5 Keys To Learn To Laugh At Yourself

Learning to laugh at yourself is the easiest way to inner peace . Also towards resilience and kindness. It is not as easy as it sounds, nor is it an ability that comes about overnight. Only the most evolved or the most fortunate, get it.

To learn to laugh at yourself it is necessary to have reached a good level of self-knowledge. But above all, a high degree of self-acceptance. If you are lucky enough to have grown up in an environment that facilitated these abilities, wonderful. If not, it is necessary to carry out daily work to acquire or increase them.

We live in a society where everyone judges everyone. And they do it, many times, without any tact. This is the result of collective insecurity. However, a good number of people are scared by such judgments. Learning to laugh at yourself is a way to become independent from the opinion of others. How to do it? Here are some tips.

1. Combine being and wanting to be

One thing is what we are and another what we want to be. It seems very clear, but sometimes it is not so clear. We often confuse the two. This happens especially if we have been instilled with a very rigid “must be”, which is why we do not distinguish between reality and the expectations that we form. When this happens it is as if we are always in debt.

That “want to be” and “should be” prevents us from appreciating and valuing who we are. For example, we are short, but we have heard so many taunts or messages against short people, that in the end we despise that characteristic of ours.

We intimidate ourselves with the highs or we put on some terrifying heels to camouflage ourselves. Instead of taking advantage of all those situations in which coming in a smaller container is an advantage. Or laugh at the stature when, even on tiptoe we reach …

2. Develop selfish intelligence

Learning to laugh at yourself requires turning the volume down to narcissism and turning it up to healthy selfishness. Narcissism has to do with the feeling of personal pride. Healthy egoism, with seeking the good and the benefit for oneself, before others.

When you have a very high sense of personal pride, it is very difficult to learn to laugh at yourself. In those cases, there is a desire to be the best, the prettiest, the most intelligent … As it is an impossible desire, what prevails is frustration. This clinging to an idealized image of ourselves often prevents us from laughing at ourselves. Those with an excessive Ego, tend to have a high frustration to jokes.

Instead, by analyzing situations selfishly, we accept ourselves as incomplete people, who must first of all be true to themselves. And it is easier to laugh at our mistakes or our failures, regardless of whether we look good or bad with others. Now, we speak of healthy selfishness.

3. Judging yourself with kindness to learn to laugh at yourself

Sometimes we are relentless judges of ourselves. We evaluate ourselves severely. We don’t accept our mistakes and beat ourselves up for them. And many times we end up demanding more of ourselves than we can give.

In order to learn to laugh at oneself, it is necessary that we first learn to look at ourselves with benevolence. This means understanding that we are fallible, incomplete and unfinished beings. What to do, say or think wrongly is not a serious sin, but a weakness that makes us more human and an opportunity to improve and continue to grow.

When we judge ourselves too harshly, we don’t leave room for humor. Everything revolves around seriousness and duty. In this way, we will create more suffering than happiness. Since we will only be happy if things only go the way we want. However, if we are flexible we can laugh at ourselves if something goes wrong. Because in the end, situations will turn out as they should, but the way to deal with them depends on us. And we can choose: face it with suffering or face it with humor.

4. Learn to be your own accomplice

If you don’t have yourself, you don’t have anyone. Instead of having a stern and inflexible inner voice, we should cultivate one that is supportive. Make efforts to forgive ourselves, rather than blame ourselves. Self-motivate, rather than condemn. Appreciate ourselves, rather than scold us.

Who knows how to support himself does not become more careless or negligent. Being overly severe with yourself only leads to nurturing emotional distress. Instead, becoming more flexible and friendly leads to greater balance. To a better relationship with oneself.

If society imposes on us what we should be and we realize that this hurts us, the best way is to take it with humor. Many bald men joke that they always carry a comb in their pocket instead of being self-conscious. And it is that being ourselves our best accomplice is the best way to be happy. In this way we also deactivate the criticisms of others. From everything they tell us we can make humor.

5. Exercise laughter

It is good to look for the occasion to laugh daily. Laughter is great for emotional health, but it also helps us to be less psycho-rigid. It facilitates that process of taking life less seriously and allowing everything to flow more spontaneously. In the end, all of this leads us to feel better about ourselves.

As Jáuregui and Fernández (2004) affirm  , “humor also provides the necessary spark to get out of a creative quagmire or interpersonal conflict” . Thus, laughter and humor serve us both personally, socially and at work.

Learning to laugh at yourself is essential to achieving and maintaining mental health. It also makes social performance much easier. When we understand that feelings of pride or arrogance are only there to get in the way, we take a big step. Humility, on the other hand, makes us less sensitive to criticism, ridicule and the opinions of others.