Bloggers' Wisdom on Humor and Mistakes

Today's Virtual Conference at Successful and Outstanding Bloggers proved exhilerating. Here's savvy advice I received from bloggers who lighten up their blogs with humor.

Chris Garrett - "One of the traits I find most endearing about people is when they can laugh at themselves, in real life or on a blog."

And, Chris added this great strategy, "I found in a business setting, where people can laugh tends to be also the places where the best ideas come from. It is way harder to have creativity when tense. Next time you are brainstorming start with a joke."

Ellen Weber - "Laughter - when it goes to our own foibles and comes from us - can level the playing field in rooms where people feel anxious, competitive or excited. Laughter also opens the door to new ideas and prepared the brain to snap em’ up."

Later, Ellen pointed out that, "A first grader laughs over 300 times daily and adults laugh 17 times a day. New research shows us that this discussion is long overdue!"

Steve Remington "In person I think it would be a lot easier to laugh at yourself because you can try to make it appear natural and spontaneous...When it comes to blogging it has to be a lot tougher to laugh. You will have to find the right words and not expressions in order to cover your butt and make things right again."

Steve shared an hilarious true story from his wedding...

I know during my wedding my mom knocked over a candle and almost burnt down the church. People starting giggling and she was embarrassed. I think she was unsure how the bride and groom would feel about this so my wife and I started giggling and made light of it. Everybody then felt ok and we moved on.

Though it wasn’t a business speech you can learn a lot from those moments.

Steli finds that, "Humor begins always with my inner voice. You can try this little experiment if you like: Think about a big problem in your life right now. Try as hard as you can to get in this state of “not-so-well” being just for a second. And then change your inner voice to silvester “the cats” voice. Start to lisp and tell yourself about all the problems in thhat voith that leth you thmile a little."

I asked Steli, a principal, if he uses humor in his Supercool School. He replied, "We want to do good AND feel good doing it! And having fun will hopefully become an important part of this learning place! Here´s a school joke I posted some time ago on my blog: School Jokes

Karin said, "We are in a ‘different’ situation at work and try to use humour when we can’t find the correct English words - blaming it on our Double Dutch ’standards.’" It's great that Karin, who is working hard to learn English can laugh at the process in this neat way.

Char shared a post from Casual Keystrokes that's "...not exactly roll on the floor laughing humor - much more subtle." She pointed to a blog that illustrates this, Who Needs Toys When You Have a Box?

At Essential Keystrokes, Char shares, "I try to keep things light at Essential Keystrokes too - primarily through the use of words and mental images. Since the topics tend to be more technical in nature, I don't want my readers falling asleep."

That's a piece of wisdom I'll keep in mind. I surely don't want my readers to fall asleep either.

Sandy Renshaw said, "A paintbrush to canvas and we would have a lot of laughs!" That's for sure Sandy. And, Sandy shares great tools to edit great images to your blogs.

Marti's blog is all about humor. She claims, "If I couldn't laugh at life's foibles, I'd be in a rubber room!"

And she shares her philosophy, "I tell funny stories of silly things that happen to me and my family. By finding the humor in even terribly tragic events, it takes away the “power” of a bad thing that has happened. By turning bad luck on its ear and laughing at it, I don’t fall into a pit of depression about it. I also believe that it gives other people hope, to see how we can laugh at our own misfortune. I get great responses from people who read my blog, saying they feel better, and are more able to cope with the bad things in their own lives, by reading how someone was able to make fun of adversity."

Yoav stopped by to say, "I love comics and read a few comics blogs. Usually I link to them or to other funny stuff on the web when I feel my blogging is becoming “heavy” and that my 7 readers need a laugh." Raymond's Brain Doodles is a favorite site Yoav brought to the session.




My dendrites are sparking now. Hope you found great advice, too.

Thanks to you Liz and all for a really remarkable session.