Laughter is a Powerful Mental Health Warrior Tool: Turning Mishaps into Moments of Joy and Triumph

Ever found yourself stuck in a series of unfortunate events, only to find laughter has the power to keep you emotional centered and moving forward out of the chaos? Join me, Bruce Schutter, as I recount a Saturday filled with minor mishaps—from almost running out of gas on my way to get coffee, to dealing with my cats' unexpected hairballs. Through these relatable stories, discover the surprising ways humor can transform potential anxiety triggers into moments of growth and resilience. Laughter, after all, isn't just the best medicine; it's a powerful tool for mental health warriors like us.

But the fun doesn't stop there. Imagine gearing up for a cozy movie night with nachos and dipping sauces, only to be hit by a sudden power outage. What would you do? Tune in to hear how my friends and I turned a frustrating situation into a hilarious adventure. From over-microwaved nachos to enduring a string of terrible horror movies, we eventually struck gold with an unexpected gem. This episode proves that with a positive attitude and a good laugh, even the darkest moments can lead to unexpected joys. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Laughter in Mental Health Warriors
• 7:26 Laughing Through Life's Challenges

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi everybody. Bruce Shooter here with the Mental Health Warrior Program Podcast no Surrender. Now today I want to talk about well, we're going to have a little fun because we're going to learn to laugh at ourselves. It's okay to laugh at yourself and you will not break, guaranteed. So we're going to talk about that. Why You're probably saying, okay, bruce, aren't we talking about mental health, being mental health warriors? This is so serious, true, and our challenges are serious. So I'm not downplaying them. I'm certainly not saying my challenge is bipolar anxiety disorders, that they are not important to address or they're not serious. But laughter is a fantastic tool and it's something when you can learn to do and laugh at some of the mistakes or the situations you find yourself in. That shows how much you've grown as a mental health warrior. So it's a fantastic thing we're going to talk about today because we're going to have a little fun, a little storytelling, and I think you'll see how you can start to laugh occasionally, and that is progress as a mental health warrior. So I'm going to jump right into this because we had a big Saturday night plan. I had a big Saturday night plan. Now, like most of the times, you want to do something special because it's Saturday night, and so the first thing was we're going to have movie night, and we're going to have movie night and we're going to have snacks and we're going to be ready because we're going to get all these things done during the day, so we're going to be ready to take that whole night off. What a fantastic plan. Everything was in alignment, the stars were in alignment and, as a mental health warrior, I felt prepared on Saturday morning and how I was going to be so ready. So here we go.

Speaker 1: 1:47

What happened? Well, the first thing that happened was I jumped into task number one. So we got up in the morning, went to go get coffee, got started, had my Diet Coke I don't drink coffee, but that's okay because we were jumping into things. Coke I don't drink coffee, but that's okay because we were jumping into things. And then you were fantastically moving forward until I realized I had forgotten to get gas in the car all week and we were down to 20 miles left. Okay, so I'm driving to get coffee, not quite awake, and I'm realizing I hope I have enough for us to get to the place. We're going to get our coffee. Hope I have enough for us to get to the place we're going to get our coffee. So there's the first part where I started laughing because I had all week long to handle getting the car filled with gasoline. But I was busy and things came up.

Speaker 1: 2:35

Now I'm bringing this up because in the past a mistake like that would have ruined the day for me. It would have started me off or maybe sent me into depression, believe it or not. Because I would have said day for me. It would have started me off and maybe sent me into depression, believe it or not, because I would have said Bruce, you can't handle anything, look at this, you can't even make sure your plan to get gas. But today, as a warrior, I realized that was because I was so busy getting things done all week and I was watching the gauge. I knew we had enough miles to get down there and then go to the store actually the grocery store where we had all these points built up, and use them to get some discounted gas.

Speaker 1: 3:13

So again, I had the choice as a warrior do I start laughing about the situation and then get the victories of going and getting the gas and the points, or do I go back to the old bruce tank the day, go home and just fall into a pit of despair. Well, no, warriors, we learned to laugh at ourselves. So I started chuckling and I just couldn't believe it. I made fun of it and started to even joke. I hope we make it there, because I certainly didn't really want to run out of gas on the way to get that coffee or your caffeine. But I also knew we enough and I was making light of the situation which allowed me to move forward have a great cup of coffee, have a great Diet Coke, in my case, start the day out and then go to the grocery store again, realizing I was already there early. There was no line I could jump in and get the gas pump, get the gas filled and use my points. So, again, by learning to laugh, I allowed myself to move forward and take the next steps in order to get those victories. Now, that was a great example to me of how the new mental health warrior uses laughter to keep moving forward.

