Episode 9: Meditation and Humor

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Losing Control, a podcast from Sports Illustrated
Studios and I Heart Radio. I'm justin Sua. Losing Control
is a podcast about the yips, but on this episode,
we're not talking about the yips. We're doing something a
little different. When we were developing this show, I knew
it was critical that we not only tell a story

(00:20):
about the yips and those who experience it, but cover
how those who get the yips work to overcome it.
And if you've been listening, there's a couple of things
that you've heard more than once. Focus on what you
can control. Breathe and use your breath to ground you
in the present moment. Try to have fun, and especially
try to laugh. Today we're talking about two of those things,

(00:44):
meditation or using your breath to ground you in the present,
and the power of humor. In the first half of
this episode, you'll hear from Dr Amishi Ja, a cognitive
neuroscientist who studies attention and the power of meditation in
her lab at the University of Miami. The author of
Pique Mind. Dr Joel will walk us through some of

(01:05):
what she's learned about meditation and attention control and introduce
us to two practices that you can begin today. In
the second half of the episode, you'll meet Jennifer Acker,
a behavioral scientist, and Naomi bagdonis an innovation strategist and
media coach. Jennifer and Naomi teach at the Stanford Graduate
School of Business and recently wrote a book called Humor Seriously,

(01:30):
Why Humor is a Secret weapon in business and life.
We'll talk about the power of humor and the benefits
of a mindset of levity, and you might be surprised
how something so simple can have such a profound impact
on your life and your work. And that's important because
whether you're battling the yips or just trying to get

(01:51):
through life, it's often the simple things that can make
the biggest difference. This is Losing Control, a podcast about
one of the ange just phenomenon sports, the yips, or
when an athlete or elite performer suddenly finds themselves unable
to do the thing that they do better than almost
everyone else on the planet. If you're listening for the

(02:12):
first time, welcome, but if you want the full experience,
head back to episode one. Losing Control is a podcast
told through conversations with athletes coaches, neuroscientists, and more, and
it's in order. Each episode features a first hand perspective
that contributes a piece to the puzzle that is the YIPS.
Along the way, you'll learn about some of the challenges

(02:33):
that high performers face and the mental work that enables
them to do what they do. Not only that, you'll
hear how you can incorporate these tools, strategies, and mindsets
into your own life because it's not just about losing control,
it's about getting it back. So let's get started. My
name is Dr Mishija. I am a neuroscientist, professor of

(02:55):
psychology and author of Peak Mind. What is egnitive neuroscience?
So cognitive neuroscience, let's just break it down. Cognitive having
to do the way we think and process information, and
neuroscience the study of the structures and functioning of the
human brain. It's a connecting what is known about information
processing with brain biology. In other words, it's how our

(03:18):
thinking is instantiated within the hardware of this thing we
carry around on our neck, our brain. Now there's a
story of yours. I love. This was back when you
were at the University of Pennsylvania. You're attending an academic
lecture and in the Q and A session you ask
a question about a negative brain and a positive brain,

(03:38):
and you're appalled by the answer. Can you please tell
us that story? Oh yeah, absolutely, We've got to travel
back in time, though this is probably two thousand four
or five, really early days from even in my role
as a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, as
you mentioned, and this was at a moment, just to
again place it, where I personally, as a scientist who

(04:01):
studied attention in my own lab, was experiencing sort of
a crisis of attention for many reasons. I had a
young child, my husband was in grad school. It was
running this high power lab at a very stellar institution,
excited to be there, et cetera. But I was really
feeling like my own mind was sort of slipping away
and my well being was slipping away. So that's sort
of my mindset. So I go to this lecture by

(04:22):
a dear colleague of mine, a world renowned, really eminent
neuroscientist named Richie Davidson, and his his expertise is in
emotion research. So as you just described, he puts up
these two images and this is at the end of
a very long sort of seminar, but it sort of
ends with this note and shows these two images of

(04:43):
functional m r I brain recordings of brain activity. One
is of him in his lab having induced participants into
a positive mood. So you do this by things like
playing happy music people are ended of their happiest memory.
Is just anything it takes to really induce that really

(05:03):
strong feeling of positive what we call affect or emotion.
And then on the other side, he showed us an
image of people induced in a negative mood done kind
of comparably with negative music or kind of music that
brings you down memories that are personally difficult and negative.
And his point was really just that if you compare

(05:24):
those two brain images side by side, they look quite
distinct from each other. There are different brain states, they activate,
different brain circuitry. It was a really important point. When
I saw that. I kept thinking, you know, how do
I get that negative brain to look like the positive one,
because I was frankly thinking of my own life. So
the question I asked at the end of his lecture,

(05:45):
all the questions were actually done. At that point. I
was sort of the last one left. I was sitting
in the back of the room, and I kind of
called out to him, like, how do you get the
negative brain to look like the positive one? And he
responded in a way, as you said. That kind of
shocked me and made me a little appalled what he

