Your twenties are strange years. You’ve just emerged from the cocoon of adolescence, but you’re expected to walk through adulthood like you know the map. You look at older adults and assume they’ve figured it out; You look at teenagers and miss the version of yourself that seemed lighter and freer. Somewhere between searching for jobs and searching for meaning in the “real world,” you start to lose your balance.
I used to think this stage was supposed to be confusing and heavy. Curiously, I enjoy my twenties more than my adolescence or even my childhood, and the reason is simple: learning the art of laughing at yourself.
For as long as I can remember, I wore perfectionism like a second skin. I was “the good one”: the diligent student, the model daughter, the girl who was never wrong. It seemed enviable, but it was exhausting. Each choice was weighed based on reputation; every slip felt catastrophic. By the time I was a teenager, that pressure had turned into anxiety. I cared too much what people thought, especially what Yo He thought of me. Looking in the mirror became an exercise in criticism: my posture, my skin, my tone, my words. Everything needed fixing.
The turning point came with a liberating thought: I’m not that important. The world wasn’t scrutinizing me half as cruelly as I was scrutinizing myself. No one was watching their every move, and even if they were, they would forget about it by dinner time. We go through hundreds of stories and reels a day; How many do we really remember? Each one is trapped in their own loops, in their own insecurities. So maybe it’s okay if my story isn’t perfectly edited.
Around that time, I came across a reel that changed my perspective completely. It referred to a scene from Friends: Ross trapped in Mona’s bathroom, desperately trying to put his pants on. For him, it was mortifying. For the public, hilarious. That contrast made me wonder, what if I could see myself the same way?
So I started treating my life like a sitcom. Did I spill coffee on my shirt before an important meeting? Cue the laugh track. Did you send an awkward text message? Just another embarrassing episode. Missed a deadline? A clumsy subplot. What once seemed catastrophic began to turn out to be comical. He was no longer the tragic protagonist, just a character in a story worth smiling at.
According to psychotherapist and wellness coach Harleen Bagga, founder of Soul Therapy, Hyderabad, laughing at yourself can be both a healthy mechanism and a mirror for self-awareness. “It’s a way to accept imperfections and find room to grow,” he says. “When done with the right intention, it builds emotional resilience, helping the nervous system respond rather than react.”
Bagga adds that humor can also become defensive: “Some people use it to mask inadequacy or avoid confrontation. Intent matters because, while laughter increases dopamine and improves mood, if it is rooted in self-hatred, it can reinforce low self-esteem.”