Speaker 1: 4:27

Now we got home then after that and I decided you know it's Saturday morning still I'm going to tackle that task that no one likes to do, that mountain of laundry, the laundry that has been piling up all week, the things that were maybe not put away from the last time but got used and now are still back in the pile. So again, here we are with some life challenges and again, each one of those little challenges has the potential to take us down and start us on that downward slide. But we're not going to let it because we can learn to laugh at it. So I chuckled as I gathered all the laundry and put things together, realizing wow, we had a lot to do. I started doing it in the laundry and getting it all clean and I started completing the task and feeling great. And as I started putting out the clothes on the bed I was going to start putting them away I got distracted to go into the kitchen and do a little bit of cleanup from the dishes, obviously another fun task we all get. My point was when I came back. Oh, I found on the fresh laundry. We have two cats and it's very hot out. They get a lot of hairballs. They had coughed up a few hairballs on the nice clean laundry that I just got done.

Speaker 1: 5:45

Now, again, I'm sure you're laughing. If you have pets, you understand this story. Maybe if you have kids it could be a similar thing. We don't have kids, but they could come in and maybe they spilled jam or cookies all over the laundry you just did. Again, I had a choice.

Speaker 1: 5:59

As a warrior, do I learn to laugh at the situation I did Because otherwise it could turn into one of those things like I talked about, where it takes you all the way down and starts that downward slope, or it could turn you into anger because you get frustrated. I just spent all this time doing this, but I also realized it was Saturday. I was ahead of the game and I'm using my warrior tools and learning to laugh and I said this is kind of funny and it's just a few items. It'll take me 20 minutes to throw them back in and they'll be done Because, again, I'm still plenty of tasks to work on, plenty of things I can do. It's not going to derail my day. So you can again see this is another example of something simple and we learn to laugh at it. And again we disarm that power, we disarm that challenge. Now I'm saying that and chuckling because again I mentioned with bipolar it can throw you into depression for no reason. Your anxiety could go over the top. A lot of this also puts you on edge in those type of challenges and your anger or your irritability can be up there. We can diffuse that right with laughter. Again, you see the point and the power of it, and I'm just getting through the beginning of the day and I've already found three, four, five times I could use laughter that's fantastic as a warrior tool. Plus, it allowed me to keep moving forward.

Speaker 1: 7:26

So now we're moving towards that grand movie night. We are getting foods ready. We're going to have nachos, we're going to have all the ingredients to have some dipping sauces, we're going to have movies that are all picked out. We're going to have this all set up so that the chores are done in the afternoon and I can sit down now in my clean clothes and I'll be able to watch these great shows. Well, we sit down and it's a lot of places like where you're at, it's been super hot. So as we go to sit down, well, we fire up the TV and everything and a storm rolls in. So what happens? The power goes out right as we're about to sit down and get settled in to maybe fire up that first TV show.

Speaker 1: 8:12

So now we're sitting in the dark and I'm looking around, well, sort of staring into the darkness, but I'm thinking as a warrior. Well, here we go. Again, my choice is do I handle the emotions? Do I handle maybe a little anxiety? What are we going to do? Oh my gosh, all the things have shut down. It's hot out. This storm is rolling through. Is it a little bit scary? Maybe it was a pretty good storm, I'll tell you.

Speaker 1: 8:35

But again, I found the best thing to do was to kind of roll with the punches and start laughing. And yes, I did, even sitting there in the dark and my wife kind of in the other side of the couch saying what are you laughing about? And I said the situation, the fact we made all these plans and life threw me a challenge. I certainly did not expect and I did not expect this one and I really wasn't even planned for it. But I guess I was, because I grabbed my little iPhone, fired up the little flashlight, went around and was able to check on things, make sure. I closed all the doors and again the storm rolled through. But shortly after the power came back on. But again I was able to laugh about it and use that power. So we kept moving forward.

Speaker 1: 9:19

Now we got power back. We got the movies ready, here we go. We put the nachos in, we're ready to eat. We're getting them all nuked in the microwave as the cheese is melting. And again, did we remember to feed the cats? No, so we quickly throw in their food, get them going, and meanwhile I forget. And the chips have been microwaved a little too much. So now we grab out the chips and they're like microwave cardboard. Wasn't paying attention because I had set it for a couple minutes.