(06:05):
said when I asked him the question of how do
you get a negative brain to look like a positive brain?
Was meditation and it was this short answer he gave.
And the reason I was so shocked was because at
that point we didn't use a term like meditation and
neuroscience lectures. It had I'd never heard it in the
context of a serious scientific lecture before, and it kind

(06:29):
of woke me up, like what is he talking about
at that point? And now, of course he runs a
giant institute that studies meditation like my own lab, but
at that moment he was not sort of out in
the open regarding that research. So we had a long
opportunity to talk afterwards, and I learned a lot about
the kind of research he was doing. But it was
quite a wake up moment. I mean, I sometimes describe
it as like the equivalent of what it would feel

(06:50):
like for astrophysicists to be told about astrology, kind of like,
what in the world are you talking about. You're not
in the right place. What do you have to say
the listeners out there who might feel like meditation simply
isn't worth their time. I myself was a skeptic, and
it's a little bit deeper than just a skepticism regarding

(07:11):
its role in serious neuroscience. It actually came from a
deeper skepticism from my own cultural background. I'm an Indian woman.
I grew up seeing meditation in my family's spiritual and
religious life. In fact that my earliest memories are seeing
my dad practicing meditation every morning, just you know, he'd
be showered and dressed and sitting there with his eyes

(07:32):
closed before he had to his high power job as
an executive. So this was something I knew, but I
never really thought it was for me. It was like,
that's great, that's for them, but not really me. And
I had not seen any evidence or indication that this
is something that should be taken seriously. But the reason
I'd say it I've changed my mind, Well, it's frankly
because of the nature of the evidence space at this point. Now,

(07:55):
what is meditation? Maybe a place to start when we
talk about why it should be worthy of consideration, And
I'll just speak to it from the brain science perspective.
When I hear that term now, having studied in my
lab for almost two decades, it means something quite different
than it did that moment that Richie Davidson said the
word to me. When I hear it now, meditation to

(08:17):
me is engaging in specific mental practices to cultivate specific
mental qualities. It's a form of brain trading. So before
we go on, this is something that I've always wondered about.
Is there a difference between mindfulness and meditation? Oh, I'm
so glad you asked that question. So is there a
difference between mindfulness and meditation? Now? The way that I

(08:41):
think of meditation is as an umbrella category, a broader category,
sort of like the term sports. If I say sports,
you're like, okay, I get it. I get what sports are,
of course, especially for this podcast, and you adjust it.
But think about the Olympics. Sports is not going to
cut it when it comes to specific elite performance and
what it means to train. What it requires to train

(09:04):
to be an Olympic level gymnast very different than being
an Olympic level golfer. So there are multiple forms of
meditation in the same way there are multiple types of sports.
We can have compassion meditation, which the practices we engage
in are to cultivate a stronger sense and connection to
the suffering of others and acting on behalf of reducing

(09:26):
that suffering, or transcendental meditation, which is about engaging in
practices to connect with a sense of transcendence, something beyond
the self. And Mindfulness training is yet another specific category
of meditation practice, and what it is highlighting is paying
attention to our present moment experience, being in the here

(09:48):
and the now without judgment or editorializing or emotionally reacting
to the present moment. It sounds so simple be in
the present, but as many of us know, it's not easy.
Why is that and how does meditation help us focus
our attention? I think you're right. It sounds pretty simple,
like we'll just pay attention to your attention, know what

(10:11):
the heck is going on, so you can kind of
see where you're at and then adjust accordingly. It sounds
like such a nice, easy to do things, but it
is so challenging in many ways, and in fact, the
reason it's challenging is because our default in terms of
the way the brain functions, is not to orient to
our own mind in that way. We aren't usually taking

(10:32):
sort of a distanced observational perspective towards what's happening in
our mind when we feel that they're stress and demand.
We're so in it and so fused with it that
we can't step away to actually see, look at that.
I'm actually overwhelmed right now, I'm actually emotionally disregulated, and
I'm so agitated. Maybe I shouldn't in this moment press

(10:53):
send on the email, or maybe I should wait to
have the meeting with this person until I feel like
I have much more control over the thoughts and points
I want to make. But that's exactly if you are
able to watch your own mind and body in this way,
you have many more choice points on how you're going
to respond, what you're going to do next, And it

(11:14):
does give you a sense of sort of agency in
your own life so that you're not so compelled by
the mindset that you're in. So I'm listening you say that.
In my mind, I'm thinking, yes, yes, that is exactly
what it looks like. And then another part of me
is saying Okay, So how do I get better at
doing that? Like? What can we do to practice and

(11:37):
to get better at being more mindful and being able
to choose our response as opposed to just react right?
And I think the first thing to even begin such
a journey is to see the value in doing it,
to see that when we are aware of our own
mind and our own behavior, we're much better able to

