Dr. Wellington Nogueira: Cultivating Courage Through Joy

Dr. Wellington Nogueira has taken an unconventional approach to caring for sick children and their families: clowning! Trained as a medical doctor and having worked as an actor in the United States, Dr. Nogueira founded the Brazilian non-profit Doutores da Alegria, “Doctors of Joy,” in 1991. Today, with a cast of 45 professional clowns, Doutores da Alegria brings a welcome dose of joy to 15 hospitals in São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Recife. He spoke to Margareta Barchan, founder of The Brave Leaders Project, about his work.

Your work has given you an interesting view on living a good life. Would you share it with us?

Living sustainably starts first with working on yourself. That is what I have learnt in my profession as a clown in hospitals. You have to deal with crises all the time and situations that make you reevaluate your life.

One patient in a hospital once told me: “If I leave this life and could start again, I would live completely different to how I live now.” I thought to myself: “Oh my God, that is what we do. We bring ourselves to a point of collapse. We are so blind and don’t pay attention to our needs. We are at this place now because we have stopped looking inwards. Instead we are looking for validation. We have given the power to someone else to decide what that means.” For example, we often give the power to the doctor on how to cure us instead of finding a way together to treat the disease. We could be living a different way if we looked at our lives from a deeper sense of self-awareness.

Do you think this self-awareness requires courage and bravery?

It does. It requires a lot of courage. When you experience that connection to yourself and your work, it is so powerful. Social entrepreneurs are very courageous people and can behave like stubborn kids. It is as if they are playing a game they want to win badly. They have flipped their lives inside out to be more aligned with their values.

Have you had to do this in your own life?

Yes, I have. I started my career as a doctor. My family invested quite a lot of time and money in my medical education. I soon realized that I wanted to be an actor instead. In order to not upset my family too much, I started teaching at the same time and discovered I really liked it.

I had never thought of being a clown. During the years I had my best professional development as an actor in NYC, I realized I had no fun. I was not happy. Then the telephone rang and a lady asked me “I need clowns who speak Spanish. Don’t be too narrow-minded, come and see what it is all about.” I was so impressed by the clowns. The turning point for me was how they talked to a sick little girl and won her confidence. The impact you can have as a clown on one person is different than the impact you can have in front of a big audience on Broadway. In a big show, it can be a disaster but as a clown with only one person in front of you, it is 100% rewarding.

I saw the impact it had on myself and had to share it with more people. I started the Doctors of Joy clowning school so I could combine my liking for teaching and clowning. We used to say that what we do in this two-year program is to unlearn given patterns and to listen to your own inner voice. 

It must have taken some courage to tell your family that you wanted to be a clown in the hospitals, rather than a doctor. How did you handle this?

They hated it at first. But when they saw the work, they changed their minds completely. There was a boy who had been hospitalized for 13 years. He was very sad, because his dream was to see the moon, something he could not do. The clowns mobilized everyone in the hospital to create an imagined world inside the building. He got to see the moon and stars and even aircraft.

I saw a new dimension of clowning then, which I think is very beautiful. We created a magical world and it made him happy. I believe that when people interact in a respectful way then we’ve achieved a more harmonious and positive way of living. The greatest thing we can do is to make the impossible things possible.

What do you hope the long-term impact of your work will be?

I hope it opens up opportunities to give more room for art in recovery spaces. Clowning has a very important role that is not always recognized. Help is not only to treat diseases; it is also your ability to look a disease right in the eyes, accept it, and continue living.

Clowning helps people see, even when they are scared, how to make the decision to live their lives in a different way. Again, this echoes the importance of self-awareness.

What is your vision for the next generation?

We need to provide a space for the self-discovery of inner joy as early as possible, and encourage it in schools. Help children become who they are meant to be.

To the next generation, I would say: Work in partnerships. Network with each other, not for money, but because you want to change the world.

This post was written by Jessica Newfield and Margareta Barchan. Read more inspiring stories like this one in our book, Brave Leaders: Finding The Guts To Make Meaningful & Lasting Change.

Images courtesy of Wellington Nogueira, Doutores da Alegria