- [Narrator] Karyn Buxman
is an international speaker
and successful author of eight books.
Booked by more than 500
companies worldwide,
Karyn is one of the few people
in the world to be inducted
into the National Speaker
Associations' hall of fame.
Today, Dan Lok interviews
Karyn on the secret
to enhancing your humor skills
to become a better leader
with personal stories
and cutting edge tips.
- Karyn, speaking of
funny photo, I think one
of the funniest thing that
I've seen was in a restaurant,
it's actually in a bathroom,
so I went to the men's bathroom
and I saw a sign in front of the urinal,
it just says don't eat the urine cake.
- Oh, yes.
(laughing)
- I'm like why, like why.
- They had to post that because
there was that one person.
- Yeah.
- Hey y'all, watch this.
- Eww, it's very true
that we look for humor
in day-to-day life, how
does that relate to health
in terms of our mental health?
- It's so wonderful, and
that's really what brought me
into this field in the very
beginning was the health aspects
and when I looked at humor,
I found that there's three
primary functions of humor.
The one being entertainment,
which everybody,
that's what they think
of when they think humor.
- [Dan] Yes.
- Another is wellbeing which is health,
and then another is influence
which is so important
in business, but in terms
of health, there are so many
studies about the benefits of humor,
and for people particularly
who use it consistently.
Again, that's a real--
- I loved what you said,
use it consistently.
- Use it consistently,
the issue is that so often
humor happens by chance
and when it happens
by chance that's wonderful,
but I want your listeners
and your viewers to understand
that it's humor by choice,
not by chance, it could be
both, but it's by choice,
and people who use it by
choice, what we find is
that every body system is affected.
It's a wonderful thing that
humor is a whole brain activity.
It affects the prefrontal cortex,
which is where we have wit,
that's the understanding
of the joke, the emotional
component of the brain,
which is the limbic system.
That's how we know we feel good and happy,
and then the occipital lobe
in the back of the brain
which is the physical
expression which is laughter,
and because of this whole brain activity,
there is this cascade of
neurotransmitters that affect us
all over our body, and
some of it we're aware of
because we have the
oxytocin and the serotonin
and the endorphin-like pinnacles
that make us feel good,
but also things that are going
on are hormones and proteins
and things that are doing
wonderful things for our body.
For instance, the number
one negative process
in our body that just fans the
flames of so many illnesses
and degenerative disease is cortisol
and humor lowers cortisol levels.
Cortisol is an inflammatory
process that's throughout
every cell of our body,
but humor decreases
those cortisol levels,
and so this is why we see
positive effects in terms
of autoimmune diseases
and we see positive effects
in terms of heart diseases,
persons with diabetes.
All of these kinds of things
we see positive effects
in people, and one of the
studies that was done in Japan,
actually it was repeated, and
I was so impressed with this,
I had mentioned it in my TEDx
Talk, was that we saw changes
not just at the cellular level,
but beyond the cellular level.
We actually saw positive
change in people's DNA.
- Wow.
- Now we're talking epigenetics,
and that people have
the ability to positively
influence future generations
by using humor intentionally
and consistently.
I mean, with something this
powerful, why would you not want
to include it, and one
of the number one issues
in our country costing
us billions of dollars--
- Depression.
- Is stress.
- Yeah, stress and depression.
Stress and depression, and
work loss, days off, sick days,
errors that are made at
work, accidents that happen,
all trace back to stress and depression
and that humor can help deal
with that, and so using this
and implementing it, it helps
people on a personal level
and at companies it's saving
them millions and even billions
of dollars in lost work days
and accidents, engagement,
happier people, they're more productive.
- [Dan] And they're more
looking forward to go to work
since their workplace is
a friendly environment,
is a fun environment,
versus people dragging, oh,
gotta go to work, of course
they're not gonna be productive.
- Right, and that's contagious.
- Yeah, 100%, if one person
is, oh, you think you having
a bad day, let me tell you my day.
(laughing)
- Isn't that crazy how we
get in this one-upsmanship
like whoever has the worst day--
- Don't get me started.
- It's like, I had the
worst day, so I win.
Yeah, that's crazy.
- It's very, very true,
and I think just like
what you're saying, this is science.
This is like science, this is
not just, oh yeah, be happy,
and things like that, that's
not what we're talking about.
- No, and this is what I
love, this is what feeds me.
I'm a neurohumorist and I know
your audience is thinking,
oh my gosh he's bringing
on another neurohumorist,
but it's living at the
intersection of humor in the brain
because really this is a great frontier,
and what we're bringing to
your viewers and your listeners
is the latest in science
that shows this will improve
your health, this will
increase your focus.
People, here's a great study
that was done by a friend
and researcher at Loma
Linda, doctor Lee Berk,
who is just an amazing
psychoneuroimmunologist,
he was doing a study of
the brain with people
and he had the control
group, he had the group
who was watching something stressful,
the movie Saving Private
Ryan, and then a group
that was watching humor and
they got to self-select out
of a couple of choices
what was funny to them
'cause what's funny to me
might not be funny to you,
but I digress, but
anyway, what he found was
that the brainwaves of people
who were experiencing humor
not only was it a whole brain
process, the alpha, the delta,
the beta, the theta,
but in addition to this,
now we see the gamma
waves, and gamma waves,
many years ago when we had
analog, we though that this was
just somehow interference,
but now that we have
digital technology we
know that gamma waves,
this is something
important, we've known that
with deep meditation and
mindfulness we have this
gamma wave pattern that
indicates focus and creativity
and this wonderful
depth and being in flow.
This is the same brainwave
pattern we see with humor.
- Wow.
- And so, maybe you have the opportunity
to practice deep
mindfulness or meditation,
but I know a lot of people,
they don't have that opportunity
but you have the opportunity
to access humor anywhere,
any place, anytime, even if
it's just in your own head.
- Right.
- And how powerful is that?
- And us entrepreneurs being
able to stay focused, right,
where it's funny, very
high-level entrepreneurs
when I meet with them, all they
talk about is actually less
about business, it's all about mind hacks
or it's about focus,
productivity, meditation.
I see that across, it's
funny how that works.
They don't necessarily talk
about the business aspect,
they talk about how could they improve
their personal performance.
