Myeloma and NHL Patients Discuss Their Go-to Sources of Laughter
Myeloma and NHL Patients Discuss Their Go-to Sources of Laughter from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
Lisa, Thomas, Donna and Diana all share what keeps them laughing. From TED Talks to TikTok videos—Thomas shares it’s always best to start your day with something positive.
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Transcript:
Lisa Hatfield:
I wrote down two sources of laughter right now, and just so people are watching this, something that they can look up, or a positivity or something that there’s just like having a low day go onto this activity guide or watch this thing, two sources of positivity or laughter or humor from any one of you want to start with, Diana?
Diana:
Number one would be my book, no I’m kidding. You know what I have found? Every morning I have since retired. And every morning since I’ve retired, I get on Facebook and TikTok and I look at Penny the talking cat. I love Penny the talking cat videos, it’s just stupid, stupid humor. I also adopted a new kitten and he brings me joy, such joy on the silly stuff that he does, so I think whatever you can find that brings you humor, do it every day. And start your day with it.
Lisa Hatfield:
That’s a good tip. Start your day with it. Yeah, getting off on the right foot. Donna, how about you?
Donna:
Well, I mentioned it a little bit earlier, one of the comedians that I really love, because he always talks about family issues, Italian Jewish issues all the time, back and forth, back and forth. That’s Sebastian Maniscalo.
He is so funny, and I watched those videos either on Facebook on TikTok, on YouTube, whatever, and he relates to everything that you could think of, whether it’s growing up in situations that are awkward, whether it’s awkwardness at holidays, whether it’s the awkwardness to going out with his children or his wife or whatever, so it’s all family-related. And it just makes me laugh. It puts me in a different place and I laugh and I find it very relaxing, and I just say, wow, I can relate to that or whatever. But he makes me laugh all the time cause it’s his voice that says mannerism, and the subject matter is always great, and it’s never raunchy actually. Never.
Lisa Hatfield:
That’s nice. Yeah.
Diana:
This January, I broke my foot. I had a stress factor, my foot, so I had to sit on the couch for six weeks, I couldn’t go to the gym, I couldn’t walk 12000 steps a day, which is what I typically do. I watched all 178 episodes of Seinfeld over those six weeks and it’s what kept me going.
Lisa Hatfield:
Awesome. So, Thomas, what are two sources or Donna were you done? Thomas, a couple of sources of inspiration or humor for you?
Thomas:
We all have this in common is we all go to TikTok in the morning and just look at something to get our day going. So that’s one of the things that I do. And then the other thing is, I give calls, sometimes I call them or via text to some… My guys that I ride my bike with, one of the guys are so animated with every story that he tells, he makes you laugh even when you don’t even want to laugh because of how he animates the story. So, between him and what I see on TikTok and social media, that really brightens my day up in the morning before I start it. And it has to be something positive, anything negative, I try to scroll past that even so fast that it doesn’t even get into my brain.
Lisa Hatfield:
That’s awesome. Yeah, avoid the negative. I like to look up every once in a while, when I’m feeling just… I need a good laugh. I look up YouTube videos of babies laughing, for some reason, you see it, there was a video with Dad Laughing, the baby with her sneezing and the baby would have this huge belly laugh that just got me laughing pretty good, and I also like… There’s a podcast just for positivity that I have listened to, the guy’s name is Shawn. I think it’s pronounced Achor, it’s like anchor without the n, but he talked about… He studied happiness, I think he taught at Harvard for a little while, and he does these experiments and I think would be really funny to watch, but when he goes in and talks to groups he tells everybody to pair up two different… Everybody’s in a pair, and then he’s okay, somebody’s number one, and the pair, somebody’s number two, it doesn’t matter who’s which number right now, and then he proceeds to tell people for the next seven seconds, I want you to control your behavior, so I’m going to tell you to do something for seven seconds, you can’t partner with somebody you’re married, you can’t be paired up with somebody that you know really well, so what he does is he says okay, all the number ones…
I want you to go neutral, go blank. No emotion, nothing. Number two, for seven seconds, I want you to stare deeply and warmly into the eyes of number one, now mind you, these might be complete strangers and both of them are supposed to not… They’re supposed to totally control their behavior, so for seven seconds they do that to stop, and then he reverses it, so number two is now number one, and vice versa is supposed to show no emotion and not smile, not laugh, and he said, Success is by controlling your behavior failure is you did something, usually laughing or smiling when somebody’s gazing deeply in your eyes and you’re supposed to be totally neutral. He does these experiments… He said 85% to 90% of people fail because they cannot control their emotions, they can’t help, but they’ll laugh or they’ll giggle or whatever, and he said it’s universal. It really predicts nothing, but it’s universal, it happens every time, but he talks a lot about the mirror neurons that we have, you know, if somebody’s yawning, we feel like we have to, Jon, but smiling and laughter is sort of contagious because of these mirror neurons.
So, if one person starts laughing at the partner, the other one does too, and it’s just kind of one of his funny experiments, so that would be… I guess my take away is this podcast by… Or a couple of podcasts by Sean Achor. They’re funny to listen to. He describes him, he’s just super funny to hear talking anyway, he had some TED talks out there. So those are my two go-tos.
