Who needs words when you have laughter? Building bond across cultures with Laughter Intelligence®
Four months into my trip, I still can’t speak Georgian (or Czech, or Romanian, or…). But I’ve made friends anyway, with two train station guys, an 80 year old guesthouse host, and a late arriving waitress. Laughter did the heavy lifting. Once, it bit me back.
I’m going to tell you all the stories about how I am putting the SMILE framework of Laughter Intelligence® to work on the road!
In This Episode
- What I’m learning about laughter
- How Mako, last episode’s guest, put laughter into her café Wi-Fi password
- What happened when I tried to convince Georgia to eat mchadi with jam, and how I stopped taking being laughed at personally
- How a smile, a silly face, and a very long Google Translate lesson built trust with two train station guys
- How one word, “Husbands.”, made my guesthouse host laugh
- A Russian dad’s joke about a priest, a taxi driver, and the Pearly Gates
- The story I’m not proud of, when my laughter backfired, and why shame needs extra care
Episode Highlights With Timestamps
- [00:10] Four months on the road, and a twist: today I’m sharing what I’m learning about laughter
- [02:10] The S.M.I.L.E. framework goes travelling
- [03:35] Mako changes her café Wi-Fi password to “Ha ha ha ha ha” (and you have to say it out loud)
- [08:00] My mission to convince Georgia that mchadi belongs with jam
- [10:30] Being laughed at, and the best teacher stare in the business
- [13:15] The train guys, a $1.19 ticket, and a ten-minute Google Translate lesson
- [15:50] Lilia, a honking car horn, and the one word that built a bond
- [20:35] Family dynamics and a spot on joke
- [22:05] The story I’m not proud of: when my laughter backfired
- [27:05] Repairing trust, and why shame needs extra care
Links and Resources Mentioned
- Episode 12 with Mako Tkabladze of Runa Café in Kutaisi, Georgia: Come have a seat at a Georgian café where laughter is always on the menu
- Google Translate (my travel sidekick and occasional disaster averter)
- Laughter Revolution Digest, every two weeks: marlasimlett.com
- Reels from the road on Instagram and Facebook, including the mchadi and jam mission
- Email me: [email protected]
Hit subscribe on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen, so the next episode finds you while your coffee is still hot. Then join the Laughter Revolution Digest at marlasimlett.com for more photos, more stories, and more of what I’m learning and laughing about on the road. Your inbox could use a giggle.
Full Transcript
[Speaker: Marla Simlett]
Welcome to Laughter Revolution. I’m Marla Simlett, and as you know, my firm belief is even though life sometimes can be tough, getting through it doesn’t always have to be, because laughter.
So as many of you know, I am still on the road. I left on June 14th, and today is actually the four-month anniversary of my trip. So I’ve been on the road officially four months today. And you know, in some ways I’ve got two months left, like eight weeks, and it feels like I’m coming into the home stretch.
But when I think back to all of the things that I did in the first two months, I’m like, “Hey, Marla, you gotta slow your roll.” Like, you have so many things to see and do, and adventures to have, and people to meet, and things to learn about. And not only learning about them, but learning how to deal with them with laughter.
And that’s, here, what I’m here to share with you today.
Although a little bit of a twist today, because for this episode I’m not so much talking about something I’m bumping up against and then, using laughter to fix. I’m actually talking about what I’m learning about laughter.
And you know, just looking back a little bit, when I first decided that I was going to become the Laughter Queen or whatever you wanna call me, I did tons of research about laughter and the 50 years of research people have done about laughter and humor and the benefits and the ways that we can implement it in our lives, in our workplaces, in our relationships.
But I’m still learning. It’s still pretty new for me. And I’m learning more and more about Laughter Intelligence®, which trademarked, registered trademark. It’s the framework that I’ve set up about using laughter intentionally to improve your life.
So the framework actually, because it’s… I’m cute this way. The framework, the acronym or the initialism is SMILE, and that’s what I’ve been doing on my trip. In addition to using laughter to help me, I’ve been learning more about laughter in the different cultures I’ve been in and how I’m using it myself.
So that acronym, SMILE, is Study. I’ve been studying laughter.
Mapping -my own laughter signature as well as other people’s laughter signatures. Identifying -where I’m getting stuck with using laughter or where maybe I’m using it inappropriately, and I have quite the story about that to tell you. Leveraging laughter, so using laughter in my travels, in my life with the people I’m meeting in order to build trust, build relationships, have a good time.
