Allen Klein – The Healing Power Of Humor Transcript

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Host: Welcome to the Lifelong Wellness podcast where we talk to wellness professionals from so many walks of life from around the world and get their insight into living healthier. I’m your host, Wes Malik. Today's very special guest is Allen Klein who is an award-winning author and speaker who shows audiences worldwide how to use humor and positive thinking to deal with life's not-so-funny stuff. He is a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Applied in Therapeutic Humor and author of 28 books including the Healing Power of Humor, You Can't Ruin My Day, and Embracing Life After Loss. He is also a TEDx presenter and he is a very, very interesting guest. And we’re so lucky to be speaking to him because when we speak to our guests, we try to find insight into how they live and there is no substitute for experience. I’m talking to different people from various walks of life we get to share that experience. Hi Allen, how you doing?

Allen: I’m fairly fabulous. How are you?

Host: Very good, very good. Many, many years ago you’re a set designer, right?

Allen: Yeah and that's when I lived in New York City. I designed television and off-Broadway.

Host: You work with Captain Kangaroo, too?

Allen: Captain Kangaroo, Merv Griffin, Jackie Gleason…

Host: Wow!

Allen: Yes.

Host: Wow! And what was it? Did you get to meet the stars of the shows?

Allen: Oh, yeah. In fact, I don't know how old you are but remember the act, José Ferrer? He was in Moulin Rouge. He played Toulouse-Lautrec and did the whole whirl on his knees.

Host: No, no, no, I'm sorry. I don’t know about José.

Allen: That’s okay. Anyhow so, when they flew us to the West Coast it was first class and I sat next to him

Host: Oh really?

Allen: And chatted about theatre the whole time so…

Host: That is fantastic! That is wonderful! I know you've moved on to writing and speaking publicly and you’ve been doing that for decades now. Was there a transition or did you keep set designing and seam designing? Did you do both things at the same time at one point in time?

Allen: I did a little bit of designing in San Francisco but what happened was my wife passed away at thirty-four.

Host: Yes.

Allen: She, we found out she had a rare liver disease at thirty-one years old and after she died I thought I don’t want to do what I'm doing and I gave up that and went back to school to learn about death and dying. And it was Norman Cousins, talking about healing himself with humor and my wife had a great sense of humor and so I went back and got a Master's degree in Human, H-U-M-A-N, Development and my thesis was The Healing Power of Humor, which turned into my first book.

Host: So that's how you got into writing. It was a natural progression from your education, from your thesis, and into your first book.

Allen: Right. Well, I have a passion to tell the world about the power of humor to help us get through anything. And so I started to write about it, but when I look back, Wes, I realize I was a writer. I remember writing a poem in the sixth grade and having to get up in front of the assembly and recite the poem. So, I was a writer way, way a long time ago.

Host: Okay. (laughing) You just weren't published until you wrote your first book but you’re a writer before that. And it hasn't stopped for many, many decades, but just to answer your previous question. I am forty-three years old. That is half your age. (laughing)

Allen: Oh my goodness! (laughing) Can I remember when I was that far back? (laughing) I don't remember what I had for breakfast forty years ago. Oh, my goodness! (laughing)

Host: So, from your first book in the many decades on, you had 28 books published, they’re about humor, they’re about therapy. There are many books about inspirational quotations that you've done. I have a list of eight or nine in front of me right here and they go way back and…Why did you decide to just continue writing on this and gathering inspirational quotations?

Allen: Well, one of my beliefs is that words can change our life. And I've seen that over and over. I've seen how changing my attitude after my wife died, how not only with humor but just looking at the positive things I still had in my life rather than what I have lost. And so words were very instrumental in me changing my attitude in everything that happens, you know. We decide how to handle the situation and it’s the words, it's our intention of how to get on with our life. And so after my first book, The Healing Power of Humor, I collected hundreds of quotes from that book. I didn’t use most of them and I thought here are some great quotations that could help people, you know, one sentence. If they just take that it’s like a mantra for the day how it could help them. And so I put together a book of uplifting, humorous, light-hearted quotations and that was published. Funny you bring that up because it was just reissued with a new publisher and a new title. It's now called The Lighten Up Book.

Host: Ah, okay The Lighten Up Book. And is it up on Amazon along with your other books?

Allen: It certainly is. Yes, it came out, I think this March or April.

Host: Oh, okay very recently. You’ve had 28 books published and I got to ask, are you working on your twenty-ninth?

