Catching up with Karyn

My alarm clock didn’t go off. No hot water in the shower. I’d run out of coffee (gasp!). And to top it all off… my “fat pants” were feeling a bit snug—aaaaaauuuuggghhhhhh! This was shaping up to be a miserable morning, and my 12-hour shift hadn’t even begun!

I heard my phone chime and my heart skipped a beat. Had I gotten my times mixed up—was I late for work? I snatched my phone off the table and saw the text:

“I just wanted you remind you how amazing you are and how grateful I am that you’re in my life.”

My eyes got teary and my heart swelled. My sister, also a busy healthcare professional and three time zones away, had taken 30 seconds out of her busy schedule to share her gratitude. It changed the course of my entire day and reshaped my life.

Studies have shown that one way of increasing your happiness setpoint is to practice being grateful. Studies vary slightly in their findings, but in a nutshell, writing down...

Strategic humor has the power to build relationships, relieve stress, and boost creativity, along with many other outcomes beneficial to the workplace. So how does one begin to implement it at the office? It’s as simple as creating a Humor Habit! 

Why Set the Stage for Humor? 

Want to know something crazy? Humor doesn’t just work while it’s happening; it can also work before it happens! How? Thanks to a little something called the anticipatory response. 

When people anticipate something, they psychologically, emotionally, and physically “prepare” for it. Whether that “something” is good, bad, sad, or even painful, this phenomenon happens just the same, and it can be used to your advantage when developing your sense of humor. When you know something funny is about happen, you shift into a mindset that’s open to laughter. You’re ready to receive and react to the impending hilarity....

For leaders who are seeking to set an inspiring, entertaining, and engaging tone for their team, I recommend my program Amazed and Amused. 

In this program, I discuss how we find amusement by finding amazement in our days and how, even during tough situations, there are wonders to be found.  

When you learn how to live amazed and amused, your leadership ability and client relations excel. Motivate your team and inspire your stakeholders by sharing the exciting vision, products, and people that elevate your business above the rest. This passion is contagious, and it is a major key to your success! 

Depending on the length of your program or event, I can tailor my tips and strategies for the sane & successful to suit your requirements best. 

Amazed and Amused: Strategies for the Sane & Successful 

Success is not measured only in dollars and cents, but also in the moments that you...

We all know the old saying: “Laughter is the best medicine.”  

And it’s true! When you laugh, you’re: 

• Relieving anxiety
• Decreasing stress
• Giving people a socially acceptable way to express their anger 

But many of you probably already know this. So, why is it important? Well, according to a study, laughter, and the stress reduction that comes out of it, can improve one’s memory and learning ability as we age! Crazy, right?! Allow me to save you some time and summarize this awesome finding:  

Chronic stress, manifested in the hormone cortisol, takes a toll on your brain over time, eating away at your learning and memory functions. When you laugh, you reduce cortisol levels, increasing your memory and recall functions, as well as your capacity to learn. 

All this to say, who couldn’t use more memory space in the hard drive that is your...

Whether you’re a business under a lot of stress, or you’re just trying to add a little humor to your leadership style, I can help! 

Feeling the Pressure?  

If your organization is inundated with stress, then let’s nip it in the bud! Waiting until the eleventh hour to ask for help isn’t nearly as effective as acting on a situationbeforeit becomes dire. I can teach you how to leverage high-pressure situations in order to: 

• Increase Productivity
• Boost Engagement
• Improve Communication
• Increase Your Bottom Line

Adding to the Team? 

Mergers are tough. You have to help people from two different companies become comfortable in a new setting and learn how to work together. I have tips and strategies to make the transition easier for everyone!  

Are You an Effective Leader? 

Learning how to employ strategic humor in the workplace is an essential skill, and it has...

There’s a little part of your brain called the reticular activating system (ARAS) which acts as a filter for finding funny!

When you make finding humor intentional, your brain will start showing you things you’ve found amusing in the past.

It’s kind of like the internet!

Have you ever been shopping for something on the internet? Let’s say some shoes.

You do your research and think about buying them. Then decide, well…I really don’t have the cash flow right now; I think I’ll hold off.

Then you close the page and go to one of your favorite news websites…

BOOM! There’s an ad with those shoes staring right at you!

That’s kind of what the reticular activating system is doing for your brain. Oh, you found something funny over here, well check this out!

The key is to be intentional!

If you set your intention on seeing more humor, your reticular activating system will show it to you more often!

Pretty cool if you ask me!

If you...

Are you funny? Do people laugh with or at you? Or maybe you just want to be funny or simply, be funnier? Maybe you want to make people laugh without having to try so hard to be funny. If you can identify with any of these questions, you're in the right spot because I'm going to try my best to address these questions in today's video.

If you've gotten this far into my video series, odds are you're already familiar with your humor quotient and how it can help you with your goals to be a better humorist. It also is going to help you apply humor in your everyday life, but why is that so important?  Whether you're using humor to influence or get closer to your family, friends, or at work, you're using it for a reason, and I want to make sure that you're able to be as effective as possible without having to put too much effort in. Applying humor to make someone or a group of people feel good is obviously going to boost morale wherever you are, and it's important that you know that...

Here’s a question: Do you think you’re funny?

Or better yet, do you think you have a sense of humor? These are important questions to think about when you’re about to set off on a humor journey. Maybe you think you’re really funny, or maybe you wish that you could just get one laugh out of your kids now and then (corny jokes might not land so well on the younger generation). Wherever you might be on your humor journey, it’s important to know that you can always change or better your humor abilities.

Like I’ve been saying for years: it’s more important to see funny than to be funny.

Not all humor has to be comedy, and the main thing to focus on is your ability to tap into your appreciation of humor and the things that amuse you because that’s what’s going to cause you the most joy. The idea of doing this is what I call intentionally looking for humor in your everyday life. It’s a perfect example of how to be able to see...

Flying can be stressful any time of the year, but the holiday season can be especially nerve-wracking: Fretful flights. Cranky crews. Pissy passengers. Instead of instructing people to buckle their seatbelts, flight attendants might be better served to have people fasten their straight jackets! If only there was a way to deal with the strain…

But wait—Popeyes Chicken comes to the rescue! Many passengers traveling through the Philadelphia International Airport during Christmas week 2018 skipped the Philly Cheesesteaks and grabbed a to-go box that also served as an Emotional Support Chicken. Yes, I said, “Emotional. Support. Chicken.”

These chickens don’t bite, they’re TSA-friendly, and they’re “cheap” comfort food. (Sorry, I just can’t resist a good chicken pun.)

Popeyes Chicken thought this emotional support animal wouldn’t ruffle any feathers…but they were wrong. PETA and its supporters squawked that this...

It was a dark and stormy night…(really) and I was waiting to board a flight along with around 200 fellow passengers. We were already delayed an hour and a half and the mood was as dark inside the terminal as it was outside.

We were finally cleared to board, and folks—while anxious about the delay—were relieved to finally be moving out of the gate area and onto the plane. The flight attendant sprinted through her safety routine while I and others nervously calculated if there was any way we were going to make our connections. We rolled onto the tarmac and the pilot announced we were #17 in the lineup—seems there were a LOT of folks trying to get-the-heck-out-of-Dodge that night.

Slowly we taxied closer to the runway. #15…#12…#8—the pilot periodically would announce our progress. But the next time we heard his voice, it was anything but progress.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. While we were waiting for...