And then Expanding. And you know, I think I’m gonna talk about that one first because as I’m meeting people, and God, I’ve been meeting so many people, not only in the countries that I’ve been in, so Scotland, Norway, Copenhagen, Czech Republic, Romania, Georgia, there’s a few more in there as well, but also other travelers from around the world. When I’m talking about what I’m doing, they’re fascinated by it. Like, some of them are like, “Huh, you know, I’ve never thought about that before.” And others are really interested and digging in. If you listen to the last episode with Mako from the Runa Café, my Georgian guest, she thanked me profusely for doing this work and is building that work into what she does. She actually changed her Wi-Fi password at her café to, “Ha ha ha ha ha.” And you’re not allowed to say, “Oh, our password is five H-A in a row.” You have to do the laughter, which I absolutely love.
So one of the things that I’m already doing is expanding laughter in my universe, in the experiences that I’m having with the people that I’m meeting, and that was a key piece of what I wanted to do when I’m traveling. So check that off the list.
So what am I learning about laughter? And there’s a couple of different themes. So in terms of the S of the SMILE framework, I’ve been studying laughter, and not just my own laughter, but as I’m traveling around, I’m watching and listening to how people are using laughter in their relationships.
And I can give you an example right now. I’m in a guest home in Tbilisi, Georgia. I leave tonight for Laos, but I’m here for a few more hours. And there are three older ladies sitting on the patio outside. They’re probably in their 70s or so, sitting around and just giggling and laughing and telling stories.
And it’s so funny when you listen to people, especially when you don’t understand the language, you can often get the nuances of what they’re talking about and see the bonds between them. These are obviously people who know each other quite well. I think one is a grandmother and maybe a sister and I think a friend because I haven’t seen them around.
But I’ve noticed that in different pockets where I’ve been listening, especially to women, but also I love when I can see a group of men together laughing. As I was walking through where the flower market is today in Tbilisi, I heard these two guys roaring with laughter. And I wish I had enough of their language that I could have gone up and asked them what it was about, although maybe it was inappropriate and I didn’t want to know.
But yeah, so I’m watching laughter. I’m watching how people are using laughter in their interactions. I’m also, you know, watching how I can then interject myself where I can to help start building some of that trust and rapport with people, even though I may not have the language.
And this is a great example:
So here in Georgia, I was in Bojormi which is, they’re famous for their mineral water. Maybe you’ve seen it., it’s really good. But I was waiting outside. I was on Canadian time. They told me the café was gonna open at 10: 00. I was there at 5 to, ready to get my coffee on. And of course, I was standing there, and standing there, and standing there
And about 25 after 10: 00, two women came, you know, walking down the street to open the café. And I’d been waiting there with another woman, and we’d just been kinda smiling at each other because we, we’d, we weren’t speaking the same language, obviously. When they were opening the door, the three women were having a conversation, and they were kind of laughing, and then one woman stuck out her foot, and obviously was showing these shoes that she had, and the other women were, you know, admiring her shoes. Like, that is it doesn’t matter what culture it is, women love their shoes apparently.
So I was able to use that when I finally went in and ordered my coffee. I, put in Google Translate, “You must think I really need a coffee fix, ” and she kinda giggled. And then the second part she laughed out loud.
I said, “And those shoes are very cute.” And then I actually heard her talking to her friends in Georgian, telling them what I had said, and they were giggling about that. So it was a great way for me to kinda connect with them and also make them laugh. It felt really good.
Another example of that, you may have seen my, my reel on social media where I was talking about my mission to, incorporate the cornbread, so mchadi, which is popular in here in Georgia, and I love it.
And because I can’t eat gluten, I’ve been eating mchadi all over the place. But trying to convince the Georgians that they should always be having it with jam. And so in one place, Sighnaghi I had gone to three different spots and finally got to this one spot where I convinced them to give me this mchadi and jam. And I think they thought I was crazy. As I said, they were probably looking in the window, in the kitchen window like, “Why does this woman wanna eat it that way?”
So the next day I went back to have lunch, and this time I ordered beans and I ordered the cornbread as well. And I said to the waiter, “Not with any jam, ” ’cause it was the same waiter, and he had been kind of snickering since I came in
And as I, as I was sitting there waiting for my lunch, I could see him talking with one of the other waitresses, and they were kinda glancing over at me, and then they were giggling. So I knew they were talking about me and the crazy Canadian lady who needed jam with her cornbread. But I was okay with that.
You know, they were kinda laughing at me, but at least they were laughing, and I didn’t take that personally. Which is something that I’ve learned to do here. I think I’ve talked in another episode about how hard it was for me to kind of break through with trying out the languages and communicating and connecting with people in the different cultures that I’m visiting because I was worried about embarrassing myself or that they would laugh at me.
