A few years ago, I did a study on stand up comedians. This became the basis of one of my main developments which became known as the ‘laughter filter’. One of the things that I wanted to discuss this month is some skills for dramatically improving your ability to use humour.

It’s funny but some people ask me why there is a joke section in the newsletter. Yeah right. Good idea. The joke section is not there not because I just want to make people laugh. Often the jokes are ridiculously bad. The reason why it is there is that it gets people to pay attention to ambiguities. John La Valle talks about ambiguities being the basis of humour. Whenever you become aware of a word having more than one meaning your brain processes it in more than one way. This allows you to make more connections in your brain which improves the efficiency of your brain.
So, literally, paying attention to ambiguities, noticing them, spotting them, being aware of them allows you to improve your brain power and increase the speed with which you think. Also, by writing down ambiguities, you’ll find that your brain will start to find double meanings a lot more and the world will become a hilarious place to exist in.

Daar ging het allemaal om. Hilarious space..