Focus Works – No Joke!
Does humor mesh with the Law of Attraction? Can you be funny and attract what you want at the same time?
As with so many things, the answer is, “it depends.” Primarily, it depends on the focus of your humor: just because something makes you laugh doesn’t mean it’s truly funny or that you really want to attract more of what has captured your attention.
When I was six years old, my eight-year-old sister Karen giggled uncontrollably with me during my grandfather’s funeral service. Our mother, on the other hand, wasn’t amused in the least, and she tried frantically to shush us with withering looks and the half-whispered warning to “Just wait until we get home!”
I suppose our mother thought that Karen and I were actually having a high old time. A trained person would have seen at once that in fact we were so upset about our grandfather’s death that we diverted our anxiety into laughter. We were completely focused on how uncomfortable we felt, and we attracted even more discomfort when Mom got her hands on us later, which wasn’t surprising, because the focus of our humor in this case was on a negative event.
Years later, my own daughters and I were rushing to keep an appointment to which we seemed doomed to be late—very late. I had a death grip on the car’s steering wheel, and as we approached every intersection with a signal, I chanted, “No red light, no red light, no red light!”
My girls were then 12 and 15 and already well-versed (by me) on the Law of Attraction. If you have ever experienced the gleeful condescension when a teenager has caught you failing to practice what you preach, you can guess what I saw when I looked into the rearview mirror. The girls were giving me that pubescent look of superiority, and as soon as they caught my eye, they began hectoring me in tones you might use to talk someone down off a ledge: “Maaawmm! It’s green light, green light, green light!”
The humor in this instance turned on something positive: my girls absolutely had the right idea in calling my attention to the power of the Law of Attraction and making me see that I was misapplying it. I promptly switched my mantra to “green light,” and sure enough, we got where we were going and on time!
I return to this incident over and over again when I find myself misdirecting my focus by placing it on what I don’t want. “Green light, green light, green light!” rings in my head, and I instantly adjust my focus.
Humor can be mean-spirited or a spirited means to a good end. Dale Irvin, a sought-after speaker at multi-day conferences, calls himself the “Professional Summarizer.” Each evening, he recaps the day’s events and has everyone in the audience laughing with him. Because he comments only on what people have said that day and doesn’t refer to their looks, dress or mannerisms, his listeners enjoy his poking fun at them and feel all the better for having attended the conference. Not incidentally, Dale enjoys being rehired year after year.
Humor is simply a different way to focus. The Law of Attraction says you get more of what you focus on. When your humor is positive, you attract more of the good things in life. If you focus on meanness, you attract more of that.
The next time you are tempted to tell a joke or forward a funny story via email, ask yourself, “Do I want more of this?” If so, by all means, spread the joy!
