A New Set of Prompts: Play and Humor

Below is a full set of new prompts. You can download the file and insert it into your LifeJournal. (See full instructions after the prompts.) Or you can use these prompts as a reference and use when your looking to explore the role of play and humor in your life.

1. What kinds of things make you laugh?  .
2. Remember a time when you made a group of people laugh-your family, a classroom of kids, your colleagues. Describe in great detail the experience.
3. What do you do for fun in your life?
4. Do you consciously make time for fun in your life or does your fun time occur spontaneously? If you plan, how often do you include fun and play in your life?
5. Who is your favorite comedian, comedy writer, humorist? Why? What qualities of this person do you like best?
6. What games did you love to play as a child? Can you recount several high points of the play that you remember when you were a child?
7. Do you spend time with many people who have a good sense of humor, are playful, and enjoy laughing and not being serious?
8. Is your family of origin inclined to playfulness, humor, and fun?  If so, who among your family members are the funniest? Do/did you spend much time with them?
9. Are you attracted to "funsters"? Who among your friends/family are funsters and do you specifically seek them out?
10. What prevents you from "lightening up" and being playful and having fun?
11. Do you take your fun too seriously? Some people play games and sports for fun, but become so competitively involved that they lose the fun in it. Where do you fit in the spectrum of keeping your fun light-hearted vs. taking it too seriously?
12. Do/did you ever get in trouble for having fun and playing?
13. Who were your best fun-loving friends growing up? Recount a few funny stories about them.
14. Make a list of the movies, books, magazines, blogs, websites, and/or TV shows that you consider very funny.
15. Are you inclined to be quick to laugh and find the humor in a situation? If not, how would you change that?
16. It is said that children in nursery school laugh about 300 times a day and that adults laugh about 17 times per day. Do you find yourself smiling/laughing many times during the day? Do you think you laugh more or less than the average adult?
17. Do you rely on props (such as intoxicants, food, or particular playmates) to have fun, or can you be in play-mode at any time?
18. Do you remember a time when you used humor well to change a situation that was becoming hostile or tense?
19. Are you able to play with children easily?  What kind of play do you most enjoy with them--free form fantasy, or board games, or outdoor games like tag, or  sports?
20. Are there forms of humor that you favor or dislike-irony, sarcasm, wit, exaggeration, satire, slapstick, spoof, paradox?
21. Laughter has been shown to increase health by reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, elevating mood, and boosting the immune system. Is there something that you could easily incorporate into your day that would increase humor and fun into your life? How often do you laugh during the course of the day? Do you think that it's a good number of times? If not, could you increase the number of times that you laugh/play/have fun in a day?
22. Go to a playground, a children's museum, a schoolyard at recess or any kid's environment where there are unstructured activities.  Soak up the culture of the place--the humor, fun, and playfulness --and write about the experience, especially any memories which may surface.
23. Write a story that makes you laugh.  Anything goes-- a true story or a ridiculous fantasy that you concoct.
24. Are you able at times to see and appreciate the absurdity of life?

Instructions for how to download the Play and Humor prompts to install them into your LifeJournal program:

1. Right click this link and save the file to your hard drive. Remember where you save it. (The file name is PlayandHumor.csv).

2.  Open up the LifeJournal program and click the "Prompts" button on the application toolbar. In the Prompts dialog go to the File menu>Manage Prompts.

3. In the Manage Prompts dialog, go to the File menu>Import.

4. Browse to the PlayandHumor.csv file and the "Open" button. The prompts will be imported into your LifeJournal program.