(11:59):
calibrate re calibrate a Just just knowing that is a
really good conceptual starting point and then accepting also that
knowing that is not enough. There is something you have
to do. And you gave the keyword practice, right, So
there's different ways that people consider how they might practice this.
One approach is practice being in the environment that is

(12:21):
extremely demanding, something that in military training is called stress
inoculation training. Do a very highly demanding thing so that
you're used to operating in that environment. In the athletic context,
it would be preseason training so that you're getting ready
for the competition season. And I think that those are
really useful ways to think about just getting acclimated to

(12:42):
these circumstances. But I'll tell you something. What we learned
from our engagement with groups like actually, preseason athletes and
pre deployment soldiers or soldiers going through readiness training is
something that was quite kind of bad news, which was
that the training activities that are intended to prepare the

(13:04):
individuals for the demand that will be coming next actually
the training activities themselves were depleting attention. So what I
mean by that is when we partnered, for example, with
the University of Miami's football team, what we wanted to
do is see what would happen to attention over the
course of preseason training, very demanding period of time. They're

(13:27):
practicing rigorously with drills and physical conditioning, and there are
many of them are still taking summer classes, a very
demanding period of time, and then at the end of
that training period they go to camp that determined sort
of what their season might look like in terms of
their individual performance and role on the team. So we
tracked football players over a four week interval. We actually

(13:48):
brought them to the lab, We tested their attention in
many different ways and their mood and their stress levels,
et cetera. And then four weeks later we asked them
to come back and do the same thing. And intervening
within those weeks was a very high demand interval, and
what we found was that everybody, the entire team's attention
was worse and mood declined. So that was kind of

(14:10):
an eye opener. When we've done this with predeployment soldiers,
same thing. Four to eight weeks of pre deployment training
or some type of writingess training intended to best prepare
service members, it itself will cause mood to decline and
attention to decline. Even for undergraduates. We see this so
at the beginning and end of the semester, performance is worse,

(14:32):
mood is worse, and then you've got to take final
exams or in the business context, highly demanding, so you know,
working with groups like accountants and other people that have
cyclical sales cycles, high demand intervals deplete attention and suppress mood.
So this one approach of prepare people by having them practice,
it doesn't seem to work in terms of protecting attention.

(14:54):
We've got to do something else. So the second approaches,
as you said, practice in a different way, practiced by
training attention. And what we introduced to all of these
groups is mindfulness training as a sort of suite of
attention training practices. To see if would protect against decline
and attentional performance, mood, and even performance in terms of

(15:15):
operationally relevant performance. For military service members, for example, does
it actually help them be better soldiers even though they're
experiencing a highly demanding interval. And I'll tell you over
and over again, what we found was that people engaging
in as little as four weeks of mindfulness training twelve
to fifteen minutes of daily mindfulness practice over that four
week interval, they were protected in terms of their attention,

(15:38):
didn't decline, stayed stable over time even though the demands
were increasing and protracted, and their mood stayed stable over time.
Same thing with the football team. Those that receive mindfulness
training and practiced it stayed stable over time in terms
of their attention in their mood. If somebody is sitting
here listening and they're thinking, okay, that sounds like me.

(15:59):
I'm stressed. I'm in a high stress environment. I'm suffering,
My performance is suffering, my attention is all over the place.
What do I do about it? I think that's the
question I asked myself frankly, and I think that's the
question that many of the populations that we work with.
Whether it is special operations forces, or professional athletes, or

(16:21):
undergraduates or medical and nursing trainees, or business professionals that
are about to launch a new company or a new venture.
This is the exact same thought that arises in our mind.
I want to do something about it. I want some
action or ability to make myself effective even in the
face of stress. So that's we can definitely talk about that.

(16:41):
But I wanted to just mention because there may be
other people listening that are like, I don't agree with this.
Stress activates me. Stress makes me at my best. I
met my peak performance when I feel a little bit stressed.
And you know, frankly, that was a challenge I got
pretty early on in our early days working with the Marines.
I remember this very big, brawny marine like kind of

(17:02):
challenging me in the middle of one of my briefings,
like saying, ma'am, I don't agree stress is good, stress
is helpful. And my argument was actually know that stress
can actually be problematic. But he was correct. And this
is because stress, just like performance, can be on a continuum.
We can have low stress, medium stress, high stress, and

(17:23):
there's a whole range of stress that we can experience
and it ends up that there's this very lawful relationship.
In fact, it's one of the only things that we
would say is a lawful and law within psychology, something
called the yurkeys dots in law that says that there
is a a lawful relationship between what happens with our
perceived stress, the level of perceived stress, and our performance.