Allen: Oh yes. (laughing) Well, I have twenty-nine that will come out is actually already written and scheduled for publication next February, I think it is. It’s about keeping your life simple. It's called The Joy of Simplicity.

Host: Brilliant!

Allen: And again, it’s a quote book, an inspirational quote book about how to do that.

Host: I guess you’ve never suffered from writer's block, have you? After twenty-nine books! (laughing).

Allen: Oh, some days I do but you know what I find, Wes, is the more I write, the more ideas come to me. I mean I have more ideas about books that I could publish than I probably have time in my life to do. So, it's like a never-ending process. I'm writing one thing and I go, “Hey, there’s a great idea for another book!” And sometimes I work on it and sometimes I don't.

Host: Allen, you have lived a very full life. You've traveled the world, you've met with hundreds, possibly thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people because you’re a public speaker, you talk to people about your life experience and what you write on. So, I think you probably have a very good answer to my question. Now, this podcast is about lifelong wellness and I think a person with your experience can answer this question very well in-depth. What does wellness mean to you? How do you live your life?

Allen: Wellness for me is doing what you want to do and not letting anyone or anything stop you because I went over I have seen that. Actually what I talked about in my TEDx talk about intention, The Power of Intention, because when I was growing up in New York City my parents took me to see my first Broadway show and I fell so in love with it. It was Oklahoma!, I think it was Oklahoma! or the Carousel, but it was Oklahoma! And I fell in love with it and wanted to be the person that created those pretty pictures on stage. And so I would take a shoebox and I would make pretty little, you know, scenes or vignettes of dioramas, say, the book we were reading in grade school. And then I went on and I never did much about becoming a designer until college. When I did all the theatrical productions at Hunter College in New York City when I was there and then got into Yale Drama School and it was at 3M Masters in scenic design. And I was let go after the first year. I was told, basically, I had no talent.

Host: What? Really!

Allen: (laughing) Well, they didn’t say that to my face but being kicked out, you know, it’s telling me something. And so I went back to New York City. I got into the Scenic Design Union and it's a very stringent test. I won’t go over the details but I failed it the first time. I passed the second time and so I got a job at CBS first as an apprentice and then as a full designer once I passed the test. And I realize my fellow classmates at Yale who are still doing college productions and I was doing national TV. And so I realize the intention that nobody could tell me, even the head at Yale Drama School, could tell me I can’t do something. So that's the way I live my life. If I want to do something, you know, with certain limitations, you know, I'm not a big strappy football kind of guy player, you know, but if I want to do something, I learn the craft or I want to travel somewhere, whatever it is, I generally don't let other people tell me, you know, that I can't do it because maybe they feel they can't do it.

Host: That's your strong-willed and some would say very stubborn, hard-headed, that you pursue what you want to do, but many people understand and sometimes don’t even gain this lesson in life. Some people do, later on, but it appears to me that you learned this lesson very early on in life that you, the power of intention, and you did what you wanted to do. That's fantastic at such a young age…

Allen: Right and I think it’s the attitude, you know. I didn't always have this attitude, you know. I look back and I see I hadn’t had it in an instant.

Host: Yeah.

Allen: But I think it was my wife passing away at such an early age that really cemented that idea that we are only here for a short time. I mean it’s cliché-ish, but we’re only here for a short time. If you want to do something, go and do it.

Host: So, that is the pivotal point in your life where you decided that this is the way I'm going to live my life and that's how you lived it so many decades on.

Allen: Right, so it's basically attitude towards life. And that is why I do so many books because I'm hoping to change people's attitude and I know, Wes, from emails and letters that I get from people how my words have really influenced them. And as they say often, “Your work has changed my life.” I mean in my keynotes, I do the therapeutic value of humor and people have often come up to me over the years and say things like, “You know, my son was murdered two years ago and I haven’t laughed for two years. Thank you so much for coming here today and I've had my first laugh in two years and you’ve given me hope that I can now get on with my life and enjoy my life more.”

Host: How do you help those people? How do you tell them that, you know…What is your process? How do you use humor or how do you tell people to use humor to cope with grief? Do you tell them to memorize some jokes and start telling them to people or start watching comedy movies? How do you inspire these people?

