Sustainable Ambition Forum - 4.04.23
Hi friends! 👋
Happy spring!
In this new season, I’m going to test a new approach to the newsletter. I’ll continue to make Sustainable Ambition Forum a place for an exchange of ideas on becoming more consciously ambitious and thriving in life and work. My hope is to offer content, tips, and tools that are valuable to you and deliver it in a way that makes it easier to absorb and put it into practice.
I’m always open to feedback. If you want, please tell me 👍 or 👎 for this approach. You can shoot me a quick email here (to make it simple, I’ve already scripted a draft for you and will ask again in upcoming issues).
And I’d love to know if there are challenges you face or topics you’d like me to cover to help you make life+work work better for you. Again, drop me a quick note here.
To start this week, I’m sharing A Sustainability Practice: The power of laughter. I encourage you to put it into practice and laugh today. 😊
Warmly,
Kathy Oneto
Founder of Sustainable Ambition
P.S. The above photo is from a stroll years back in Lake Como, Italy. I found it humorous. Such inspiration is all around, just channel Jerry Seinfeld!
Sustainable Ambition is a constant, personal practice. Each month I’ll feature a small, smart action or inquiry to test out and see what supports your Sustainable Ambition best.
This month our practice focus is: Laugh! It’s an easy, quick stress relief and a way to reset your nervous system when it’s on hyper-drive.
Really, it works. I’ve been practicing with shifting my energy and mood by getting myself to laugh by watching a humorous reel on Instagram (I know... giving in to social media, but it works!) or reading a joke online. As noted below, think about bringing your colleagues in on the laugh, too.
Laughter Resources
Book: “Unleash your Complexity Genius: Growing your inner capacity to lead,” by Jennifer Garvey Berger and Carolyn Coughlin.
I loved this book. It’s powerful and easy-to-read, offering guidance on how to unleash the multiple tools within our grasp to help us navigate the challenges and complexities we experience in today’s world. The book talks about how we can shift out of our sympathetic nervous system response (i.e., fight or flight) and step into our parasympathetic nervous system, from which we can be more creative and resourceful.
Laughter is one of the complexity geniuses Berger and Couglin highlight, and it’s a powerful tool that leaders can deploy not only for themselves but for their teams. They share how laughter creates social bonds and that if we laugh together we are more likely to be vulnerable, risk failure, and admit mistakes.
They suggest leaders think about in our work world: “I wonder what I could do to shape the context so that there would be more laughter?” How can you create the conditions for laughter to be present in your meetings and conversations at work? How can you role model this?
Book: “Humor, Seriously” by Dr. Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas
This is another book about the power of humor in the workplace. Aaker and Bagonas share how leaders who use humor are viewed as more motivating and their employees are more engaged, amongst many other benefits. Their book highlights how we can have different humor styles and gives tips on how humor can be smartly deployed at work.
Note that in both books, the authors call out the nuance in using laughter as a leader. We need to be sure to not use it to mock or laugh at someone who has less power than us. That can have detrimental effects, of course.
Learn more here.
Watch a TED Talk here.
Read an HBR article here.
Take a quiz here to learn your humor style.
“There is little success where there is little laughter.”
— Andrew Carnegie
“Laughter is an instant vacation.”
— Milton Berle