(17:47):
That's the keys dots in law y E R K
E S D O D S O N. Moving on,
and for people that are listening to us right now,
just to visualize it, think of it is. On the
X axis of a graph, just two lines, you've got
stress low to high, and on the y axis you've
got performance low to high. So the lowest amount of

(18:10):
stress and the lowest performance right on that, right on
the point where they both meet. And the shape of
this relationship between performance and stress is an inverted you.
So take the letter, you just turn it upside down,
so now you can kind of picture it in your mind.
As stress increases, as you get more and more stressed,
you're on the upside of that rising up of the
inverted you to a point at which you are at

(18:33):
a peak peak, so that a specific amount of stress
is going to result in sort of optimized performance. That's awesome.
That's something we call you stress, the letters E and
you in front of the word stress. All of that
suggests that when the pressure is low, we're not going
to perform all that well. But as we turn up
the dial on our sense of pressure and stress, performance

(18:55):
increases until we get to that point that that marine
who had challenged me was talking about. There's a certain
amount of stress at which performance is at its peak.
But if we pushed past that level of perceived stress
will start falling on the downslide of that inverted you,
so that more and more, as more and more stress
is experienced, performance will get worse and worse. And there's

(19:18):
kind of another important thing to keep in mind, which
is the conversation I ended up having with that whole
group of marines that I was briefing, which is that
even if there is a peak amount of stress that
you experience that results in your sense of optimized performance
just that sweet spot, if that same level of stress
is experienced over a protracted period of time, you know,

(19:40):
not just a day or two or a week, but
weeks and weeks and months on end, you are no
longer going to be performing at your best, you're going
to start sliding into distress. I just wanted to highlight
that point justin just to say that these relationships are
known and very well studied. Kind of back to your
question regarding what can we do about it? That is

(20:04):
actually the pursuit that we went on in my lab
where we studied many different things to see what might
protect against this stress related decline that we saw in
attention when people experienced weeks and weeks of high demand
and high stress. And out of all the things that
we looked at, the only thing that consistently and reliably

(20:24):
and statistically changed attention to protect it against stress related
decline was mindfulness training. And so the question shifted to
how do we get this to more people so that
no matter your profession, if you're experiencing high stress, you
can engage in these practices. It's accessible to you so
you can benefit. I appreciate you bringing some concepts into

(20:47):
the conversation that may be new to many of our listeners.
And before we move on, you mentioned a zone of
optimal stress. Is there a way to reliably find that zone?
How do we need termined the level of stress that's
good for us and identify where we begin to slip
into overwhelm. Well, I mean, maybe I flipped the question

(21:08):
on its head. I would say, all of us know
what that is, and it really is subjective. So that's
a very important point. There's no objective amount of demand
that results in a specific experience of stress, because it
varies based on who we are, our life experiences, the

(21:28):
particular condition that our mind is because of life events
are upbringing. There's so many factors, and I was just
it was funny. I was talking to my my daughter
about this. She's fifteen, and she was sort of asking me,
you know, when I go and give speeches in front
of lots of people, don't I get nervous? And I
completely understand that. But through the course of my career,
I've had many opportunities to give public lectures and I

(21:51):
actually don't feel that stressed out by it. Maybe initially
it was a little bit of a stress or maybe
I'm oriented towards not having a problem with giving public presentations,
But it's not the actual act of giving a talk
that would be stressful. It's my experience and it's the
translation of it in the instantiation of it. In my
mind and body. So just to say, we all know

(22:13):
what it feels like to have that dipping into overwhelmed experience,
and we also know what it feels like when it's
the right amount of challenge when we're in the zone,
so to speak. So I don't think that's something we
need to look for. Maybe the question we want to
pursue is how do I get myself so that, regardless
of the demand, my mind is sort of armored. I'm

(22:33):
mentally armored to be able to bring myself back into
a zone where it feels like I'm functioning still at
my peak, even if the objective demands are quite rigorous
and extreme. And that is where I think the mental
training really makes a difference, so that we're orienting to
the experiences we have in a way that keeps us

(22:54):
in the more regulated zone without experiencing overwhelmed. Where it
starts now, compromising it pension. We'll be back with Dr
Amishija after this. This is losing control and I'm justin sua.
I'm speaking with Dr amishi Ja. Let's get to the

(23:15):
thing itself. What is a practice or some practices that
are particularly useful for people who frequently experience high stress. Yes,
there are actually this the whole suite of four main
practices that I would say are worth checking out, and
you know, I'll describe some of them now, but if
people want to dig in a little bit deeper, I

(23:35):
get into that in my book. In fact, the whole
motivation for writing Peak Mind was to take what we
learned from our laboratory studies and make them so that
more people could benefit from them. So I just wanted
to mention that if it it feels unsatisfying or not enough,
there's more you can read about it. But the key,
as we've been talking about, if we want to intervene
with regard to the sort of ballistic direction of our mind,

(23:58):
which may be reactive, which may be overwhelmed, which may
be ruminating, which may be catastrophizing, whatever it is, if
we want to intervene in that kind of ballistic mindset,
we've got to first of all, know it's happening. We've
got to be aware and notice, look at that I'm
in the grips of anger or worry or whatever it