Allen: No jokes. (laughing) Because jokes are, you know, every individual they could be offensive. One is, I think, what happens is I tell my own story of how my wife died at thirty-four. How we went, you know, it was really a difficult time her having a terminal illness of three years, no cure for that time, no liver transplant, having a 10-year-old daughter to raise when my wife died and how I was able to get through that. How my daughter helped me get through that. How we laughed together, how we remembered funny things that we say mommy did. And then I have, any program I give I have the audience remember the words, letters rather, one word, L-A-U-G-H, laugh. And I go through each letter so “L” is to let go. That you cannot get on with life. Yes, you want to remember that person, you want to honor them, but you can’t get on with your life if that kind of stops your life. I remember I became a hospice volunteer after my wife died and I had one client whose mother died and this was a young 30-year-old woman whose mother died. And for two years she was like grieving and yes, it’s important to grieve, but she couldn't go out of the house, she couldn’t go to the movie, she couldn’t do anything and I thought, “What a tragedy!” Not only did her mother died, but this woman's life has kind of ended for two years, and in a way she died, too. So, two lives were lost. So, at some point, we got to let go and I do. It sounds serious now, Wes, but I do it in a very fun way. So, if people think of some smaller thing that they need to let go of then they each get a balloon and we blow it up and we just let it go. And if you’ve ever seen, say, five hundred balloons going around the room. (laughing) People just start laughing and letting go. So, various processes are used with people. “A” is attitude. We just talked about that. You’re the only one that can change your attitude. No one else can do that. And “U” is, I cheated it’s for Y-O-U that each individual person has to go find that humor in their own life to lighten up on changing their attitude.

Host: “You” as in me.

Allen: As in me, yes. (laughing)

Host: Okay.

Allen: And then “G” is to go do it and I have various techniques like having fun pictures around like I have a picture of my daughter when she had a, teenager and she wanted to pie thrown in her face, which I did.

Host: Okay. (laughing)

Allen: Her smile is just glowing. I look at it and I smile. So things like that. Everyone in the workshop gets a red clown nose that we do an exercise with and they get to take home. And I get feedback of how “I was in traffic jams and I use the clown nose and it lightened up and people around me start laughing.” So, I have a little prop around and then “H”, L-A-U-G-H, “H” is open your humor, eyes, and ears because humor all around us, just look for it. So, I give examples, one is, I was in the laundromat and I looked on the wall and it said “When the machine stops remove all your clothing”, which I did. (laughing) So, you know, I have various examples. So, just remember that one word, L-A-U-G-H is one of the techniques I use.

Host: So that's how you spell “LAUGH”, but here's my question, Allen. How do you spell “relief”?

Allen: (laughing) That's one of the questions. L-A-U-G-H is how I spell it.

Host: Right. If our audience hasn't seen your TEDx talk or hasn't been to one of your talks or seen one of the videos on YouTube, this is a question you ask your audience and you get very humorous responses. The responses, people give you are fantastic. Do you mind sharing some?

Allen: Oh, God. (laughing) I'm not sure I could say some on the air. (laughing) We have one person who said, “I divorce my husband.” (laughing)

Host: You based your life and you teach people, you know, why humor is so important and it’s because of your own grief, because of your own grieving process. I believe grief can be confusing. Is that correct?

Allen: Well, it can because people think, you know, they get off two weeks of work because a loved one died and they go back to work and everybody thinks it should be over it. I'm not sure you get fully over it. I mean, I still something happens and I see something or hear something and it brings tears to my eyes when I think of my wife. But as I said you move on with your life and in fact a lot of the stuff I learned from my wife or the times we had together enriched my life. So, I try to concentrate on that. She was a great traveler and it taught me before I met her I'd never been out of the country and we ran to Italy on our honeymoon, had some great times traveling. So, it's something that has enriched my life and then I traveled several times a year now to wonderful places. So, what I'm saying is the focus, you know, you have a choice. Again, going back to attitude, you can focus on the positive of your life or the negative of your life, whether it's a loss, whether it's a traffic jam, whether it's a hangnail (laughing)

Host: Right.

Allen: Yeah, choice. You have that choice. So, it’s like a simple idea, but a hard one to accomplish.

Host: So it is difficult for some people to accomplish and overcome whatever that they're feeling at that moment. It can range from many types of grief and many types of feelings that people experience but you have a five-step program from loss to laughter that you write about and embracing life after loss. What are those five steps?

Allen: Well, again it's pretty simple and they're all “L” words. So, it’s Losing that realize that you know, that we can't live forever. That we’re going to lose and some it’s harder than others. We maybe lose our job, which is part of it. It's not just losing a loved one, but acknowledging that loss is part of life. So, first, acknowledge that. The second thing is that we realize that loss can be our greatest teachers. So the second word is Learning.

Host: Okay.

