You’ve made a mistake, or someone has played a practical joke designed to make you looked foolish. Other people are laughing at you – and you just wish the ground would open up beneath you! How do you deal with that situation?

Of course, not each situation is the same – if you are with a close group of friends who laugh because they have found your embarrassing faux pas genuinely funny, then lighten up and try to see that they aren’t laughing in order to make you feel bad. Laughter is a driving dynamic behind almost all friendships, and when your face is red just try to remember that it will soon be someone else’s turn – and that you’ll be laughing when that happens! If you can embrace your mortification and laugh with the others, it’ll be forgotten quicker. If it isn’t, at least in future people will laugh with you, rather than at you.

Unfortunately, we are not always with good friends when things go wrong. If you feel that the laughter isn’t good hearted – that it’s malicious, that the people laughing are revealing in your awkward feeling, then what do you do? The most important thing to remember is not to get angry – because if people see it bothers you, then their natural reaction is to find the whole situation funnier, and the memory of it will last longer. In this case, laugh, but try to smoothly change the subject. If it carries on, try to make yourself scarce until people have forgotten. Although you have to ask yourself, if these people make you feel so bad, why would you want to spend any more time with them?

So, those genuinely unpleasant situations aside, it is important to be able to laugh at yourself. It shows you don't take yourself too seriously, that you aren’t afraid to make mistakes. Everyone messes up now and then – if you can take it in your stride and see the funny side, you’ll be a much happier person, especially if you can learn from it! Many successful , funny comedians manage to take awkward moments from their lives and retell them in their acts. By laughing at themselves and inviting their audience to laugh with them they are taking control of the embarrassing situation, turning it round, and making it work for them – if you can emulate this, you’ll be telling the joke instead of being the joke. We all make mistakes; we’ve all fallen on the proverbial banana skin and had a metaphorical pie to the face – the worst thing you can do is deny it. Just take it in your stride, admit it was funny, and move on.

No one likes ‘that guy’ – you know the one, the guy who can laugh at other people, but when it comes back to him, he doesn’t like to be laughed at. There’s a reason that he isn’t so popular – he takes himself too seriously. Life is too short to be seriously all the time, and laughter is, as everyone knows, one of the best medicines and will help to de-stress your life. Next time you do something ridiculous, see the funny side - just laugh, and if people laugh with you, you can feel good about making them feel good!