And I’ve kinda worked through that, and now you wanna laugh at me? Go ahead. At least, at least you’re having fun. And, and I’ve learned to kind of make the faces and laugh along as well. Unless I think they’re being malicious, and then I give them my best… I used to work with kids in the elementary school system. I have the best teacher stare ever. And for those of you just listening, I’m giving the stare. And if I think somebody’s being mean, I will give them that stare until they look sufficiently chagrined and they look away. So don’t think that’s not happening.
So, yeah, that’s a great reframe for me. So being able to switch from taking it personally and allowing people to have that humor and joining in when I can. And I’m lucky I’ve got a pretty good, face for expressions, and I’m not above rolling my eyes at myself to make people laugh.
So another thing I’m learning about laughter, and coming back to the SMILE framework, I’m learning how much a smile and a little chuckle opens up trust and communication, especially in places where there is no trust built, and there may actually be mistrust.
And if you travel, you know this. In some places, they get a lot of tourists, and some of them aren’t respectful. And some of them aren’t interested in kind of integrating at all into the culture. They’re there to see the things that they wanna see and have the trip that they wanna have, whether that’s, you know, completely in comfort or, always speaking their own language, and things like that. Which is fine.
But it can set some people off in their… in the countries. So they may be coming to me with a little bit of mistrust. And I noticed that a lot when I was in the Pankisi Valley. It’s the, Chechen community here in Georgia. And, as I was reading, they’ve had a lot of mistrust with people coming to their community, which has been quite closed off for a while.
There was some rumors about it being a hotbed for terrorists, and Bin Laden had been here and there was a lot of journalists who came in at a certain point. And the people there learned to mistrust people coming into their community. And they’ve been working on that. But I found I would walk by somebody on the street or meet them in a store, and there weren’t a lot of tourists there when I was there last week, – And they would be quite stoic and not looking very open.
But if I gave them a big smile and I said, “Gamarjoba, ” or, you know, made a gesture of friendship or something like that, they were quick to smile. And just that connection through that smile is so amazing. And it builds trust. And then if you can use the facial expressions and the, you know, the humor with yourself to open that up even a little bit more, it can go so far. And with Google Translate, you can have so much fun.
And I… This is a really good example of that., I call them my train guys because again, when I was in Borjomi, I was getting the train. I was trying to figure out where to get the train at 6: 00 in the morning to take me to Tbilisi, and it was gonna cost me $1.19. I just wanna put that out there. Four-hour train trip.
And so I found what looked like the, what a, what was the train station, which was just this booth, and there’s these two old guys sitting in it smoking up a storm. And I come up trying to ask them questions, and of course they have no English. I feel like maybe they’d never even seen a smartphone, ’cause I whip out my phone and gonna use Google Translate as I’ve been using, and they’re just looking at it.
And so I am dictating, as I do, into Google Translate, asking them, “Is this where I get the train tomorrow morning? What time does it come? How do I pay for it?” And they’re looking at it, and they’re reading it, and they’re looking at each other and talking to each other. And then I’m trying to explain to them, like, I clear that out and I switch the languages, and then I hold it up to them trying to let them know that they can, you know, dictate themselves or talk into it in Georgian and it will translate for me. And it must have taken about 10 minutes for them to get that. And in the meantime, we’re smiling, we’re laughing. I’m hand to the forehead showing them I’m sorry I don’t speak Georgian and I know this is hard. And we actually really had a fun time. And finally one of them got -because, you know, they’d start speaking too quick, and I’d be like, “No, wait.” And then they’d, they’d wait too long and it would turn off, and it was just a, it was just a catastrophe in some ways. But they finally got it, and I realized what I needed to do. And then when I left, it felt like we had this connection. When I saw them the next morning when I was there at 6: 00, they gave me a wave and made sure that I got on the train and I was on my way. So super cool.
My other funny story about that, which I love, is, of Lilia, who was my host at a guest house in Telavi. Again, here in Georgia. I’ve been here in Georgia for a month, so got a lot of stories
And she was so funny. She was probably 80 and running that house by herself. Yes, she had a husband, but he didn’t do very much. And one day she… I was sitting out on the deck and she was there doing some work, and all of a sudden the horn started honking on the car, and she leaned over the deck and started yammering at him in Georgian. I didn’t really need to understand Georgian to know that she was not happy. And finally she turns away and she starts to walk away, and I just said, “Husbands.” And I don’t think she understood what it was, but she got the gist and she went, “Oh.” And we laughed and bonded about that -even though my husband is not a husband. We had a lot of, a lot of giggles around that.
So that’s one of the things that’s happening, is using smile and laughter and kind of mapping it and figuring out, like, how is that gonna work for me out in the world, and how can I leverage it?
The other thing that I find funny, I mean, I love to make people laugh. And of course, laughter is this universal process, and it’s a universal thing. And people love it when they can make you laugh. And I really try to give people that opportunity. So if someone’s trying… I had a guest house host who was…
We were doing a lot of Google translating, and he was making jokes on his phone, and was so happy when I got them, and he made me laugh, and vice versa. And it… Giving people that gift of your laughter, whether sometimes you completely get it or not, I think is another piece of that bonding. And of course, you don’t wanna laugh if you don’t think it’s appropriate. But I haven’t found a culture yet where there aren’t some things that are so common that you get the gist of it, and you know what the appropriate response is.
And so here’s a good example of that one., so I was at, Lilia’s guest house, and there was a Russian family there: a father, a mother, and their 11-year-old daughter.
And I don’t know if I’d mentioned laughter already or talked about my podcast or whatever. The father didn’t speak English. The daughter spoke English and so did the mother. But the father decided, Nikolai decided he wanted to tell me a joke. And it was so funny because he would have to say the joke in Russian. His poor long-suffering wife had to translate it, and I could tell she was doing the wife dance of, “This person doesn’t… Please don’t bother this person with your jokes. She doesn’t wanna hear it.” But I said, “Yes, I wanna hear it. Come on, ” and encouraging it.
Meanwhile, the daughter’s rolling her eyes, as only an 11-year-old girl can do in any culture, at her dad being such a dad and embarrassing her to death.
So I want, actually wanna tell you this one joke because it was very funny, especially given that we were in Georgia and he set it up. It’s probably a universal joke. You can use it in a lot of ways, but he set it up for being in Georgia. And it was just so funny to watch him tell the joke as if he was telling it in English. He had the mannerisms, he had the voices, So it was just fascinating to watch that humor process and then how it translated through his wife.
So here’s the joke. And to preface this, you’ve probably heard me talk about or seen some of my posts about Georgian drivers. True fact, they are wild. Many of them are wild. Many of them have a loose association with the rules of the road or what should be done. Tailgating, like, within millimeters to the car in front of them, five cars in a row, in the rain. Yeah, it’s, it’s a thing. I spent a lot of time with my hands over my eyes and just slowly peeking out every once in a while to make sure that I was gonna get to the right spot.
So anyway, he talked about Georgian drivers, and here’s the joke:
So there was a priest and a Georgian driver. A taxi driver. And they both died, and they went to heaven. And there they are at the Pearly Gates, and there’s St. Peter. And he asked first, the taxi driver, “What do you do for a living?” And he said, “Well, I was, I was a taxi driver.” And he said, “Great. Go to heaven.”
Sends him through the gate, no questions asked. Then he says to the priest, “And what do you do?” And he said, “Well, I’m a priest. I’ve been preaching, you know, the word of God and bringing people to the fold, my whole life.” And he said, “Huh. Huh. You’re going to hell.” And the priest is like, “What? What do you mean I’m going to hell? How come he got to go to heaven and I’m going to hell when I’ve been working for God my whole life?” And he said, “Listen. People go to church, they listen to you, they fall asleep. You’re boring. That’s not helping us at all. The taxi driver? People in his car never sleep, and they’re actually, ” and I’m crossing myself now, “they’re actually actively praying the whole time they’re there.” That’s just the way it is.
I love that joke Nicolai did such a good job of, of telling that. So if you happen to see this, Nicolai, thanks. That’s a great one.
So the last story I want to tell you that I’m learning about laughter is again mapping my laughter signature and identifying where I have some blocks, and I found a big block
It’s not a story I’m proud of, but I’m gonna tell it anyway. It starts out very funny. So I’m in the little Pankisi Valley where the Chechen people are. And the kids are just getting out of school the first day I was there, and I’m walking down the road, and they all want to try their English, and, “Hello, ” and chatting with me, and I chatted with a couple little boys, and apparently, I don’t know if you’ve heard this, six seven is a thing that North American kids were doing a while ago, and it’s just now got to the Chechen community here in Georgia.
So they were like, “Six seven, six seven.” And I promptly behind their back looked it up and realized what it is. It’s just kind of like a, it’s like a nothing thing, but it might mean kind of like this or that, and so I was six sevening them back. They thought I was really cool. I thought they thought I was really cool., I chatted with some grade six girls who were talking about what they were studying and what they wanted to do. They thought I was 25, so they were my favorite people., and that was great.
And then I’m walking along, and all of a sudden a gate opens, and four little boys come out. They were probably eight, nine, 10.
And the first one comes out and he sees me and he says, “Hello.” And I said, “Hello.” The next one, “Hello. Hi. Hello. Hello.” And then the fourth little guy comes out, “Fuck you.” Sorry for the language there. I should have warned you. But that was my response as well. I stopped and I said, “What did you say?” And I… It just shocked me so much. It was so out of context and so jarring, and I could see that the little guy was taken aback and his friends ’cause my response was so strong. And I, and I said something like, “That’s not a nice thing to say. You shouldn’t be saying that.” And then I just walked away, and I heard some muttering but I just walked away and they went on their way.
Turned around ’cause I decided I wasn’t walking seven kilometers to the waterfall. Turned around a little while later and I’m walking back, and there were the four boys sitting by the side of the road. Three of them, when they saw me, had their hoods over their faces. I could tell I had shamed them., it wasn’t my intent, but I’d just been so shocked. And the little guy that originally said the F word to me was sitting there in defiance.
And as soon as I walked up, he yelled it at me again. And I’m like, “What are you doing? Like, you shouldn’t be saying that.” And then I decided I wanted to have a little fun with it, so I started saying, “Six seven, six seven, ” and kinda joking with him, but he wasn’t having any of my jokes because I had broken the trust that might have happened between us. I had broken that with my response. And so when I six sevened, he took it as more shaming of him, and so he started yelling the F word at me again. He started going, “Nah.” I’m not proud, but I went, “Nah, ” right back at him.
And at first I thought, again, it was fun. And then he started really yelling at me, and I just kept walking and I realized that, yeah, I had not taken the high road. And what I had started out thinking was fun, as I examined how that was feeling in my body, I realized I had been triggered by this little boy’s response, and I was being a child myself. And maybe you caught that before I did, but when you’re in it, you don’t always notice it. So I felt some shame around that and honestly, if I could go back, I would find that little boy and somehow Google Translate to him that I was sorry, and I should not have done that.
And, you know, it’s probably out of his mind. I hope it is, but I hope I haven’t ruined him for tourists for the rest of his life.
But it was interesting to see from a laughter perspective how that laughter that I was thinking was funny, ’cause it was kind of amusing me at the time, was not funny and was not being interpreted as funny, and actually damaged a relationship.
And, you know, if that happens in real life, you wanna be able to go back and make that repair, or that trust is broken. That trust is gone. So that was a really good lesson for me of recognizing that I was triggered, recognizing how that felt for me and what I would do differently, were it for it to happen again.
So hope that gives you some insight too, because it’s interesting with laughter. It can, it can go badly sometimes, and you may have had that experience yourself. And because it’s such a positive thing, when it goes badly, I think it hits really hard and a lot of shame comes in, and shame’s one of the hardest emotions to deal with and to clear and to sit with. So we never want to put anybody in that situation, no matter how old they are. So note to self and note to me, I think that’s all I want to talk about today. I have learned so much in this [four] months I’ve been on the road, and I’m really excited for the next two months. I’m gonna be moving into Southeast Asia, and then over to South Korea and Japan.
I’m so excited to not only be in those cultures and eat the food, and see the things, and meet the people, but also have more experience with laughter and see what I can learn about that. Get some more guests for the show, and also spread my message. So expand and leverage. Spreading my message and leveraging laughter where I can to, help make the world a better place, I hope. That’s my mission. Making people feel better. Helping people be better, do better, one laugh at a time.
So that’s it for me for today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it was useful to you and not just me telling stories, but even if it was just me telling stories and you got a few laughs, I’ll take it.
If you’re interested and know you wanna see other episodes when I’ll have more guests on, please subscribe where you listen to your favorite podcasts, and then you’ll know when the next episode comes out every time it comes out, every other Thursday.
If you’re interested in seeing more pictures from my trip and hearing more about what I’m learning and laughing about on the road but in written form, I have a Laughter Revolution Digest that comes out every two weeks, and you can subscribe to that on my website at marlasimlett.com.
And there you can also look to past editions, so you can, see the pictures that I’ve been putting out
Follow me on social media. Instagram, Facebook. I’m putting reels out all the time showing places that I am, telling funny stories, letting you know what I’m learning and laughing about, and I’d love to connect with you there.
Or send me an email at [email protected]. Tell me where you’re stuck. Tell me what you’re laughing about. Tell me what you think of the podcast and anything you think I can add or change.
This is episode 13. Lucky number 13. So I would love to hear what you think
That’s it for me. I hope you have a laughter-filled day, a wonder-filled day.
And until next time, laugh more, be well, become your greatest you.
