by D. P. Noe

Created on: April 28, 2009

Humor can help to foster positive attitudes that make it easier to handle challenging situations in the workplace. Humor is known to reduce stress and help individuals handle difficult situations in the workplace. if you can lighten up a stressful situation, it is much easier to be productive and accomplish goals.

Simple things like a cartoon or starting a meeting with a humorous story are ways to stimulate individuals to be engaged and focused. If the leaders of an organization can use humor to see the positive side of things, this can help stay away from the negative. Negativity will bring down any organization nine times out of ten.

Learn that it is permissible to laugh and smile. Working in an area like a trauma ER where there is often a lot of tragedy, the only way to get through that day after day is to lighten up the environment. In areas like an busy ER, humor can be a survival method when you are constantly dealing with loss of life and serious illness.

If you are having a bad day at work, find some time to spend with colleagues who have a good sense of humor.Taking your mind off of work even for a few minutes by using humor can significantly improve your day. Watch how your colleagues have incorporated humor in their daily work life and model some of their behaviors.

If you are involved in a difficult situation, try to find a humorous side. If you add laughter to the situation you will be amazed how much easier you can handle the situation. There is always some humor that can be added to any situation, the key is to learn how to find it and use it.

Humor helps to see the positive sides of situations if you are willing to look for them. If you have difficulty doing that, then look back on previous positive work experiences and what can you learn from them and use in your current situation. Again stay away from negativity, negativity destroys humor and your working environment.

Use humor carefully, never use it to put down another individual or another culture. Humor used to make fun of or to humiliate another individual is wrong and will do nothing but destroy the working environment.

If you feel you have lost your sense of humor or cannot seem to find anything humorous in a situation, seek other another individual to help you. When you go home, watch a funny movie or read a funny book. Look for things to use in the workplace and bring them back to work the next day. Anticipate ahead of time that you are going to have a better day and learn to add humor. You can have a tremendous impact on the working environment by adding humor. Individuals will be drawn to you and you can have the opportunity to improve the working environment in your organization.

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