Monday, October 19, 2015

The importance of fun and laughter in sports

Play for Fun with laughter
In my 7 years as a professional standup comedian I was continually overwhelmed by the fact that as comedians, we could take a group of people in a room, who would never be together again, and unite them in laughter. After the show was over, people would come up to you, buy your CD or DVD, stop and chat, or comment on the show.
I would sometimes stand  to the side and just watch the whole proceedings. Watching people leave the comedy club feeling good, made me feel good.
Then it struck me how valuable laughter was to people. Oprah had a show that had a lot of sadness and angst. She did some wonderful things for people, but there was much sadness in her shows. Ellen, on the other hand stressed fun and laughter. She even starts her show with some dancing and everyone joins in. Her show is as strong as ever, and my daughter Molly got me to watch it with her a couple of times. This woman wants people to feel good, laugh, and have fun.
When I commented about this fun and laughter to a couple of my ex players and guys I coached with, they all said basically the same thing to me. V.J. when you were coaching you tried to make us laugh. We had fun. We didn’t know at the time it was helping us as much as it did. What we did know is that it was different than what we were used to, and we were drawn to it and you.
You don’t have to be a professional comedian to bring fun and laughter to your team. The opportunities will be there if you look for them. Try it.

As the Joker said in the Batman movie: “Why so serious?”

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