IAM924- Author Shows Audience’s How to Use Humor and Positivity

Allen Klein is an award-winning author and speaker who shows audiences worldwide how to use humor and positivity to deal with life’s not-so-funny stuff. He is a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Applied Therapeutic Humor as well as a Toastmaster’s Communication and Leadership Award. In addition, he is also a TEDx presenter on intention, and the author of over 30 books including The Healing Power of Humor, You Can’t Ruin My Day, and Embracing Life After Loss. Today he is going to talk about his recently released book, The Awe Factor, and why a little bit of wonder can make a big difference in your life.

• CEO Hack: Putting my intention out and to the world
• CEO Nugget: Having an affirmation
• CEO Defined: I don't have to answer to anyone else or work when I don't want to and I am grateful

Website: http://www.allenklein.com/

Books: https://www.allenklein.com/books.htm
Facebook: facebook.com/allen.klein
Twitter: @allenklein
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/allenklein/
Instagram: allenklein22

Allen's last episode: https://iamceo.co/2018/11/06/iam101-award-winning-author-speaker-shows-people-how-to-use-positive-thinking-humor-through-difficult-stuff/

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00:18 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:46 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Allen Klein of AllenKlein.com. Allen, it's great to have you back on the show.

00:55 – Allen Klein

It's so fabulous to be here again. Thank you.

00:58 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely. The pleasure is all ours again. And if you remember the podcast, we will definitely have in the show notes, that Allen does a lot of phenomenal work. Before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more so you can hear even more about what it is that he's doing. Allen is an award-winning author and speaker who shows audiences worldwide how to use humor and positivity to deal with life's not-so-funny stuff. He's a recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Association for Applied Therapeutic Humor, as well as a Toastmasters Communicator and Leadership Award.

In addition, he is also a TEDx presenter on attention and the author of over 30 books, including The Healing Power of Humor, You Can't Ruin My Day, and Embracing Life After Loss. Today, he is going to talk about his most recently published book, The All Factor, and why a little bit of wonder can make a big difference in your life. Allen, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:47 – Allen Klein

I'm ready as ever.

01:49 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, Well, let's do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I want to hear a little bit more on how you guys started. Can you take us through all the awesome work that you're doing and what led you to kind of get started with your most recently released book?

01:59 – Allen Klein

Yeah, Well, it all started, I guess, right before my first book. My wife passed away when she was 34. She had a great sense of humor. And I realized how it helped me and her and her friends, how the humor, even just for a moment, helped us rise above the situation and get a little reprieve. And so I gave up a business I had, went back to school after she died to learn about therapeutic humor because Norman Cousins was talking about how it helped him get over a rare disease. And so I just went back to school, got a master's degree in therapeutic humor, and Wrote my first book, The Healing Power of Humor.

Started to teach people about it, through keynotes and workshops. And suddenly I was at the right place at the right time. People wanted to know more about it. And over the years, I realized humor was kind of in a positive psychology category. And it was just one element. And so I started investigating other positive, how to help people get more positive things in their life. And so I wrote, I think you mentioned some of the books. One is Embracing Life After Loss, which is about a guide to going through loss, a gentle guide because when my wife died, there were all of these very major 2, 300 page books about grief telling me how bad I would feel.

And I thought I was already feeling bad. I don't need those books. So I wrote one that's more uplifting and inspirational. I also wrote, You Can't Ruin My Day, because I realized that we often give our power away to other people or other things. And so I wrote a book about that and several others. And the current one is the awe, A-W-E factor. And the reason I wrote that is I started to look back on my life as I'm getting up in years. And I realized there were so many, what I call magic moments, incredible awe moments that I'm sure a lot of people have, and they probably don't call it all, realize how incredible it is.

And so I wanted to make people more aware of that. So I have some incredible stories from my own life and the people I interviewed. I have some of the new scientific research. And then I have a section on how people could get more awe in their life. So in about 150 words, Gresham is who I am, what I am, what I'm currently up to.

04:57 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. I definitely appreciate you for telling your story and letting us know. Sorry, of course, you know, you hear about your wife, but I appreciate you for not just, you know, finding something for yourself, but finding something that could help out so many other people. Because I think when you go through difficult things, you sometimes don't know or feel as if there is other people that are potentially going through the same things and how to exactly heal yourself. So I appreciate you for doing that. And of course kind of creating an opportunity for people to learn more and how to get better and how to use laughter as a way to see life in a different light, it sounds like.

05:32 – Allen Klein

Right, exactly. Yeah, because there's, well, particularly now there's COVID, there's inauguration, you know, that's happened or coming up, depending when people are listening to this, I guess when it's gonna be on the air. But, you know, there's always gonna be difficult stuff to get through in our life. If you're alive, that's part of living. But what I want to share is that people can put some of that in the background and look for the brighter, the lighter side of life. Because if you can't find that, why are you living? And I know people that think about suicide, they cannot find that lighter side of life.

So, they're often depressed and everything is negative. So I just try to help people find all the positive, the lightest stuff around them. And I can guarantee we all have it. There's all the negative, but there's all the positive too. And so the awe factor, the brand new book, I think is another step in helping people find those little uplifting, inspirational things in their life in spite of what's happening in the not so great stuff. So that's the main focus of the book and why I do this.

06:53 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, I definitely appreciate you for doing that, Allen. And like you said, there's so many things that are kind of going on. And I think especially with COVID and so many things happening, people not being able to have their regular action, so to speak. There's been a lot of people that have dealt with depression, dealt with frustration, dealt with so many things. And to be able to find, I don't know if you would say this overlining or find those all experiences that they can lean on is definitely something that's huge. So I love that you created this and I think it's something that's very timely. And I heard you mentioned something and I want to ask you a little bit more about that. You said that a lot of times people don't recognize the all factors or the all things in their life. Is there some reason behind that that you kind of talk about in your book?

