Laugh at Yourself
A Mixed Mental Art
Welcome to Polymathic Being, a place to explore counterintuitive insights across multiple domains. These essays explore common topics from different perspectives and disciplines to uncover unique insights and solutions.
Today’s topic adds to our toolkit of Mixed Mental Arts and provides another way to embrace humility, which we first explored in Embracing our White Belts. This powerful art can be applied to politics, our life circumstances, and to our own behaviors to uncover the absurd things we do, and then laugh them away.
Let’s be honest, we take ourselves too seriously. Just look at any social media platform, and 90% of it is the projection of the most inane banalities as the most important thing in the world. When questioned, we often double down and affix to tenacious identities, and when pushed, we catastrophize our circumstances as worse than they’ve ever been.
Simply put, we don’t laugh at ourselves enough. There’s no room for the ironic chuckle when you realize you’ve created a logical contradiction. There’s only anger when it’s pointed out. Instead of seeing the absurdity in how the seriousness is feeding the problem, the reaction is to accuse the person laughing of irresponsibility.
But this isn’t easy. It requires introspection, and it requires constant effort. There is no ‘one-stop’ win for laughing at yourself. Once you pull the self-righteous stick out of your ass, it might start with a frustrated yet rueful grunt, but over time, the more we learn to laugh at our own absurdities, the more we can find the amazing things that surround us, boosting mood, perspective, and positivity.
To get started, let’s break this down into three layers and explore how to laugh at politics, circumstances, and ourselves, both our behavior and our ego.
Laugh at Politics
The politics challenge came to a head recently with a fellow who was clogging my feed with post after post about the horrors of American politics. This is bad enough, but even crazier because he’s Australian and, when questioned, he viewed me as the irresponsible one for not caring as much as he does and his actions as his duty…
However, I honestly think it’s hilarious. Sure, Trump is an anathema to how I would like to see the President of the United States conduct business. I wouldn’t want to work for him, that’s for sure. But what I find more absurd than Trump is the response. I still chuckle when I think of how many news cycles were spent on “Covfefe.”
Yes, he says absurd things. No, you don’t have to repost every absurd thing he says. Humorously, he’s called an egomaniac, yet those same folks fail to understand that every over-inflated panic-attack post they feverishly type feeds his ego. It’s the opposite reaction to what I recommend in Heaven is High, and the Emperor is Far Away, and we’ve collapsed heaven into a hellscape of social media while inviting the emperor to live rent-free in our brains.
And yes, I laugh. I laugh a lot because it’s so absurd, and yet people take it so seriously that it becomes more absurd. It’s something Andrew Perlot recently wrote in Never Trust the Unironic, where he dives into the idea that, if you can’t laugh at yourself or your life or your beliefs, you’re never going to be able to do much in this world but experience misery. He asks:
Can dyed-in-the-wool Republicans and Democrats laugh at their presidents’ follies? Do communists, libertarians, and socialists smirk at their ideologies’ absurdities? Why do the devout never seem to chuckle at the inanities sprinkled amid their admirable beliefs?
So, yes, laugh at politics, laugh at how seriously they’re taking themselves, and laugh at how seriously you take them. When you can step back and just chuckle, you’ll feel the shackles in your brain unlock, and you’ll be able to step away more and more and focus on laughing at your circumstances.
Laugh at your Circumstances
Coupled with our sense of identity with politics is also how seriously we take our circumstances. As we explored in How to Be Miserable, much of our misery is self-inflicted because we take ourselves, our goals, our perceptions, and, especially, our grievances way too seriously. That’s why the 10 commandments of misery are bracketed as.
1) Thou Shalt Label Thyself and Chafe at Labels
10) Thou Shalt Wallow in Apocalypse
The first is that we take the labels so seriously that we can’t see them for their facile absurdity, and the tenth is that we catastrophize everything under the idea that NOTHING HAS BEEN WORSE! which is absurd, and I laugh about all the time when I consider just how damn good we have it right now.
One of the tricks I’ve learned to help provide perspective, especially when I’m tempted to take my circumstances too seriously, is to Stare Into Evil and really consider how bad things could get and have gotten in the past. It’s shockingly therapeutic to consider the depth of darkness, and then, when you pull back out and consider your current minor inconvenience, done right, you can’t help but chuckle.
Even better, you’ll start to realize just how much cool stuff is happening as Michael Sellers recently wrote in World Cup Fans Discover Ordinary America; Maybe We Should Too. Imagine awe in ‘ordinary’ America. Awe in things we take for granted that cause thousands of others to stop and marvel while we drive by, rage-posting the latest banal political outrage on social media. When you do that, you’ll start laughing at your own behavior.
Laugh at Your Behavior
Lastly, and wrapping it all together, is to laugh at yourself; your own behaviors at the intimately personal level. This is important because it’s about introspection, not projection. It’s fundamentally related to the crucial social tool of teasing. Now, this might seem counterintuitive, but teasing is incredibly important to gently guide behavior in larger social settings.