(24:20):
is that you're experiencing. And for that we have to train.
So one of the practices that that I offer is
something called the find your Flashlight practice, and I call
it that because in many ways we've really dug into
what attention is. But one way I think about attention
is that it's sort of like a flashlight, like an
actual physical flashlight of torch, depending on the part of

(24:43):
the world that you live in. And what I mean
by that is, if you're in a darkened room, can't
see anything, or on a darkened path, a flashlight is
a super duper handy tool because wherever it is that
we shine, that flashlight will get crisper, clearer, more detailed
information about that part of space, and using it we
can kind of sample our environment and maneuver to whatever

(25:04):
we need to do, whether it's get get to the
right part of the path to deal with whatever we're
doing walking around at night, or if you're in a
darkened room, figure out where the door is to leave.
It's a very handy thing to have. Same thing with
our attention. Attention, just like that flashlight illuminates different aspects
of our conscious experience. Where we pay attention matters. It

(25:24):
changes the amount of information that we get. Everything else
that we're not paying attention to is sort of darkened
down so now, if you're in the middle of some
kind of very extremely reactive moment, most of the time
you have no idea where your mind is. You are lost.
You have know what we call meta awareness, awareness of

(25:44):
our present moment attention. And so the finder flashlight practice
is the opportunity to very very efficiently learn and get
more familiar with cultivating the capacity to know where our
mind is, know where our attention is, and control it
in some sense, to get it back on track to

(26:06):
where we want it to be in this practice, and
it's a very fundamental or foundational practice of all kinds
of mindfulness training programs. So you first thing you want
to do is kind of just like any other activity.
Think of the parallel with what you want to do
when you're doing some kind of physical exercise. You want
to set the stage so that you're best supported to
do it. You've got the right gear and right equipment

(26:28):
for for mindfulness practice. You don't need anything externally. You've
got your mind and your body. You're in good shape.
That's all you really need. But try to find a comfortable,
quiet space and then really make the intention to set
a timers that you have a few minutes where you're
gonna do this in a formal way. You're not just
gonna say, oh, I'm gonna be mindful right now. You're
gonna exercise and train for mindfulness. And the first thing

(26:51):
we do when we're doing this is sit comfortably. I
would say, you know, you want to take this body
posture that really gives the sense of what you're trying
to achieve. Like I would say, upright, not uptight. You're
not going to be overly rigid, but you're really embodying
sort of dignified, confident, attentive orientation. And then you're going
to check out the fact that this entire time in

(27:12):
your life, in your days. Then, particularly in the moment
that you're doing this practice, your breathing, your body is
sitting and breathing, it's there. You're not controlling the breath.
You're just checking into that part of your present moment experience.
And so breath is a really helpful anchor in this
moment to just have a specific thing that we're going

(27:34):
to focus on. So we notice ourselves, our body's breathing,
and then we're going to really be tuning into what
feels most vivid. Tied to our breath is it the
coolness of air moving in and on our nostrils, or
our abdomen moving up and down, whatever it is for you,
that's going to be the target for your attention for
the next few moments of the practice. So you want

(27:55):
to think of it as taking that flashlight of your
attention and shining it on that breath related sensation. Again,
you're just observing it, the thing is happening, You're just
attending to it by shining that flashlight of attention on it.
And then you do this for a few moments. You know,
you're just intending to keep attention right there on that
breath related sensation. The second step is to notice where

(28:19):
is my mind right now? Where am i? Am I
actually paying attention to breath related sensations or if I
wandered away, meandered away to other thoughts or feelings or
distractions in my environment. So focus attention on the breath.
Notice where's my mind? And the third step is redirect

(28:40):
if you are off track, redirect that attention pointed back
to those breath related sensations. And you know, just describing
the short practice, the reason I call it, find your
flashlights because that's what we're doing we're doing three steps focus, notice,
redirect and repeat. Focus notice, redirect, repeat, and a lot
of my military colleagues will call this sort of the

(29:01):
push up for the mind that you're giving us reps
to do. We can do that, and doing this over
and over again, we know will strengthen our ability to
direct attention willfully not so much about the breath. We're
not trying to be Olympic level breath followers. But now
you're in the middle of a conversation, or in the
middle of some very important, you know, athletic performance moment,

(29:21):
or just in your daily life trying to write an email,
and you just can't get your head where you want
it to be. Focus that's the intended target. Notice where's
my mind right now? And then with the kind of
comfort and control, redirected back as you will. So all
those steps are important. The focusing is important, then noticing,
the finding of the flashlight is important, and then the

(29:43):
redirecting of it is important. It ends up that all
three of those steps tap into three of the main
systems of attention, so we're sort of supporting ourselves to
strengthen all aspects. Find your flashlight, focus, notice, redirect, repeat,
here's the second practice. So that's the sort of longer practice,
and that's the one we ask people to build up

