How to Be "Easily Amused and Impossible to Offend"
HOW TO BE EASILY AMUSED AND IMPOSSIBLE TO OFFEND
1. BE YOUNG AT HEART
The average child will smile hundreds of times a day, laugh hundreds of times a day, and ask hundreds of questions a day. But elderly people tend to do each of these things less than 10 times a day. So one of the keys to staying "young at heart" is to keep smiling, laughing, and asking questions...
It's important to keep a happy, humorous, and curious outlook on life so that we don't end up unhappy, bitter, and set in our ways.
Recently, a man in his 50s said to me, "I don't know what to get my dad for 'Father's Day'... He's so old that he hates everything!" which made me laugh, but also got me wondering why it is that so many people end up like that.
Many young adults will intentionally hold back smiles and laughter during certain situations out of fear of looking "childish", and they will also hesitate to ask as many questions as they would like to because they would rather be seen as "the person with all of the answers" than "the person with all of the questions".
Start catching yourself whenever you feel the urge to hold back a smile, a laugh, or a question, and start letting your "inner child" express itself a lot more often.
A BABY LAUGHING JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE IS RIPPING A PIECE OF PAPER
2. LEARN ABOUT THE VERY BIG AND THE VERY SMALL
I think it's amazing to look at things that we can only see through a microscope as well as things that we can only see through a telescope, and to realize that we are somewhere in the middle of it all.
What does this have to do with our attitudes?
The more that you look through a telescope and realize how big the universe is, the more you realize just how small and insignificant your problems really are. And the more that you look through a microscope and learn about the microscopic world, the more you realize just how big and important you really are.
"Wisdom is knowing that I am nothing. Love is knowing that I am everything. And in between the two, my life flows."
- Nisargadatta Maharaj
3. LET GO OF ATTACHMENTS
How did you react the last time the electricity went off? Did you feel frustrated the instant it went out? And did you feel that without electricity there was nothing to do except wait for it to come back on?
Being "attached" to something means that you will suffer without it.
If you find out that a total stranger on the other side of the world got their car stolen, it probably won't be that big of a deal to you. But if you find out that "YOUR" car got stolen, it will probably be a very big deal to you, and the amount of stress that you feel will be in direct proportion to how attached you are to the car. (If your profile picture on social media is a picture of your car, and it gets stolen, it might even feel like "identity theft".)
You were born without any material possessions, and you can't take any material possessions with you when you die, so the most freeing thing that you can do is to let go of as many attachments as you can now while you are still alive, and to live the rest of your life free from the fear and stress of losing them.
4. BEWARE OF BECOMING A "CHRONIC COMPLAINER"
Imagine if a man dislikes the president of his country so much that he writes a book about how terrible he thinks the president is, then he goes on TV shows and publicly criticizes the president in front of millions of people, and then he starts a website where he sells T-shirts, bumper stickers, and coffee mugs that all have negative depictions of the president on them.
Because this man has built such a strong reputation for being the guy who criticizes the president, what do you think the odds are that he would actually want to see the president do something good and deserving of praise? And what do you think the odds are that deep down he wants the president to continue to do things that he can criticize?
The more time and energy that you "invest" in trying to convince others about how bad your boss, your ex-lover, or someone else you don't like is, the more that person will become someone who you "love to hate", and the more that you will want to protect your "investment" by searching for any evidence you can find to prove that you have been right about that person all along.
In the same way that you can become addicted to drugs and alcohol, you can become addicted to complaining and being offended, and as we speak, countless people are being conditioned to be offended over things that the media wants them to be offended by.
Some "chronic complainers" will spend countless hours mentally rehearsing arguments in their head that they imagine they will have the next time that they run into certain people they know, or they will spend a lot of their free time on the internet arguing with people they don't even know over politics, movies, music, etc, and the most effective way to stop this kind of complaining is to realize just how much of your time and energy you are wasting on it...
"Did you really have a bad day, or was it a bad 10 minutes that you spent the rest of the day dwelling on?"
- Mel Robbins
5. REALIZE THAT NOBODY CAN OFFEND YOU WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION
If a Hollywood filmmaker wants to use a popular song in their movie, they must first get permission from the artist. And if a person wants to offend you, they must first get your permission.
If someone criticizes you about something, it is ultimately your choice whether or not you even react to it, and it is also your choice how you react.
If it feels difficult not to get offended by other people's behavior, please keep in mind that not everyone who offends you may be trying to offend you. (Maybe you've had the experience of someone getting offended because they took something that you said or did the wrong way.) And even if someone is intentionally trying to offend you, please try to feel a little sympathetic towards anyone who would be in that state of mind...
"The ones who are the hardest to love are the ones who need it the most."
-"The Peaceful Warrior"
6. IMITATE PEOPLE
Even if you hate "The President of the United States" with a passion, and you get angry every time you see the President on TV giving a speech, you will probably want to laugh if you turn on a show like "Saturday Night Live" and there is someone dressed up just like the president and mimicking their voice and mannerisms perfectly.
There is something about a realistic impersonation of someone that makes people laugh and feel good in a unique way, and the healing power of this can be unbelievable.
If you have a co-worker who you think is annoying because they stand way too close to you when they talk, or they lie and exaggerate about everything, or they are constantly talking about their dog, people like this can go from being a source of annoyance to a source of laughter by learning how to imitate them.
I want to stress that I'm not encouraging you to make fun of people in a mean-spirited way. I'm encouraging you to learn how to do a REALISTIC imitation of anyone you may find annoying, and to have fun with it when they aren't around.
Unfortunately, when people imitate someone they don't like, they usually won't do a realistic impression of them, and will instead just talk in a dumbed-down voice to mock that person. (Which will not provide the same benefits.)
When you get really good at doing an impression of someone you don't like, you not only start wanting to laugh instead of getting angry whenever you think about them, but you will eventually start to become more understanding and sympathetic towards them.
Female actors who pretend to be pregnant in a movie will sometimes start to get cravings for pickles and other foods that women who actually are pregnant do, and this is because the more realistic of an impression that you can do of someone, the more that you start to imagine (and even feel) what it would be like to be that person.
I have talked about many different subjects on this website, and there is a reason that I have saved this one for last.
Imitating other people is how we learned how to walk, talk, and do many of the other basic things that we do on a daily basis, and even a lot of the most amazing technological accomplishments of our species (like the ability to fly) were achieved through "mimicking" other species on this planet.
But there are still far greater things that can be learned and discovered through imitation.
Like they say, "laughter is the best medicine", and I believe that the greatest healing humanity will ever experience will come once we can put ourselves in the shoes of others for a laugh, only to laugh at ourselves for ever believing that there were any "others".
And just like a person who can't find their keys and searches high and low for them until they finally realize that they were in their pocket all along, after searching high and low for something outside of ourselves to heal us, we will finally realize that what we were looking for was inside of us all along...
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