Laughter, they say, is good for the soul. They’re right! If I’m ever diagnosed with a serious illness, I’ll treat myself to, and with, comedy DVDs. It’s great to laugh. Laughter is from the gut. It gets us beyond logic, rationality, constraint, prudence. Even in the most boring of work tasks, we might look for opportunities for laughter. The funny side offers a different perspective. It can give us courage to take whatever step we might be being invited to take. Huh? Well, I did a firewalk once. I was scared and was unable to walk barefoot onto the burning embers. (By the way, I very much do not recommend you try this at home – people do get burned and burned badly doing firewalks!) My rational mind told me it was dumb, stupid, irresponsible, senseless, potentially painful, even debilitating. The guy organising the firewalk suggested that the next time I laughed, that then was the time to take my first step onto the burning embers. It’s the shift from head to gut, from logic to the funny side. And so, when next I laughed, I went for it. And I was glad I did. Facing one’s fear, but not acting on the basis of fear, is a good thing. Feeling the fear but doing it anyway, as Susan Jeffers so wisely put it in the title of her book. I guess the idea I’m looking at here is that laughter can help you to ‘do it anyway’. And it makes life so much more fun!