(30:04):
to about twelve minutes a day. The hip pocket version
of this is something I call the stop practice, and
that's just you're going to in the moment. And I
always say, you know, anytime you're stopped, stop light, stop sign,
waiting for the elevator, whatever you're doing in your daily life,
you can do the stop practice. And and it's really
just the first step is stop in some sense, whatever

(30:25):
you're doing. Just stop what you're doing. You're you're usually
standing in some context, take a breath. So now instead
of minutes and minutes of focusing on the breath, just
one conscious breath. So that's s for stop, T, take
a breath, observe. That's that noticing component. Notice what's happening

(30:46):
around you, within you. That's the oh S, stop T
take a breath, oh observe, and then p pro seed,
move on with your life. So it can be a
breath too few us, but it's a mini version of that.
Find your flashlight practice and what happens after you've done that,
as you've got your flashlight back in your hand, your

(31:06):
attention is now with you. You know where you are,
so the next moment can be dealt with more efficiently
and more successfully. There are a lot of athletes out
there who practice mindfulness meditation. They'll do it before games,
they'll do after games, and if you watch closely, you'll
even find athletes pausing to take a deep breath and

(31:27):
to practice mindfulness in the moment in between serves, in
between sets, in between any event, just to settle, to
ground themselves, and to redirect their focus to the most
important thing at that moment, that here and now. We'll
be back with Jennifer Acker and Naomi Bagdonas after this,

(31:50):
I'm justin suah and this is losing control. Jennifer Acker
and Naomi Bagdonas are the authors of Humor Seriously, Why
humor is a secret weapon in business and life. What
might surprise you is that they both teach at the
Stanford Graduate School of Business, which is no laughing matter.
But that little joke actually points to a key idea

(32:13):
that the distinction we've created between spaces where we're serious
in spaces where we let ourselves laugh is artificial and
actually does us a disservice to kick off our conversation,
I asked Naomi to talk about the humor cliff, which
refers to the age when we begin to lose our
sense of humor. When you ask people this really simple question,

(32:35):
did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday? People pretty
consistently say yes at age sixteen, eighteen twenty, and then
right around age three people start saying no. We go
to work and we think that we have to be
serious people to be successful, and we fall off this
humor cliff. And by the way, this data is really striking.

(32:57):
Things start to look up again around age eighty, which
is horrifying because the average life expectancy is seventy eight.
Here's Jennifer. Yeah, so you know, it's really right around
the time when you do go to work. And what
we find is that people believe when they oft to
work that in order to do serious work, be respected,

(33:17):
gained status, that you actually should not use humor or levity,
and that in fact, humor and levity betray the mission
of being serious. And in fact, what we're finding in
the actual data is that you can do very serious things.
In fact, you can do them better when you don't
take yourself so seriously. And one of the things here

(33:39):
is that when you can laugh at your faults, it
becomes easier to overcome them, and we find this to
be particularly true with high performing athletes, or business leaders,
or even just really effective parents and humans. Naomi, can
you talk about how this works. There's this belief that

(34:00):
when things get hard, when work gets serious, the best
way to overcome is to be serious. And in sports
and at work, when we're not performing how we want,
it can feel like the best way to overcome that
is to sort of bear down and do the work,
and we often find that the opposite is really most effective.

(34:21):
So one story that we heard in our research for
the book that we wrote is from fifteen Warrior season.
So Steve Kerr's first year as head coach of the
Golden State Warriors, and the team had started the season
off strong, but the head suffered this series of crushing
losses to the Grizzlies, the Lakers, and the Clippers. And

(34:42):
so one day, on the way to practice, all of
the players around the bus. The bus unexpectedly starts driving
in the opposite direction of the practice courts. So everyone
is pretty confused and Steve sort of has this grint
on his face. He knows what's going on. The confusion
only grows when the bus stops in front of this
table tennis club and Steve gets off the bus. He says,

(35:06):
all right, everyone pile in, and all the players go
into this table tennis club and for the next couple
of hours, no one touched a basketball. All they did
was have this heated, spirited, fun session of table tennis,
and the players talked about how there was sort of

(35:26):
this mood shift. We're not focusing on the thing that's
been hard, We're not focusing on the game. We're focusing
on just playing together. And after this table tennis tournament,
Steve called the team together for a meeting, and it
was in the back room of that small table tennis
joint in Oakland that the players had one of their

(35:47):
most candid conversations about what wasn't working, why they were losing,
and what their vision was going forward. And one of
the players later told us that it was this experience
and the atmosphere that Steve created. This this atmosphere of joy,
of laughter, of not taking yourself too seriously even through
something that is so serious, was what helped create this

(36:09):
new form of camaraderie and turn the team around, and
then of course the Warriors would go on to one
of their best seasons in the NBA since nineteen seventy five,
and and of course we all know the story from
then on, But it was really this moment of recognizing
things are hard, people are down. How do we turn
this around in a way that that incorporates some levity

(36:29):
and helps us move forward. I love hearing about coach Kurrn,
how he works, and we've all seen the Warriors dominate
this past decade. So, Jennifer, what do you say to
listeners out there who are like, this all sounds great.
I'm on board, but I'm just not funny. When I
try to make a joke, people frown, they shake their heads.