Allen: That you can learn because I think we got along if things are really good. And yes, we learned some things but when we have lost something, it really kind of hits us up in the head and I think we, you know, we can learn. Not everyone does but we can learn from that loss like we can learn to be more empathetic to other people, to love people more. Each individual might learn something different, but there is something they are better to be learned if they’re open to it. And the other I talked about this, in order to move on we have to start to Let go, to get on with our life. And then we start another “L” word, the fourth “L”, Living. So, we don't stay in the house, you know, we go out to lunch with friends, whatever it is. You know, we travel more. It’s not that we’re not honoring the person we lost, whatever we lost. It's just that we need to start getting on with our own life, not feel guilty about it. Some people feel guilty about that but I always say, “How would the person that’s deceased, how would they want you to live your life?” And most people say, “They wanted me to continue and have a good time in my life” and yet often people don't do that. So, start living, and then across the last thing is to start looking for the Laughter in your life for the laughter you had with that person. The laughter that you find every day if you’re letting go and letting it happen.

Host: I love your positive attitude. It's fantastic. It's really refreshing as well because a lot of people take a lot of stress because of life. You know, go to work, traffic jams, pay the bills. You know, they’re stressed of being at one place at one time or doing things for others. And, you know, we all cope differently. Even though…I'm not even sitting across you. We are thousands of kilometers, thousands of miles away but I can feel that positive energy all the way from San Francisco here, you know, all the way here. Have you always had this positive attitude? How did you maintain it? Is it tiring?

Allen: I have always had it. I think I got it from my mother and from my dad, although my dad was a very negative person. You know, for him the glass is always half empty and I have some wonderfully funny stories about some of his negativity that I used to get really upset about, and then I realized if I could just step back and see how his negativity has taught me to be so positive.
Host: Yeah.

Allen: I'm really grateful that he was so negative which is kind of weird, but…

Host: Okay like a double negative, making a positive, yeah.

Allen: Exactly! And my mom was always really positive. She lived to ninety-five (years old).

Host: Wow!

Allen: Classic story I often open my programs with is, she was at the doctor’s and it was 6 o'clock at night and they had to close the office and the van that she usually takes to get back home didn't show up. So, the receptionist said, “Mrs. Klein, I'll call them. I’ll make sure they’re coming but I need to close the office. I'll take you downstairs, there’s a pizza place, I’ll buy you a soda if you want and you can wait there comfortably.” So, they did that and when my mom waited and waited and then the van never showed up. So, my mom went up to the guy behind the counter and asked, “Do you deliver?” and he said, “Yeah, we’re a pizza place. Of course, we deliver.” She said, “Great! I want a pepperoni pizza and I want to go with it”.

(Both laughing)

Host: Oh, your mom is so awesome!

Allen: I know. I think I learned my sense of humor, positive attitude from her. She just had this great, great spirit. Diggity dealing with my negative dad…(laughing) She would just like, I’m sure it annoyed her but, it didn’t always show. She turned it around by joking around sometimes.

Host: So, you traveled a lot, you’ve been around the world. What's your favorite place to visit?

Allen: Oh, God. Recently, the last couple of years I've taken a couple of river cruises in Europe and I don’t know if it’s my favorite place to visit but the tulip time in Amsterdam. We went to…No these are gardens, Perkin something gardens, they are during tulip time. They have seven million tulips in bloom.

Host: Wow!

Allen: Seven million. (laughing) It was like, I can’t believe it. It was like magic. I didn’t know where to look. I didn't know what to photograph. It was just like, you wanted to take in every single moment, every inch of it. It was just so beautiful. Any of your listeners could be in Amsterdam during tulip time.

Host: That is the place to be?

Allen: Oh, definitely, yeah. And then I was born in Manhattan, raised in New York and so I try to go every year because I love Broadway shows and there’s nothing to me like a live Broadway show. In fact, tonight I'm going to San Francisco, the opening of the touring show of Donna Summer’s music.

Host: The new musical. Yeah.

Allen: Yeah, Summer. I think it’s called “Summer”?

Host: I’ve heard great things about it.

Allen: Anyhow, yes so I have tickets tonight. I love live theatre because, like life, I mean in the movie they do incredible stuff, right? The effects are incredible, but in live theatre, just like life you never know what’s going to happen. I mean over my years of Broadway shows I've seen the scenery fall, I’ve seen very famous, and I won’t even mention names, actors forget their lines, I’ve seen a motorcycle fall on someone in the play and they shouted out some curse words. (laughing) You know that one happens in the movies. So live theatre is, for me, is really exciting.

