|
If You Aren't Having Fun, It Can be a Long Day
Author: | Saturday July 04, 2009
Motivational Speaker Dale Henry, right, laughs it up with Bob O'Halloran, Chairman of the Workers' Compensation Claims Professionals in Florida.
Good Humor Can Give
You Key to Better Life
By Ray Brasted
Every conference should have a speaker who can make us laugh while also motivating us to be better at our jobs and relationships. Because, no matter how many times we hear the same message, we need to be reminded that life is strung together by events and chance encounters, most of which are beyond our control. How we handle these interactions can make us laugh or send us into a rage.
I am writing this while sitting in an isle seat on a U.S. Airways jet bound for Phoenix. I managed to spill coffee on the person sitting next to me before we were even settled in for the ride.
Fortunately my fellow passenger was not an individual who had missed his coffee, had a fight with his wife and was hassled at the security gate. I got off easy. The young lady accepted my apology after the initial shock of feeling a wet, burning sensation left her leg, The quick lesson: Potential conflict is skulking in the shadows waiting to pounce on the unwary.
How we cope with problems (and positive events), large and small, dictate how happy we will be in life. Dale Henry understands this and has spent the better part of two decades traveling somewhere just about every other day to get his listeners to lighten up a bit.
Speaking to workers' compensation claims adjusters, individuals who have their share of conflict in their lives, Dr. Henry drew from his own life's challenges and limitations to spark laughter in the audience.
An underachiever in high school and advised to take up a blue-collar trade (not that there is anything wrong with that) by his academic advisor, Henry, instead, was determined to maximize his potential and made it through college and graduate school. Along the way he learned how to laugh at himself, his southern accent and his short stature. He noted he does not fly first class because his feet don't touch the floor in those big comfortable seats.
Every event has possibilities for positive or negative outcomes. "I can't make you retain the advice and information I am giving you today, that is up to you," he told the audience. Maybe by my writing this down, and you reading these words, we can retain that advice for a little while.
Ed. Note: Ray Brasted is Publisher of the Voice Newspaper.
|
