The Natural Medicine Of Humor Will Help You Stop Running The Gauntlet

We know that by being too hard on ourselves, we run ourselves through the gauntlet every day. But did you know that the phrase "running the gauntlet" is actually a corruption of the Swedish word "gatlopp," which means "lane"? The Swedish army used the gatlopp to punish soldiers; the guilty soldier was forced to run naked between two rows of soldiers who beat him with whips and clubs. More about this in a moment...

Let's discuss my Fun Commandment that is the perfect antidote for putting yourself through your gauntlet of mental punishment: Laugh with Yourself. The trick to this Commandment is to make sure you're laughing with yourself and not at yourself. Laughing with yourself rather than at yourself is, after all, the difference between endorsing yourself versus attacking yourself.

Of course, endorsing yourself is what you're after with this Fun Commandment. When we laugh with ourselves we are saying, loudly and clearly, that we are okay; we are supposed to make mistakes and be incongruent because we are perfectly imperfect. We take the pressure off our harsh self-expectations and judgments. No one is as hard on you as yourself if you're not careful to laugh with yourself!

Another reason this Commandment is so vital is connected to what I've found through three decades of medical practice - you cannot think yourself into a new way of living, you must live yourself into a new way of thinking. It's all well and good to talk about going easier on ourselves, but until we actually start to let up, those thoughts will simply remain unrealized "good intentions." When we laugh with ourselves we put our goal of easing up on ourselves into action and that has the wonderful benefit of actually changing who we are and how we think of ourselves!

Here are three keys to ensure you are laughing with, rather than at, yourself:

1. Your humor should give you confidence, not take confidence away from you. If you find yourself buoyed and bolstered by your humor, you are definitely laughing with yourself!




2. Your humor should give you energy and not discourage you. Laughing with yourself is a gift you give yourself and should serve to renew and recharge you.



3. Your humor should be self-effacing rather than self-deprecating. Self-deprecating means "exposing a weakness," which is the opposite of what laughing with yourself is intended to do. Self-effacing means "dropping the pretense" and, if you are dropping your pretense with your humor, you are achieving the maximum gain from laughing with yourself!

By the way, British soldiers who observed the gatlopp during the Thirty Years War brought the expression home with them. But they changed the word to the similar sounding English word "gauntlet." Please don't run yourself through your personal gauntlet of mental abuse; laugh with yourself this week as you make your inevitable mistakes!

And...I'll see you at my website!

Cliff Kuhn, M.D.
The Laugh Doctor

The Natural Medicine of Humor
"Discover a unique, FREE, and incredibly powerful prescription created out of desperation by a (formerly) stressed-out Kentucky psychiatrist"

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