and successful author of eight books.

Booked by more than 500 companies worldwide,

Karyn is one of the few people in the world to be inducted

into the National Speaker Associations' hall of fame.

Today, Dan Lok interviews Karyn on the secret

to enhancing your humor skills to become a better leader

with personal stories and cutting edge tips.

- Karyn, speaking of funny photo, I think one

of the funniest thing that I've seen was in a restaurant,

it's actually in a bathroom, so I went to the men's bathroom

and I saw a sign in front of the urinal,

it just says don't eat the urine cake.

- Oh, yes.

(laughing)

- I'm like why, like why.

- They had to post that because there was that one person.

- Yeah.

- Hey y'all, watch this.

- Eww, it's very true that we look for humor

in day-to-day life, how does that relate to health

in terms of our mental health?

- It's so wonderful, and that's really what brought me

into this field in the very beginning was the health aspects

and when I looked at humor, I found that there's three

primary functions of humor.

The one being entertainment, which everybody,

that's what they think of when they think humor.

- [Dan] Yes.

- Another is wellbeing which is health,

and then another is influence which is so important

in business, but in terms of health, there are so many

studies about the benefits of humor,

and for people particularly who use it consistently.

Again, that's a real--

- I loved what you said, use it consistently.

- Use it consistently, the issue is that so often

humor happens by chance and when it happens

by chance that's wonderful, but I want your listeners

and your viewers to understand that it's humor by choice,

not by chance, it could be both, but it's by choice,

and people who use it by choice, what we find is

that every body system is affected.

It's a wonderful thing that humor is a whole brain activity.

It affects the prefrontal cortex,

which is where we have wit, that's the understanding

of the joke, the emotional component of the brain,

which is the limbic system.

That's how we know we feel good and happy,

and then the occipital lobe in the back of the brain

which is the physical expression which is laughter,

and because of this whole brain activity,

there is this cascade of neurotransmitters that affect us

all over our body, and some of it we're aware of

because we have the oxytocin and the serotonin

and the endorphin-like pinnacles that make us feel good,

but also things that are going on are hormones and proteins

and things that are doing wonderful things for our body.

For instance, the number one negative process

in our body that just fans the flames of so many illnesses

and degenerative disease is cortisol

and humor lowers cortisol levels.

Cortisol is an inflammatory process that's throughout

every cell of our body, but humor decreases

those cortisol levels, and so this is why we see

positive effects in terms of autoimmune diseases

and we see positive effects in terms of heart diseases,

persons with diabetes.

All of these kinds of things we see positive effects

in people, and one of the studies that was done in Japan,

actually it was repeated, and I was so impressed with this,

I had mentioned it in my TEDx Talk, was that we saw changes

not just at the cellular level,

but beyond the cellular level.

We actually saw positive change in people's DNA.

- Wow.

- Now we're talking epigenetics, and that people have

the ability to positively influence future generations

by using humor intentionally and consistently.

I mean, with something this powerful, why would you not want

to include it, and one of the number one issues

in our country costing us billions of dollars--

- Depression.

- Is stress.

- Yeah, stress and depression.

Stress and depression, and work loss, days off, sick days,

errors that are made at work, accidents that happen,

all trace back to stress and depression

and that humor can help deal with that, and so using this

and implementing it, it helps people on a personal level

and at companies it's saving them millions and even billions

of dollars in lost work days and accidents, engagement,

happier people, they're more productive.

- [Dan] And they're more looking forward to go to work

since their workplace is a friendly environment,

is a fun environment, versus people dragging, oh,

gotta go to work, of course they're not gonna be productive.

- Right, and that's contagious.

- Yeah, 100%, if one person is, oh, you think you having

a bad day, let me tell you my day.

(laughing)

- Isn't that crazy how we get in this one-upsmanship

like whoever has the worst day--

- Don't get me started.

- It's like, I had the worst day, so I win.

Yeah, that's crazy.

- It's very, very true, and I think just like

what you're saying, this is science.

This is like science, this is not just, oh yeah, be happy,

and things like that, that's not what we're talking about.

- No, and this is what I love, this is what feeds me.

I'm a neurohumorist and I know your audience is thinking,

oh my gosh he's bringing on another neurohumorist,

but it's living at the intersection of humor in the brain

because really this is a great frontier,

and what we're bringing to your viewers and your listeners

is the latest in science that shows this will improve

your health, this will increase your focus.

People, here's a great study that was done by a friend

and researcher at Loma Linda, doctor Lee Berk,

who is just an amazing psychoneuroimmunologist,

he was doing a study of the brain with people

and he had the control group, he had the group

who was watching something stressful,

the movie Saving Private Ryan, and then a group

that was watching humor and they got to self-select out

of a couple of choices what was funny to them

'cause what's funny to me might not be funny to you,

but I digress, but anyway, what he found was

that the brainwaves of people who were experiencing humor

not only was it a whole brain process, the alpha, the delta,

the beta, the theta, but in addition to this,

now we see the gamma waves, and gamma waves,

many years ago when we had analog, we though that this was

just somehow interference, but now that we have

digital technology we know that gamma waves,

this is something important, we've known that

with deep meditation and mindfulness we have this

gamma wave pattern that indicates focus and creativity

and this wonderful depth and being in flow.

This is the same brainwave pattern we see with humor.

- Wow.

- And so, maybe you have the opportunity

to practice deep mindfulness or meditation,

but I know a lot of people, they don't have that opportunity

but you have the opportunity to access humor anywhere,

any place, anytime, even if it's just in your own head.

- Right.

- And how powerful is that?

- And us entrepreneurs being able to stay focused, right,

where it's funny, very high-level entrepreneurs

when I meet with them, all they talk about is actually less

about business, it's all about mind hacks

or it's about focus, productivity, meditation.

I see that across, it's funny how that works.

They don't necessarily talk about the business aspect,

they talk about how could they improve

their personal performance.