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A Sense of Humor in the Workplace Is it me? Or, was that not funny? - By Edward B. ToupinWhen I was first initiated into Corporate America, I had a sense of humor that went unmatched by any mortal soul. I was quick-witted, smart, sharp, and knew every gag and joke available to humanity. Most of it, I learned in college. But, college never really did teach the fact that having a sense of humor in the workplace is different than `jocularity.` After a few brushes with career-chaos, I realized that the definition of `corporate humor` deals with how one handles oneself and not how one can elicit laughter.--- Where did this come from? --- One of my friends came to Las Vegas last week to visit and relax a bit. He and I went out and checked out some of the local bands. During the course of the evening, he brought up some issues about his current job situation. After some introductory words, we discussed the issue that he seems to get blamed for some of the stupidest things, that he never did, and no one takes him seriously anymore. Then, he cracked some joke about it and we carried on. Not being taken seriously by your peers is actually a common problem with people who do have a sense of humor. But, funny has no place in the workplace and can easily wreak havoc on an otherwise blossoming career. --- So, no more laughter? --- Of course, laughter is necessary in life. But, in a professional setting, it becomes a different type of laughter. One situation you will encounter as you move through your career is the seriousness of professionalism. Of course, to some, this is not a problem. But, to those that have a funny bone, this is a big problem and a detriment to one`s career. You have to realize that when your boss asks if you have a sense of humor, he`s not asking if you`re a clown. What he is asking is whether or not you can accept criticism, deal with difficult people, and gracefully handle mistakes without snapping people`s heads off when things get stressful. It is important and considered professional to be able to take criticism lightly as it is sometimes used as a tool of `turf wars` than an actual personal attack. --- Hey, that was funny! --- If you begin to crack jokes and make snide remarks, you will eventually not be taken seriously in the workplace. You will be seen as someone who wastes time because every time that someone approaches you to discuss a project or other issues with you, some of that time is spent explaining your humorous comments. Additionally, many corporate-minded individuals do not have the time to analyze comments with hidden meanings and will take what you say as absolute. Therefore, if you make a `stupid` comment in hopes of eliciting a smile, your comment will be taken as an absolute and a representation of your professionalism in the workplace. Finally, if your comments do have hidden meanings or contain humorous connotations, then anything you say will be taken as unreliable, thus labeling you as unreliable. Realize that the corporate culture labels you by `visible change,` not completely by merit. What I mean is, the last way you presented yourself is the way that you will be seen in the workplace. If you are a serious, pleasant, and hard worker, you will be seen that way. If you crack a joke in the middle of a serious moment, from then on, you will be seen as a joker. --- Look over there! --- One thing to keep in mind is that many people crack jokes and make `humorous` comments when they are uncomfortable or lack confidence in a situation. If this applies to you, realize that your peers know this as well. Being overly humorous under stress gives off a sign of weakness within the workplace and will also cause you to be ousted from the ranks. Try to find another outlet for discomfort or confidence issues. Perhaps a favorite ink pen or a small quartz crystal to toy with in such situations will remind you to maintain your professional fa?ade as well as keep you calm. --- Watch what you say! --- One of the big problems facing corporate cultures today is that, in general, everyone is `sensitive` to everything. Instead of working together for a common goal, there are individuals that stay on their toes looking for that one thing that they can use to cause some sort of upheaval within the culture. With that, corporate-minded peers are also on the lookout for those who might do or say something to upset those sensitive individuals. Because of this situation, there truly is no room in a standard corporate culture for remarks and comments that in certain groups might otherwise be humorous. You have to realize that when you speak within a corporate culture, be concise, be realistic, and do not add comedic breaks or sarcasm. Since everyone is taking everything `seriously` with a `sense of humor` for themselves, then whatever you say will be taken seriously and could easily land you in hot water. To alleviate the chance of being misinterpreted, keep emotion and personal beliefs out of the context of your conversations. Basically, listen closely and be concise in what you say. Not only does this eliminate the problem of having people take you wrong, but it also saves a lot of time. --- The Deadly Silence --- There are several little games played within the corporate environment to elicit a fatal comment from the unwary. The most deadly game is the `long pause.