(36:50):
It feels awkward. I don't know what to say. You
name it? What do you say that the person who
doesn't think that they have a funny bone in their body? Right?
So the first, like the secret really is, is to
understand that this is not about being funny, It's about
being human. We know how to do this, and one

(37:13):
of the insights on how to get back more human
is to actually just know your humor style. What Naomi
and I've dined in the last decade of work is
basically analyzed globally what people say are their humor style.
So there's four types. One is a stand up and
they're bold and irreverent and they're unafraid to ruffle a

(37:33):
few feathers to get a laugh. Then there is the sniper.
They're edgy, sarcastic, dry, the masters of the unexpected dig
Then there is the magnet and they're gregarious and charismatic.
There may be a little bit more physical with their humor,
a little bit more in the limelight. They tend to
be extroverted. And then there's the sweetheart and they are

(37:54):
earnest and honest and understated and their goal in using
humor as often to uplift others. And so each of
these styles have strengths and each of them have risks.
What's interesting to know is that two of these styles,
the sweetheart and the magnet style, tend to uplift others

(38:14):
and bring people together. We often say that people want
to be valued members of a winning team on an
inspired mission, and those particular humor styles do a really
good job of uplifting others and making people come together
to really feel like they aren't a team, especially in
the workplace, how do you gauge whether or not humor

(38:37):
is right for a particular context or environment. What we
teach our students, it's really not necessarily about the overuse
of this muscle, so to speak, but it's actually better
understanding when and why it's useful. So the students in
our class, for example, report after taking the class that
they're better able to read the room, to know when

(39:01):
it's going to be actually quite useful, and and to
really understand which types of humor are going to be
useful in um different situations. So I'll give you an example.
Naomi has learned over time, you know, to basically shift
her style based on the goals in a certain meeting,

(39:22):
who's in that meeting, etcetera. And so I don't know
if you want to talk more about it, but I
think that ability of understanding how to read the room
and also shift your style and know why you're using
humor becomes so important. Yeah. I think this is such
an important point, and it's one that doesn't seem intuitive.
People think, Okay, I've got my sense of humor. I

(39:43):
either bring it with me or I don't. It's either
on or off, and this is really not the case.
It's so important for people to recognize what's your home style,
and how can you shift based on the context and
based on your strategic goals. So Jennifer mentioned when I
was early in my career, I was my mid twenties,
and I was designing and facilitating these workshops for groups

(40:04):
of executives. So I would often be in the room
with people twenty years my senior and predominantly more male
than me. In that context, if I lean too heavily
on magnet and sweetheart style humor, if I'm too goofy
and silly and irreverent, people are going to code that
as lower status. But if instead I use sniper style humor,

(40:26):
if I'm sharp and witty and direct and a bit
more biting with my humor, people will actually code that
as higher in status. And so that's the style that
I use in a context where I'm perhaps the lower
status person in the room, and and therefore I can
do what's called punching up. I can make fun of
people of higher status. Now, on the other side, when

(40:47):
you're the most senior person in the room. So let's
say when Jennifer and I are are in the classroom
teaching at Stanford, and in that context were the authority
figures we don't want to be using teasing humor with
our students. We want to really be leaning into magnet
and sweetheart style humor that's going to be uplifting and
that's going to bring people together. So it's it's really
recognizing what is the context, what's my strategic goal, and

(41:10):
therefore what type of humor is going to work best
for me. Here we've talked about teams, but what about
when you're alone? How can you use humor when you're
on your own. There's one exercise that our students love,
and it's actually just going throughout the day and noticing
because one of the big things is this isn't about
being funny, right, this is just about noticing truths in

(41:32):
the world. And that's simple training of seeing truths and
then you know those truths are the things that actually
oftentimes make you smile. So we asked our students just
to write down a few truths that they see each day,
and it's in that mechanism that they start to see
small moments of levity that they would not have otherwise seen.

(41:56):
So it's much easier than you think, I want to
ask about this science, Naomi. What's happening in the brain
when we're laughing, especially if we're stressed out. Yeah, neurologically
and chemically, it is one of our most powerful assets
to get through these stressful times. So you asked about
the neuroscience. When we laugh, our brains released this cocktail

(42:18):
of hormones. We release endorphins, so that gives us, you know,
we feel more energized, more able to tackle difficult things,
and really importantly, we lower our cortisol and our epenefrin.
So even the anticipation of laughter, not even laughing, but
just knowing that you will be able to have a
laugh with your colleagues has been shown to decrease cortisol

