# 45 - Oh Yeah...Right...A Sense of Humor

Episode 45

[00:00:00] : Hey there, everybody, I e almost said, Hey there, Rick Lewis. That's hilarious. I'm getting all dyslexic in my intro. Um, I meant to say, Hey there, everybody, this is Rick Lewis coming at you with Episode 45 off the follow through Formula Podcast. Holy mackerel! I'm still here! And I could even start with saying I'll be back tomorrow because I know how this episode's gonna end. It's gonna end with me saying I'll be back tomorrow. But in any case, the thing that's coming up for me today is that sometimes you just have toe have a sense of humor. But sometimes when you most need that sense of humor, you don't have one. And that seemed to be kind of that some of the day that I had today, where I really wanted and needed a sense of humor, but it just wasn't available. And why is it that my sense of humor disappears mawr reliably when I'm around my family than it does when I'm around other people? Why is that? And does anybody else in the world have that experience that when you're around your family in those closest to you, your most intimate that you can lose your sense of humor and lose it in relationship. To what? What is it that overtakes the frame of awareness and eliminates that sense of humor? We actually do have quite a bit of fun around my home, but I noticed myself getting quite serious, and I'm reflecting on the experience my 11 year old son is having of this this period of intermittent locked down or it's just us on top of each other 24 hours a day. And that's a particularly that's an experience that's going to shape his life. It's been almost a year that we've been doing that, and this is probably going to go on for some time. Someone asked me today what generation my son is in, like, What is it called? He's not a millennial, and I thought, maybe he's, Ah, panda meals and that should be the name of the next generation, the Pen de meals, because this experience of being, um, isolated Thio to the degree that we have been is going to shape their lives, and I don't know how I got in this topic. I don't even know where I'm going with this. I'm just trying to find my own sense of humor and how ridiculous it can be Sometimes when you're observing yourself and just watching yourself do the funniest, weirdest things, like when we play board games. I am the most competitive person. I am just so competitive when we're playing board games and I get so annoyed when people take a long time to figure out exactly what next move they should make or what card they should play. And then my family looks at me because I'm feeling impatient like you're so competitive. But I just want to play the game. It's just a game, and I have my strategy all worked out, and I'm waiting for my turn so I can make my great next move. But somebody is going to spend 3.5 days considering what exactly they should do on their turn. And it's pretty funny to just watch my impatience in my reactivity. I'm impatient a lot, actually, and it's funny because what I'm I have my idea of follow through my default for what follow through is all about is getting shit done. It's like get things done. But I remember I did a whole episode, I think which one was that? Oh, it's called The Naked Dream in real life. And that episode was all about how following through has to include relationship because we're interdependent beings. I'm sure I said something very wise and brilliant about how we must be in relationship with each other in order to follow through effectively in our lives or some such thing like that. And it's just not my default mode. I just following through means get it, get it happening, get it done. And if people are dragging their feet and being indecisive and overthinking things, I get very annoyed and impatient. My mother, who I told you all about because she's the one and she's featured in How to Find your Purpose. The episode I recorded called How to Find Your Purpose, and I wound up without even expecting Thio. I wound up talking about my mom, who wrote this book and is doing this whole thing at age 84 where she is out there promoting her book and the um, promoting the cause of kindness among other people. And this woman is the kind ist lady you would ever meet in your life. And now not only does she have a book that I helped her with, she has a website that I built for her. It's called smiling at strangers dot net and that is all a wonderful thing that she has this website, but I built it. And so when she needs something changed on the website, she has to call me and I have to make the change and we have to communicate about what those changes are and win. A 59 year old non digital native who has worked really hard to just have a little bit of proficiency with technology, is trying to talk to an 84 year old about technological issues and changes, and that 84 year old is trying to communicate back about the changes that she would like to see. It's not a fast process, and sometimes that drives me nuts, and I sit there watching myself being totally impatient with my amazing, wonderful 84 year old mother on the phone, who deserves every shred of patience from from now till forever. The woman raised me. I was her child, the degree of patients she extended to me, the least I could do is like, knock it off with my own impatience and relationship to my mother, trying to understand what goes on on a website and communicate her vision for how she would like to see it changed. So this is the humor. This is where I just need to keep my sense of humor when were self observing. If we don't have a sense of humor, we're in big trouble because we're weird. Were weird people weird, strange human beings. And we have such, uh, sometimes endearing but often neurotic and annoying tendencies that we just won't drop, and I see it all the time at home. I see the way my wife and son look at me and the looks they give me and just the constant wonderment of How could you possibly be like that? How could you? How can you? And I think a lot of the reaction I get from the two of them is that I just get so serious. So this is just something I am. This is a note to self episode, and if you take anything away from it yourself, if there's anything valuable in the consideration of lightening up and having a sense of humor about yourself and about your goals and about everything that's so important to you in your life, just like it is in my life. If we can relax around that jointly on this journey of living on purpose Oh, God forbid that everything I'm doing and everything I'm saying about purpose should cause anyone to live with a greater degree of seriousness, self importance, self righteousness or less puns being thought of and delivered or over the course of the day than strike me down in my tracks. Let this project finish quickly because that would be sad. That would be a very sad thing if that was the result of these daily episodes. So there you go. There's my plug today to lighten up, have a sense of humor about yourself about other people, about the incessantly persistent, incredibly, um, resilient habits that we have that just seemed to be repeated over and over and over again, even when they aren't optimal. Well, who? Yea, human beings, that's what we are. We like repeating things. We like our habit grooves, and I got plenty of my own funny stuff that I do So you're probably hearing some of those habits and getting used to some of those habits of mine. And anyway, thanks for sticking around so far. And if you hang in there even longer, I'm grateful for your tolerance and your forbearance in your patients off me as a and the parts of me that air habitual and mechanical. And I don't even get a chance to get tired of you because I'm not hearing from you. You didn't even call today. Mhm. All right, I guess I should finish. This has been the wonderful and amazing Episode 45 of the follow through formula podcasts. I knew it was going to end like this. I'm Rick Lewis and I'll be back tomorrow.