` In many cases, you might sit before your boss, or peers, and provide information on a particular subject or project. During the course of the discussion, you notice that your audience appears to be listening to everything you say. Then, at the end of your soliloquy, the audience seems dead or stuck in a mental time warp. This pause can last for as long as 10 seconds. During this pause, it might seem as though your audience is mulling through your comments, but this is not entirely the case. They are creating an uncomfortable pause for you to begin doubting your comments in hopes that you divulge additional information and demonstrate your lack of confidence and discomfort. This situation will get you every single time if you`re not aware that it is only a game. One purpose of this game is so that the audience can acquire additional information from you that you would have otherwise never divulged. On the other hand, the audience might be trying to acquire your nonsensical traits from your discomfort to use during a future turf war. Again, be concise, and then listen. Wait out the infinite pause without saying a word and you`ll see that they were just waiting for you to speak. --- What`s next? --- Realize that you can still have fun and enjoy your work without the frolicky antics of a pubescent employee. One mishap can destroy a lifetime of kudos making it is easier to fall from graces than to repair a reputation. Companies want people they can count on 100% of the time, not just when you`re serious and comfortable. Focus, take responsibility, move forward competently, and produce quality results. If you`ve already fallen because of your sense of humor, then you will have to work hard to get back into the good graces of the culture. All you have to do is maintain a professional fa?ade, realize that corporate America is `not personal,` and motivate in your career with confidence. Realize that you can still have fun and enjoy your work without the frolicky antics of a pubescent employee. Companies want people they can count on 100% of the time, not just when you`re serious and comfortable. Is it possible to transcend subjectivity and see things as they really are? - by Elia WiseThe following is an excerpt from LETTER TO EARTH (Random House/Harmony 2000) by Elia Wise."LETTER TO EARTH establishes viable foundations for a science of consciousness. The theories it presents substantiate and unify the work of generations of intuitive thinkers and writers." M.F. Schlitz, Doctor of Science, University of Zurich "?An original, beautifully written work that definitely stretches the limits of accepted knowledge about the role of human consciousness in the world." Library Journal Is it possible to transcend subjectivity and see things as they really are? Subjectivity is an endowment of All That Is. It enables you to be the creator of your own life experience by allowing you to empower objects and situations with infinite variability and meanings. It facilitates creativity and supports individuality. While your subjectivity is unique to you, subjectivity is within the nature of all Beings. It is a Universal value. The capacity to empower objects and situations with subjec- tive meanings is an inherent mechanism for self-healing. It enables you to spontaneously heal something that may have happened many years ago. Picture yourself walking through the woods. The sun is playing checkers with the treetops and a soft wind brings you a waft of wild sage. At the moment you become aware of the sage, you are looking down at your red sneakers. Although nothing significant is happening, you are deeply moved and begin to sob. Without being conscious of it, you are reproducing the combination of elements surrounding a situation that impacted you when you were a child in your grandmother?s kitchen. Your grandma, in a red apron, was cooking a sage turkey dressing. A breeze from the open kitchen window sent the aromas wafting through the house as the sun was making patches on the kitchen floor? and at just that moment, something painful happened to you. Sympathetic Vibrational Magnetism [the Unified Field Theory presented in LETTER TO EARTH] gives you the capacity to effortlessly reconfigure the variables of a past moment. Your subjectivity makes them meaningful. A conscious or subconscious need to heal the incident in Grandma?s kitchen led you to reconstruct the sensory variables of the incident. But did wearing red sneakers on the walk through a breezy, sage-filled woods stimulate the healing opportunity, or did the need for healing stimulate you to plan the walk through a breezy, sage-filled wood and choose your red sneakers? In multidimensional events, Universal simultaneity often overrides local time or practical sequence. It is nearly impossible to know which factor is the stimulus and which is the response. When you recreate the variables of a past moment of experience your current subjectivity costumes them in such a way that the historic incident need not be apparent. The synthesis of frequencies from the historic moment realigns you with the energy of that moment, providing an opportunity for healing and regeneration of the values that were originally impacted. The process is entirely subjective. Whether you are conscious or unconscious of having invoked the old, you are enabled by subjectivity to imbue its variables with new meanings. The way you internalize the stimuli of the new moment can transform the pain and significance of the old, creating a moment of spontaneous healing. This is the alchemyof spontaneous self-healing. It happens frequently throughout yourlife, although usually without your awareness. If you entertain this idea in the multidimensional context of Soul memory, the deepest referent for the red shoes may be an experience within your Soul of a more primitive culture, where a red string on the ankle marked you for death. While your conscious mind might locate the painful memory in Grandma?s kitchen, what caused the event in Grandma?s kitchen to be so painful may have been your Soul memory of the red string. Every perspective is a lens for viewing that automatically limits your perception to its particular power of magnitude. Every complex system of energy is made up of smaller subsystems, each possessing its own stimuli, magnetism and organization of values. On Earth, people usually experience only the overall effect of these subsystems. When you greet someone you get an overall feeling. You do not feel the vibration of what was eaten for breakfast, distinct from the