(42:40):
by thirty nine percent and epenefern by seventy And these
are sort of the fight or flight hormones that we have,
right So the result is that we feel safer, we
feel calmer, we feel less stressed. And when we are
in those mindsets, when our stress is lowered, we're also
able to access our highest modes of thinking. We're able

(43:02):
to be most creative, we're able to be most decisive,
We're able to perform at the highest levels when we
have that laughter and when we have those hormones firing
in our brains. So humor has all of these benefits,
and I would venture that most of us probably do
enjoy laughing even or especially when we're stressed out. Jennifer,

(43:23):
can you talk about how it's sometimes the simple things,
the things that are right in front of us, that
are sometimes the most impactful. Why do we tend to
miss them? So? Sometimes sometimes the things that are, you know,
the most simple and mundane, things that are in front
of us all of the time and are free, are

(43:45):
actually the most impactful, But we don't use them that
much because we get in our heads so easily it's
hard to kind of like step outside and actually notice
what makes life meaningful. Just think about the people that
you like to spend your time with. How often do
you find yourself laughing generously with them? We would We

(44:09):
would bet the answer is a lot. In the book,
you write beautifully about how your mom's time as a
hospice volunteer has informed your work on humor. Can you
talk about this and for listeners who may not be familiar.
Hospice cares for people who are near the end of
their lives. Yeah, absolutely so. My mom is a teacher,
but she also um as she has these side hustles.

(44:32):
When I was growing up, one of which was working
extensively for hospice and so one thing that I learned
at early age was what do people wish for in
their last days of life? Because it was her job
to see if she could make those wishes come true.
And I remember talking to her about what people wish

(44:54):
for when they did have regrets or still needed something,
And one of the things they often mentioned it is
I wish I laughed more. I wish I didn't I
wish I just felt more joined in to take myself
so seriously in my life. And this is something that
they're mentioning in they're one of the most serious moments
of their life. And I always that struck me as

(45:15):
as profound, and more recently, one of the things that's
become even more imparent is that this idea of a
mindset of levity in work and play doesn't just mitigate
that one particular regret, but it actually relates to and
mitigates these other pattern these other kind of regrets that
people mentioned. One they mentioned often that they wish they

(45:37):
had been bolder and took more risks, traveled more, you know,
left the status quo more. And what we find is
those with a sense of humor not taking themselves so
seriously are better able to take those bigger, bolder risks
because you know, diffusion is often eased, diffusion attention is
often eased when you're in that mindset. Another one I

(45:58):
remember was authenticity. They wish that they were more, had
been more authentic, And what we find with our executives
and students is that when they better understand their own
humor style and are looking at life on the precipice
of a smile, they actually behave in more authentic ways.
The other one is presently. You know, people have mentioned
I wish I just I appreciated the small moments more,

(46:21):
you know, holding hands with my grandchild, or you know,
just saying I love you. And one of the things
we find in our our work on humor is that
you have to be more present because you're noticing these
truths in the world and these opportunities to uplift others.
And then the last is love. People wish they had

(46:42):
the chance to say I love you one more time,
which is maybe the biggest regret, and what we find
is that when humor exists, love is not far behind.
And so we feel very strongly about these ideas around
humor not just for making you more active in athletics
or business or whatever you're doing, but also in life

(47:05):
and having a more meaningful life. The next episode of
Losing Control is the last episode of Losing Control, at
least for now. And whether it's your first episode or
you've been with us since the beginning, thank you so
much for listening. Next time, we're looking squarely at mental

(47:26):
health with a clinical psychiatrist, and we're also checking back
with the one and only Rick Ankiel. That's up next
on Losing Control. A sincere thank you to our guests,
Jennifer Acker and Naomi Bagdona's authors of Humor Seriously. Jennifer
and Naomi both teach at the Stanford Graduate School of Business,

(47:48):
and Dr Amishi Jo a professor of psychology at the
University of Miami, where she also serves as the Director
of Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative,
of which she co founded in two thousand and ten.
She is the author of Pete Mind. Thank you so much,
for listening and don't forget to rate and subscribe. I'm

(48:11):
Justin Suah, your host, and you can find me on
Instagram and Twitter at Justin Suah. That's j U s
t I N s u A. You could also check
me out on the Increase Your Impact podcast. Losing Control
is a podcast from Sports Illustrated Studios and I Heart Radio.
Original music by Jerrem Suah. Michael McDowell is our producer,

(48:35):
editing and mixing by Will Stanton. This episode was fact
checked by Zoey Mulloch at s I Studios. Max Miller
is supervising producer, and Brandon Getchis and Matt Lipson are
executive producers at I Heart Radio. Sean ty Toone as
our executive producer. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

(48:56):
you get your podcasts. This podcast not provide medical advice,
and nothing you here on this podcast is intended or
implied to be a substitute for professional medical consultation, diagnosis,
or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or
other qualified health provider with any questions you may have
regard in your health. Never disregard professional medical advice or

(49:20):
delay in seeking it because of something you have heard
on this podcast.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC