Why you should Stop Doing Self Deprecation Jokes
By: Philip Baker
Tags: Self Improvement, Comedy, Self, Self-awareness, Awareness

There is something deep going on with the ability to delve into your worst experiences and laugh at them. It shows that you are OK with them, and you have accepted them as part of who you are, taking the lesson and growing from them.

If there is something to learn from comedians is not how funny or creative they are with their lines, but the fact that they grew so far further from their worst nightmares that they are light enough to joke about them as if they were a dark threat that almost got the better of them but they managed to deal with it anyway.

“The secret source of humor itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.” — Mark Twain

This was the lesson that I got out of watching tones of hours of comedic geniuses and getting accustomed to their patterns enough to think that I should incorporate them in my life as well.

Somehow I considered it a good idea to bring this pattern into my life and joke about my shortcomings as well in an attempt to accept them and leave them behind.

I would joke about my mistakes to my friends, laugh at my inability to find solutions, and make fun of my extra weight as if I was well beyond these superficial matters.

If I was to ask a question in my work, I would prepend it with “OK let’s re-iterate over this a little bit because it takes some time for me to register it in this dumb head” as though it was always my fault for not understanding something — it wasn’t- and I would always prepare the ground of any mistake that might have taken place with “OK what did I do wrong this time” as if I had always played some part in the whole thing -even though I hadn’t-.

What I failed to understand at that moment in time was that there are two modes of self-deprecating jokes. The cases where you really accept some parts of your past so you can move on to the future, and the cases where you are afraid of the future so you subvert yourself on purpose so that you can minimize the impact.

The former is a form of self-empowering while the latter is a form of self-disempowering that you use as self-defense for lack of confidence and belief.

The Two Forms Of Self Deprecation

There are numerous studies on the fact that people that can admit to their own short-comings have high emotional intelligence and that not taking yourself too seriously is a sign of modesty and wisdom that all successful people ought to have. But there is a tricky point here and the mark of distinction of whether self-deprecation is a positive or a negative attitude is always to look at where the weight of responsibility leans toward.

When a leader of a company has the courage to admit the mistakes he made in the last year and takes the plunge of responsibility to amend each and every one of them to rectify them as fast as possible, he brings more responsibility to his side. He is courageous enough to expose himself to the people that can criticize him, and make a clear statement that he is willing to take the extra weight and work on it. It is evident that through this action he is taking more responsibility.

On the other hand when a team is presented with a big new project and a person is not afraid to ‘admit’ his various shortcomings and the fact that he always finds some way to screw everything up by saying for example “Oh I can’t wait to see how I’m going to ruin the whole thing this time,” or some other belittling remark like that, he is actually removing responsibility from his shoulders and expects everyone else to jump in and cover for his unwillingness to do so himself.

This later form of self-deprecation is not courageous nor honorable for being able to accept your mistakes, but a form of avoidance that you deploy when you refuse to take the part of your role seriously enough or when your self-esteem is so low to believe that you won’t be able to handle it well.

It is this second case that people ought to be aware of and being able to distinguish between the two cases is of paramount importance to be able to do so.