Being able to laugh at yourself and roll with the teasing allows informal feedback, long before it needs to escalate. Those who can’t handle teasing risk something even worse, as people tend to avoid overt confrontation and will just slowly push the person out of their lives. The overserious person typically finds themselves both miserable and alone as they eschew the ability to laugh at themselves.
Worse, they miss the critical opportunity to improve at what they do. This leans into another of Andrew’s essays, How To Be Great, According To Xenophon, where he shares a quote from Seneca:
“No one prompts laughter if he has already gotten a laugh at his own expense. Tradition relates how Vatinius, a man born for both laughter and hatred, was a charming and witty joker. He said a great many things at the expense of his own feet and his scarred neck. This is how he avoided being made fun of by his enemies, who were as numerous as his deformities…”
— Seneca, On the Constancy of the Wise Person, 17.2
This is a tactic I used to great success growing up, when I was truly bullied by a small group of people. I was tall, gangly, and, yes, nerdy. I was a perfect magnet and got the nickname “Gump” from the blockbuster movie of my childhood. Instead of hiding from it, I leaned in. I laughed at myself, and that forced a situation where anyone else was laughing with me, not at me.
Sure, I was gumpy; I grew six inches in a year, my brain had no idea where my body ended! I could have taken offense, but I stopped taking it seriously and laughed. However, because I was laughing at myself and I saw the need for improvement, I doubled down and worked my ass off to improve my coordination. I’m also focused on helping my own percosiouly tall children do the same (My 13-year-old daughter will likely break 6 feet in height this year.)
Being able to laugh at my behavior has been one of the most important tools for professional development I’ve ever used. It breaks down the defenses and keeps me humble as I consider the absurdities of my own reactions and the size of my ego.
Laugh at Your Ego
The final element is to just laugh at your ego and all the things you clutch to yourself as identities, values, and all the other banalities you’ve conflated to be of utmost importance. Once you’ve stripped off the first three layers, you’ll find your ego at the core, and with the practice you’ve acquired, you’ll find, as Epictetus said: "He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at."
Because truly, the person who needs to laugh first is yourself, and once you do that, you’ll find how many things you’ve allowed others to control or manipulate and, giving perspective, just how absurd that really is. Laughing at your ego is hard, but incredibly rewarding.
Tying it Together
Being able to laugh at politics, your circumstances, and yourself provides four different layers of existence that demand reconsideration. It’s what Andrew Smith and I wrote about in The Power of Inversion, where, when we find ourselves hyper-focused on something, desperately trying to hold on, it helps to invert and really consider if we’re being logical or absurd.
Most of the time, our ego blinds us to absurdity, and one way to really highlight this is the art of Mastering Irreverence. This is a powerful mental tool for looking at the things we take most seriously, and it intentionally applies irreverence, breaking the ‘sacred’ into gritty reality. Coupled with that sense of humor, I’ve found myself laughing at just how crazy and silly it really looks.
I’ve done this personally, professionally, and politically. It’s been refreshing to just laugh because it frees me from the bonds that others demand I conform to, while helping reframe and redirect my attention to what really matters. I laugh, step away from my computer, and realize there’s actually more in life that's awesome than the absurd banality of what I thought was serious.
It’s a critical Mixed Mental Art that helps us embrace the polymathic mindset of Insatiable Curiosity, the Humility to accept I don’t have all the answers, and Intentional Reframing to see if I understand the situation. Laughter helps soften the impact of each of these as they challenge who we are, how we view ourselves, and how we position ourselves in the world.
Laughter is also one of the best therapies, and this powerful art can be applied to politics, our life circumstances, and our own behaviors to uncover the absurd things we do and then laugh them away.
What have you discovered that now makes you laugh? What beliefs, cares, identities, or politics were held dear, but now you just chuckle?
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I like the spirit of this piece, Michael! I would replace “laugh at” with “recognize the absurdity” and “see the imperfections” about our selves (and others). Whatever shaves off a bit of the hubris/arrogance is a good thing overall!
Michael, I agree that being comfortable laughing at ourselves is critical, though one cited example complicate the insight. Being willing to confront mistakes is at the heart of what is implied by laughing at ourselves. That is essential to growth and learning.
Yet, President Trump is one of the most prolific examples of a fundamental refusal to do so. Instead, his approach is to never admit you were wrong. When confronted with obvious contradictions, attack and discredit. Deny. Absolutely never laugh at yourself when you can deflect to others and call them names.
While I agree that focus on every little banal issue feeds the problem, letting insignificant events distract from the true issues, that is his strategy and many fall into the trap.
I disagree on some policy decisions, but my fundamental issue with the current leader of the free world is his absolute inconsistency with my core values to admit when Past Me was wrong, listen to various points of view, and be willing to learn and grow. He is the polar opposite, and unfortunately merely one exceptionally prominent, influential example of the antithesis of your insight. While I get your point from the reaction to politics perspective, I belief inclusion as an example weakened the argument without confronting the contradiction it highlights.