Host: When you travel all over the world you meet with people, I’m very sure you talked to everyone wherever you go. You kind of seem like that person that you’re not very reserved. You probably strike up conversations with everyone all over the world whenever you travel in the States, you know, outside of North America, Europe wherever you may go. Do people view humor differently and experience emotions differently or project themselves differently? Have you seen, you know, have you gone to a place where you feel like, “Oh, wow! All these people are very depressed” or have you gone to a place where you remarked at, “Wow! Everyone’s so wonderful or happy”, you know. Have you noticed any?

Allen: Yeah, one of the things I…I haven’t been there but I read, I think it’s Bhutan, is like the happy place or the happiest place in the world by some study. (laughing) But in my own life, I’m not sure I have seen it when I travel. What I did see was I once taught a workshop all day to Swedish Doctors.

Host: Okay.

Allen: On Humor.

Host: Interesting.

Allen: Yeah. Maybe it’s because of language…I realized the language barrier was difficult. The humor was different than my humor.
Host: Right.

Allen: I also noticed that I was speaking to people like from, I think it was Vietnam or something, some country like that Asian country. And they told me they cannot laugh at work, that you do your work, you come home, you laugh with your family but you do not laugh at work.

Host: So you have to be very serious. Okay. Wow!

Allen: Yeah, so what the point is, that you have two different countries and the humor was very different. And I think even in this country, I think in the United States, people from the south have a different kind of sense of humor than people or an attitude towards life than people elsewhere.

Host: Now, you’ve assembled so many quotes from around the world for many people and you have assembled them in books. Do you have any specific quotes that, you know, you live by or are very important to you?

Allen: I have an affirmation that actually I made up for me and this really works. And your listeners are welcome to take it and use it and see if it works in their life, but my affirmation is, “The world treats me as royalty wherever I go”. The world treats me as royalty wherever I go. And one thing’s going so great, perhaps someday, I keep repeating that over and over and indeed it starts happening because that is what I’m seeing. So, I don’t see the other stuff. So, one example, I was going to Europe, I was on the upgrade list to get up to first class. And I got to the airport, looked at the list, there were like forty people ahead of me and there were only a few seats open. So, I knew I wasn’t going to get it. So, I was, “Okay, I wasn’t going to get it” and got on the plane, closed the doors, ready to take off, there’s an engine problem. We got to go back to the gate and we’ll get you a different plane. Okay? My second chance I could maybe be upgraded. So, I was so happy about it. (laughing) Other people not so happy. So, we got on the second plane, still not upgraded, the waitlist for upgrade is maybe gone down to now in the twenties so I’m getting closer but there are not twenty seats open. Ready to take off, we’re sitting on the tarmac too long and the Captain announces, “Sorry but the crew was going to be going on a time limit, they’re over time. They cannot fly this plane, we got to go back to the gate and get another crew”.

Host: Okay.

Allen: Great, a third time! (laughing) Possibly be upgraded. So we got back to the gate, they cannot get another crew. We have to come back the next day.

Host: Good, next day. Okay

Allen: Next day we come back, now it’s only down to like nine people ahead of me but there are still only two seats open and I said, “Okay, I didn’t get it”. I’m still going. You know, gratitude is one other thing I do plus the world treats me like royalty. So I’m thanking United Airlines for upgrading me even though I didn’t get the upgrade yet but I am using my gratitude approach. (laughing) And they’re closing the doors, I’m still not upgraded, I felt “Okay, none of this worked”. (laughing) Just about, you know, then someone comes running on the plane, the guy from the gate right before they actually close the door, he comes over and whispers to us “Come with me” and he brings us to First Class and we fly First Class to Europe.

Host: Oh Wow! It’s fantastic.

Allen: Third attempt but it worked. (laughing)

Host: It’s a wonderful affirmation and it’s a wonderful way to live your life. The positivity exhibited is just brilliant. It’s infectious, in fact. I am so glad that you bring a smile to everyone’s faces and I hope you do it for a very long time and I hope you continue to do it well long. And I hope you surpass your mother’s age of ninety-five. You are already eighty-one, I believe. Is that correct?

Allen: Yeah, eighty-one and a half. (laughing)

Host: Thank you so much, Mr. Allen Klein, for being on the Lifelong Wellness podcast today with us. And the New Year is coming up would you, you know, like to leave us with a good positive thought for the next year?

Allen: I would and my advice is people get a feather and keep it wherever they could see it and the words to go with that would be, “For the New Year, keep it light”.

Host: That is so wonderful. Thank you so much for being on the show with us Allen.

Allen: Thank you. What a great time we had, I appreciate it. Thanks, Wes.