07:36 – Allen Klein

Well, I think, you know, there's so much negative stuff and people focus on that or if they complain a lot, you know, it's something they can hang on to. Whereas if they have nothing to complain about, it's like they don't have a life. But I just want to touch, you know, cause it's not just, I'm not just throwing out stuff that is in my head. This is the scientific research here. Happiness has been studied for many years. Awe is maybe only in the last 08:10 years that it's been studied. But a fairly recent scientific research came out and this is with seniors. And seniors talk about depression. Seniors are often depressed, they're often anxious. And so this study took some seniors every day 15 minutes, took them on a walk for 8 different weeks.

So 8 times once a week, a 15-minute walk. And, you know, purposely with intention, and you mentioned my TEDx talks on intention, this kind of goes along with it. But they ask them when they go on the walk to find something that they find wonder or awe in, whether it was nature or whether it was a building or something they saw in the sky or whatever it was. So every day, or I guess once a week actually, they for 8 weeks they found something that they found awesome. And then they had another group that they just took out walking that they didn't give that direction to.

And after 8 weeks, they gave them some tests and they found the people that found the are less depressed and less anxious. So this is not just something I'm saying, this is scientific research. And we don't have to be old to do that. You can go out on your morning jog or you're walking your dog and consciously think, I'm gonna find something that really lights me up, that really kind of is awesome for me. And you're helping your body. You're gonna be less depressed when you find things like that, less anxious.

09:59 – Gresham Harkless

And so would you consider that to be what I call your secret sauce? The thing you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique. Is it that ability to not just see that, but also to, I think, communicate that through your books and all the different kinds of publications and ways on how people can kind of leverage humor and leverage appearing and looking at the awesome into their lives?

10:15 – Allen Klein

Yeah, I don't know if it's my secret sauce because Gresham, I'm human and sometimes I forget to but I do. My mom was a very positive person. My dad was very negative. And so I realized later in life, my mom had a much better time than my dad. And I thought, how do I want to treat life? How do I want to see things? And so I just kind of gravitated towards her teaching, rather than my dad's teaching, my dad, the glass was always half empty. You know, and I thought so I tried to look for the positive right before we were chatting, I told you I had an eye operation this week. And so, at first, I was very nervous about it. But then I kind of calmed down and thought, you know, look, look how it's going to help me after it's over.

It may be a little difficult to heal and stuff, but when it's over, I'll be so much better off. I kept looking at that. But what amazed me was during the operation, you know, I was getting anesthesia. And a couple of really strange things that I laughed about, I told the surgeon and she laughed about it too. But I heard it, I heard all the people operating on me chatting. I heard their voice. I heard the words, but I had no idea what the words meant. It was like it was a foreign language. And it was kind of really amusing, even while on to anesthesia, it was kind of amusing to me. It's like, what are they saying?

And then the visuals I was having, it was if I was a small little person and surrounding me, I was on a miniature Lego set. And all the buildings were really small, all made out of Legos. And it was either theater, the back of theaters or the back of department stores in this alleyway kind of, and they were loading things into the store, taking it off the truck and loading it into the warehouse or the theater or the store. And again, when I came out of the anesthesia, I just started chuckling because It was like a little child's image, you know, like a child's movie of Lego.

12:36 – Gresham Harkless

I definitely appreciate that. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

12:46 – Allen Klein

Certainly. And so I did the TEDx talk to put my intention out. But the other part of that is putting my intention in the world. And I think this is a big part that people don't realize. Once you put it out, again, if you struggle too much to try to get that it doesn't happen. So you need to put it out in the world, work towards it, do what you need to do to make it happen, and then just give it up.

13:13 – Gresham Harkless

And so would you consider that to be like kind of maybe even your nugget is that that ability to just as you said, you know, so well, along with the hack is to be able to put things out there, have intentionality and what it is that you're doing and good things will come up the crowd. Would you be that would you consider that to be like your advice?

13:31 -Allen Klein

In fact, you just reminded me that I have an affirmation I totally believe words are powerful and can help us get what we want so I have an affirmation I use a lot I probably used it at that time to get the apartment and that is the world treats me as royalty wherever I go. And if it doesn't work, if they don't treat me like royalty, what have I lost? Not much, but often they do. I don't know. A friend of mine says, oh, you're special. I said, no, I'm not special. I just put out energy that tries to put out good energy and whatever we put out comes back to us. I totally believe that. So, you know, anything you want in this world, try giving some of that away or putting out that energy and see what happens.

14:25 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. No, I appreciate that. And so I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question. So I'll roll out the red carpet and you can put on the crown. My absolute favorite question is what does being a CEO mean to you? So Allen, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:39 – Allen Klein

Well, since I work for myself, a CEO means I don't have to answer to anyone else. I don't have to work when I don't want to work. I do work hard when I'm working. It also means we talked about gratitude, I am so grateful for the talent I've been given. And so I just want to share that talent with other people to help other people that maybe don't have that talent or can see some of the things that I see because of the talent I've been given. So that's that's a CEO to me to share what and with the world.

15:21 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I'm a big believer in that we're all kind of giving gifts and those gifts are not for us to hold on to but for us to give to the world. So I definitely appreciate that definition. I appreciate you all also living and breathing that definition as well too and helping out so many other people. And I appreciate your time as well. And what I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get on to you, get a copy of all your books and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

15:50 – Allen Klein

Thank you. So yeah, people can get me at www.AllenKlein.com or go to Amazon and see all of my books.

16:01 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much again, Allen. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well for the last episode you were on 101. Thank you so much again, Allen. I look forward to having you back again when the next book comes out and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

16:14 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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