Why Saying Hell Yes to Joy Can Help Heal Soul-Sucking Disconnection

Your soul is turned inside out. You feel like Beavis pulling his shirt over his head, "I am Cornholio...." If you know the rest of that line, you are my people!

And you know if you walk around like that too long, you'll be running into walls because you can't really see too well.

And when you are disconnected from your soul, everything sounds like static. It sounds like a 5 channels at once and that crazy cacophony is unclear. You just can't get a read on what inner you is trying to tell you. You're just not sure what you need or want.

"My soul isn't talking to me," my friend insisted with me. I am pretty sure it IS talking to you. When we're exhausted and alienated from ourselves, we can't pick up that frequency.

That's how COVID was for so many of us. Me too. Burned out. Self-care wasn't the answer. I was dealing with the Trifecta of crapaggeddon: parenting and peri in a pandemic!

You likely were dealing with something like that, too. It's a disconnection from who we are. It's also our soul's way of saying, "hey, you...maybe you shouldn't be doing that with that thing over there with those folks in those spaces." Burnout isn't just volume or overload; it's doing work we don't want to do with people and places we may not want to work with.

Ignoring that over time sucks. Because it just furthers disconnection.

I think that's what's driving so much of The Great Resignation (thanks, cuz Anthony Klotz, for that term!):

So many of us are walking around disconnected from ourselves. Now magnify that in our companies, teams, relationships. That disconnection from ourselves also means disconnection from others. We're barely feeling connected to what we want, let alone connected to others.

Many companies are just people walking around, sitting on Zoom, not feeling much.

I see this every day. With healing my own Covid burnout, talking to friends, clients, you name it.

Reclaim Your Joy

So how do we come home to ourselves and heal that disconnection? I think some tenets from improvisation can help here, because the answer is to start with saying YES to ourselves as a form of self-compassion:

• Say yes to little simple joys
• Say yes to things that make you happy
• Yes AND yourself and where you want to be (saying no to others and things we don't want to do makes space for ourselves)
• Laugh your ass off (yes, choose that joy - we need it most when we don't feel like it) with things are genuine and real for you
• Rediscover your joy with play around people that make you feel seen and have your back

Joy and humor are forms of self-compassion. And self-compassion is so important to honoring and healing that disconnection for ourselves. Self-compassion for ourselves feeds our empathy and connection for others.

I am not saying it's going to be easy or comfortable. It's

What brings you joy? What makes your soul come alive really clearly?

What if you started saying 'yes' to the little things that make you laugh hysterically and to the people who have your back and to places that recharge that energy?

We're not gonna heal this overnight. I wish. We can start to reclaim our souls by questioning where we need to be and with whom.

Make the changes. Say 'yes and' to yourself. How can we 'yes and' others (as in improv) when we aren't doing that for ourselves?

My friend, the great improv instructor Susan Messing says, "You have to get yourself off first before you can get someone else off!" Yes it's funny and she's right: feed your soul with joy first and that compassion will fuel the empathy we desperately need towards others in our companies.

Humor is that. Joy is that. Laughter with others is that.

Healing disconnection starts with us and maybe some silly, ridiculous and insanely funny episodes of Beavis and Buthead. No judgment. We've all done it.

What brings you joy?

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I am on a mission to help people unlock their natural humor and inner improviser for their own personal and professional transformation. Humor is bigger than you think!

An ex-tech marketing / communications exec who led teams for 16 years and an improviser and stand-up comedian for over 24 years, today I use improvisation and stand-up comedy techniques to transform leaders, especially women leaders and brands and teams who work with them, into impactful human communicators who show up, speak up, and story tell playfully and powerfully so they can change their worlds (via my Brave Bold Story and Comedy bootcamps). I am a keynote speaker, Founder of Keeping it Human℠ and Author of "Stop Boring Me!" I still perform and teach stand-up comedy and improv. My 13 yro used to laugh at my jokes. Now I just knock on his bedroom door, throw red meat in, and run!

From Silicon Valley / Stanford to Second City and Stages beyond - I (and you) have a story to tell and humor is human AF.

You can follow my posts at #humorforchange. Visit me at my website, keepingithuman.com.

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