Speaker 1: 9:52

Again, did I ruin the evening? There's that thought, there's the anxiety, there's that thought crossing your mind and as a warrior, I said no, no, I said you know what? I've got to laugh this out because it's not the end of the world. And again made a new batch and the other ones, well, they were a little extra chewy, but you know what? They were still edible and there's plenty of dipping sauces we had. So again, there was no solution, but what I'm trying to show you as a warrior, that laughter was the key that bridged us, getting from a problem to a solution. Just look, in the morning, almost ruined the day, thinking, oh, you're going to run out of gas, but realizing, once I went to get gas, had all the points, had the program and I was celebrating that all day Same thing here Didn't ruin the evening. Managed to deal with the power outage. Managed to deal with my misplanning of the cat feeding time slash our feeding time and now we're settled down with the fresh batch of nachos.

Speaker 1: 10:51

We are moving forward here and we're laughing about the situation and we start the movies and we start movie one and again. Now, in this case, one of the things we like to do is I like to pick and find some. Really, we like horror movies, but I like to find some bad horror movies and it's kind of fun because you get to rip them apart. Sometimes they're just so over the top bad you can just start laughing about them too. But once again, there's also the challenge, because I put in this first bad movie and it was so horrible we didn't make it through the credits, so I put in the second movie. We made it through the credits, so I put in the second movie. We made it through the credits Three minutes into it couldn't take the filming, it was so terrible. Moved to number three, four minutes into it, again another one that we just couldn't handle. The dialogue, it was so slow.

Speaker 1: 11:43

Now, at this point, you can see what's happening. Here's another life challenge. Here's another situation. We have a choice. Do we laugh about it and then move on, manage the emotion to come with it, or do we start feeling like, well, there's absolutely nothing to watch? Our life is terrible. Look at all the things that have gone wrong. Oh, that's the slope. I almost slipped down and again, laughter saved us, and laughter's that tool, because I started laughing about it and saying, my gosh, I've picked four movies in a row. I think at this point that we're all terrible. I said let's give it one more shot, then we'll go back to our tried and true shows. We always have a few backups just in case, and I'm sure many of you do this. With the streaming services, you have things bookmarked all over the place.

Speaker 1: 12:29

So we put in that 5th movie and, sure enough, it turned out to be a hidden gem. Now, how fantastic was that? And, as we're watching it, this is a great horror movie and we were having so much fun. It had scary parts and it had funny parts and it was a great thing as we're eating our nachos Again, all because we could learn to laugh at some problems during the day and keep moving forward.

Speaker 1: 12:55

And then, well, you know what? We needed a break because our soda glasses were empty and we needed a bathroom break, because we had watched so many bad movies and eaten so many nachos. We needed to run to the bathroom and we're going to stop the TV. But you know what? We couldn't find a remote. Now, if you've ever seen this happen, you're on the couch, you got your food, you got your setup for your TV, everybody's enjoying it, and you go to stop the TV and put it on pause and you can't find the remote. It's disappeared in the folds of the pillows and the blankets or whatever's there. And again, it can be very frustrating and it could certainly even be that little piece that pushes you over the edge Again.

Speaker 1: 13:44

I even wrote about this in some articles, because where did the remote end up? Under our cats sitting next to us. Now, I don't know how that happened, but it was fantastic because as soon as I found it after five minutes of searching while the movie's playing and of course, I had to rewind it a bit so I wouldn't miss that but I realized that has to be one of the funniest things. That could have been a bad experience, but what a hilarious experience. So my advice to you is always check under your pets if you're looking for the remote. That's the first spot. Next spot well, under the cushions. Third spot out in the kitchen, because that's where I tend to leave it a lot.

Speaker 1: 14:20

But we are all going to use the power of laughter to get through any of those challenges. So that is what is so fantastic about this mental health warrior tool of learning to laugh at ourselves, and that is something you can use each and every day. Now there are a lot more tools and a lot more power as mental health warriors that you can find, and you will find it out on BruceShootercom. You can type in mental health warrior program out there on any of the search engines and you will find all sorts of tools, all sorts of solutions. On our site You'll find nine books of various lifestyle mindset changes you can make. You will find the Mental Health Warrior Challenge Coin, a way to carry the program with you each and every day, and you'll find the podcast and other blog articles to help you build your warrior strength so you can triumph over challenges.

Speaker 1: 15:19

But today I want you to go forward and use the power of laughter as a warrior, and next time you're challenged, don't be afraid to laugh at yourself. Your situation you will not break. It shows your new strength being able to do that. So I'm going to sign out and I'm going to go back and start playing for do that. So I'm going to sign out and I'm going to go back and start playing for next Saturday and I'm going to be able to laugh because I know there'll be mistakes made and you can do the same. Thanks for tuning in, bruce. Signing out Go be a mental health warrior today and each and every day. Bye.