vibration of an angelic night?s sleep, or from the vibration of kidney function. These discrete vibrations communicate themselves just as clearly as the gestalt vibration?if you have the presence of perception. You can perceive any moment of experience with a microscope, a magnifying glass, a zoom lens or a telescope. No matter what you perceive to be the larger system, there is always one larger, always one smaller. You think the cell lives in the kidney and the kidney lives in the body. This is true. Within what, then, does the body live? Everything in the Universe is based on essential building blocks: frequencies, values, magnetism. Regardless of where we are in the Greater Universe, we all work with the same frequencies and values. This is what enables interdimensional and interspecies communication. Only the prioritization of these frequencies and values differs, relative to the nature of each reality system. As you consider what follows, be careful not to limit yourself to the popular view of values as having ethical or moral implications. I am discussing Universal values as essential and objective states from which all Human ideas regarding values derive. It is this seminal thread that makes it possible for your alignment with a relative value concept to precipitate revelation of the essential Universal value from which it comes. Every thing, feeling, thought, idea, Being or condition that has ever been or will ever be, has an essential frequency as its organizing principle. Each frequency has its own unique value. Like a signature, the frequency pattern of a value always looks the same, every time it appears, everywhere in the Universe. The value of a frequency is both conceptual and quantifiable. Since the quantifiable nature of any value is constant and measurable, it can be represented mathemat- ically. The conceptual nature of any value is alsoconstant, but subjectivity can interfere with its recognition. The variability in any frequency or value will exhibit in its measurable amplitude, reflecting how fully it is manifest in any instance, relative to its potential. A frequency is a fundamental Universal stimulus, a seminal life force. The vibrations of a frequency are its local broadcast signal. Consciousness is their medium. Courage is a vibrational frequency that demonstrates its value both conceptually and measurably. If you took a picture of the energy field when courage is being embodied or outwardly expressed by anyone, anywhere in the Universe, the same frequency pattern would always appear in the field. There is no ambiguity. Courage is measurable. The frequency pattern of courage is an objective reality. The variabili- ties of courage will be reflected in the vibrational amplitude of the frequency each time it is expressed, not in its signature pattern. Its amplitude will vary according to how fully courage is manifest in any instance, relative to the potential of that moment. While ambivalence or reticence will cause courage to demonstrate a low amplitude, fully expressed courage will demonstrate such a high amplitude that all would recognize it and commonly name it. In an ideal configuration of variables, courage would manifest the full amplitude of its nature?its absolute or objective ! state. Many people hold that there is no such thing as objective or absolute reality. They argue that all is subjective and relative. The Cosmic view affirms both subjective and objective reality. Their relationship becomes self-evident when multidimensionality is embraced. Courage has been used as an example. Patience, perseverance, conformity, individuality, discernment, empathy, order, confluence, clarity, alignment, subjectivity, receptivity, unification, transformation and whimsy are other examples of values that express their own unique and constant frequency patterns. There is no end to the list. If you can think of it, it is a value, a combinant value, an inverted value or a misaligned value. When Humanity opens the discussion of values and frees them from the assignment of morality or judgment, you will have collectively embarked upon a path to peace, unity and Universal knowledge. Universal frequencies are seminal forces. They are like Earth?s germinal strains from which an unlimited number of combinations can be derived. A seminal frequency demonstrates a single value. A combination of seminal frequencies results in a formula of values, much like a recipe. Spirituality is a seminal frequency. Organization is another. Both have essential objective reality. Their combination can manifest as religion?a subjective construct. The frequency patterns of spirituality and organization will both be evident in the frequency pattern of religion. Anything that exists can be traced to its seminal frequencies. Human Beings do not yet comprehend values as measurable. Frequencies are understood to be measurable, but it has not yet become clear to you that values are frequencies, and that frequencies are conceptual as well as quantifiable values. You currently understand values as conceptual. The conceptual thought form at the root of a value is as objective a reality as its measurable frequency, but because it is currently perceived through meaning rather than measure, it is subject to interpretation. It is in your subjective interpretation that values become saddled with morality and judgment. www.lettertoearth.com Elia Wise, author of LETTER TO EARTH, works as a consultant specializing in practical applications of consciousness research. She has taught privately and publicly for 30 years. Elia is recognized for ground-breaking insights and for her ability to communicate complex ideas in the fields of consciousness research, spirituality and new science in ways that are easily accessible and meaningful to our lives. Elia is the 53-year-old single parent of a 6-year-old blessing of a daughter who shows her a greater truth daily. Project index
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