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Writer's picturePhil Shorland

Guest Blog for laughtercise.co.uk: The Lost Laugh

Updated: Feb 13


If you read my previous blog, you’ll know just how important the joy of laughter is to me. It always has been. When I think back to some of the best moments in my life, there is always one common theme. Laughs. Big ones. Some of the best moments from my childhood, my teens, my adult life have featured really funny moments.


The power of thinking back to a memory full of laughter, to laugh again and again as the years roll on is an amazingly powerful thing. Like a nostalgic song or Christmas film that just takes you back to that place. I remember sitting down to brainstorm starting up a new business. It’s a daunting prospect. Overwhelming at times. Through all the research though, there was one constant though…do what you love. So I did.


I felt there had always been a flaw in my team building experiences at the companies I had worked for. Sure, we had staff training days, but they were just that. Training. Corporate. Wordy. Dry. There was the obligatory ice breaker, of course, and I got to sit next to Pam for a few hours from the office down the corridor. She was a lovely lady; mid fifties she said, a growing army of grandchildren and keen to ask all about my family. I never saw her again after the lunchtime buffet though. She’s fit and well, I must add. It’s just the nature of these events. The working day is shaken up for a few hours, but by lunchtime, we all know we are slipping away into a depressing daydream, worrying about the emails we’re missing out on. Pam heads back to her office and that’ll be that until the Christmas buffet.


So as well as doing something that I love, I felt really passionate about combining it with something that I felt could be a bit better. I wanted Laughtercise to be a way for colleagues to let go. To log off from their laptops, their responsibilities and their seriousness. I wanted them to feel like kids again. Feelings that they likely hadn’t felt for a long time. Competitiveness. Being part of a team. Being a more important part of that team than they have felt for a long time. I wanted to see them reignite their lost ability to become team leader…then quickly check themselves to rein it in. Raw, honest, silly, healthy. There is something naturally beautiful about Colin from accounts ripping tissue from a box like his laptop battery’s life depends on it…just because it’s the penultimate round of his team’s Laughtercise session and the clock is ticking.


The benefits of team building are timeless, but so are the benefits of laughter. I remember an article that I read when designing the business and it focused on work-based fulfilment, stressing that happiness and learning were closely linked. For me that was perfect. It summed up exactly what I wanted Laughtercise to be about. Experiencing happiness and learning, not about jargon or new acronyms, but about each other. Our colleagues. The people sitting in the same room as us that we know so little about. I wanted to provide the tools, the games, the challenges that would ask them to dig deep and work together to escape the constraints of the office and showcase another side to themselves.


All in the name of fun and laughter.


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