I Wanted to Laugh More: A Guest Post by Chris Duffy

When life gives you lemons, laughter might be the best medicine. Chris Duffy shares how to find, cultivate and use humor to create a genuinely happier life. Read on for an exclusive essay from Chris on writing Humor Me.

The best feeling in the world is being with friends and laughing so hard you cry, tears streaming down your cheeks as you clutch your sides, struggling to catch your breath. To me, that is as good as it gets. But, if I’m being honest, that’s a feeling that I don’t have all that often. And I’m a professional comedian! Getting people to laugh is literally what I do for a living. So why am I not rolling around on the floor in giggles on a daily basis?

When I was a little kid, I laughed every day. When I was in high school and college, my friends and I would reliably crack each other up. But as I got older, the pressures and expectations of the adult world caught up to me. I found myself laughing less and worrying more. It was not a particularly fun transition, but it’s one that so many of us go through. And yet, it’s not a necessary one!

There’s no rule book that says high functioning adults need to be dour and serious. In fact, when I started looking more closely at the people I admired most, the people who were the most successful, the most creative, the most connected, I started to see that they were also the ones who laughed the most. The closer I looked, the more I saw that humor not only made these people fun to be around, it also let them see the world in a different light and have the energy to tackle serious challenges in a playful way.

That’s what planted the seed that grew into this book, Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy. It’s a book I wrote because, selfishly, I wanted to have more fun in my life. I wanted to laugh more despite having bills to pay, dishes to wash, kids to take care of, and so many giant piles of laundry to fold. I wanted to make sure that, even if my days weren’t filled with laughter, they at least included laughter. I wanted to know how other people do it. It being live a life in this challenging, often infuriating world and still stay light and fun and joyful. Along the way, I discovered that humor really is a muscle you can build and that exercising that muscle, building repeatable habits like keeping a list of things that make you laugh, deliberately seeking out odd and unusual experiences, and chatting with strangers, can transform your daily life.

I hope that anyone reading this book will, first and foremost, laugh really hard! I tried my darnedest to make it funny. I put a LOT of jokes in the footnotes! But I also hope it will give readers practical ways to connect more deeply with the people in their lives, to puncture self-seriousness and pressure, and to make their days a little more surprising and goofy.