- but it made my landlord mad as hell.
And this one is a Woody Allen joke: I divorced my first wife because she was so immature. I’d be in the tub taking a bath and she would walk in whenever she felt like it and sink my boats.
Last a Skip Stevenson joke: I left my wife because she divorced me. I am not going to live with someone under those kinds of pressures.
You're going one way and all of a sudden you're somewhere else. Your mind has to jump off the path you thought you were following to get the joke and laugh. The unexpected has occurred and the humor depends on the unexpected.
Remember the two stories in the first chapter: the people who moved and their furniture did not follow, and the poor guy who arrived at Denver International thirteen hours late. They were going along one way and quite unexpectedly life took another direction. A sense of humor helps you to laugh at unexpected turns in jokes and life. People in the Drama Zone don't get the joke and they suffer both mentally and physically.
Are we saying that telling or hearing jokes will give you a sense of humor? No, we are saying that a sense of humor requires comfort with the unexpected and jokes are one example of that. If a person could not make the shift in the above jokes, they would not see the humor. The shifting exercises the mind's flexibility, loosens it up, so hearing and reading jokes is a good way to support your sense of humor.
Another way of creating humor is to juxtapose opposites. Recall the movie The Odd Couple; Felix and Oscar were certainly opposites and did they make us laugh. Humor comes with the contrast and the difference. So often, we come upon people in our life who are very different from us. A person with a sense of humor smiles and appreciates the differences. A person without a sense of humor is likely to close his or her mind to the different. Difference is, for them, something to be excluded.
A sense of humor allows people to think more expansively; and to associate more freely, both in relationships between ideas and between people. It is important to exercise your powers of making new associations in your mind as one way of letting more humor into your life.
Let No Assumption Go Unquestioned
Questioning assumptions is another sure-fire way to loosen up the mind. Questioning assumptions is one method to combat redundancy and conformity, two states listed above from which we need freedom to have a sense of humor. Questioning assumptions gives us more options for behavior and thought because we examine the assumptions and see them for what they are. Here is a humorous example. For years, couples may be operating on assumptions they have never checked out with each other.
I hate spinach.
So do I.
Why have we eaten it all these years?
I thought you liked it.
I thought you liked it.
Free yourself from any spinach tyranny in your life. Ask yourself about everything you do: Why am I doing it this way? Does this way make sense? Is there a better way? Is there a more fun way?
When we question assumptions, we then have a choice to behave and think in new ways, or to continue to be governed by the newly examined, freely chosen assumptions. The more you question assumptions, the more you may laugh at some silly things you may have been doing. You may choose to keep many of your old behaviors but you are no longer a slave to them.
Questioning assumptions gets you out of the routine rut. When a person or company becomes attuned to the process of questioning assumptions, it will happen with greater and greater frequency. The more assumptions questioned, the greater the number of options for behavior and thought. Those burned-in thought furrows in your mind will begin to shift, and change, and your mind will LULU.
Cause and Effect, Or Effect And Cause, or What?
One kind of questioning assumptions is the questioning of cause and effect relationships. We often have these unexamined notions that A leads to B; we assume that B happens because A happened first. We set up these rules of cause and effect. You must turn these rules of cause and effect upside down — get unruly — to see if there is any truth, or humor, there. Where is the cause and where is the effect in these examples?
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I yell so my dog gets nervous. Or maybe I yell because my dog is nervous, or a yelling person picks out nervous dogs.
I cannot go out in the world and contribute because I feel sick. Or maybe I feel sick because I do not go out into the world and contribute my skills and talents and self. Or the person who is unlikely to get involved outside herself is likely to get sick.
The workplace is frenetic so I feel stressed. Or I feel stressed so my workplace is frenetic. Or a stress-prone person chooses frenetic workplaces.
Let us hear it for the assumption questioners. May they live long, loosely, and lightly.
Little Lulu: A Role Model?
Do you remember the irrepressible, feisty, lovable cartoon character Little Lulu? That girl had LULU down. She questioned everything. Yes, she had a bit of a rascal in her but most LULUers do. She had a great sense of humor. And did she question assumptions!
Remember what she did with her dad's tie? She used it for the tail on her kite. Her mom's lipstick? She wrote letters with it. Remember Lulu, see if you can find a Lulu comic book, and let her inspire you to LULU.
- "Little Lulu, Little Lulu, with freckles on your chin,
Always in and out of trouble, but mostly always in.
Using Daddy's necktie for the tail on your kite,
Using Mommy's lipstick for the letters you write.”
What's a surefire way to lighten up and loosen up your organization? Present one of our programs.
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