The greatest motivational lesson, stand up comedians teach you; the painful lesson behind making people laugh.
1. It's hard
2. People judge you
And the objective of a comic is to be always funny on stage. So the conscious assumption that every stand-up comic starts with is; they will be unfunny, booed at, heckled and suck a lot. If you can learn anything from this profession, it is how to approach failing continually. Their entire career is based on learning from bombing on stage. A stand up comic look forward to failing. Their career begins with accepting failure at the cost of becoming better, with accepting that it is absolutely necessary to fail to become better. Failing is the first step.
People, on the other hand in different professions, are most scared of failing, not even major career ending failures, micro failures, disappointments, discovering that they lack in action or talent or experience, and they get majorly discouraged, scared insecure, doubtful. Fear of failing or reaching a minor setback produces procrastination, sometimes a complete hault.
Why does this happen? Two reasons;
1. How to win, be the best and achieve what we want is first done in our minds. We make a plan, we create scenarios, and in discovering the process, we solve the problems, discover what you need, what skills to build and how it will be done. But it is all happening in your mind. It's theoretical.
Now this theoretical preparation brings us very close to satisfaction, because in our minds, we think this is how it's done. There will be no problem.
2. You are impatient. You want it to happen as soon as possible. Possibly in the next three months. Not going to happen, because the world doesn't revolve around you.
If you observe the above two points, you'd realize in our minds, we don't even entertain failing, we might entertain minor setbacks, but it is all theoretical. The awareness you need to accept failure in reality comes only when you accept the humiliation and shame that failure delivers. So you're aware that you might fail, but you haven't accepted it, which makes it a fear, or an event that will completely shake you to the core. And that difference in attitude changes the entire equation.
A stand up comic understands failing is necessary, inevitable I'm the process, which applies to everything. It's called refinement. When failure stops happening, what remains is determination to show up to work everyday and the product which works, because failure weeded out all the imperfections. Like every stand-up comic, if you can become unresponsive to feelings of humiliation and shame, and focus only on what is not working, you will become better at an unimaginable rate. This is possibly one of the greatest lessons you can learn if you want to become great at anything. You know why? Because it's people. You're not afraid of causing mistakes, errors and failing in private. The failure affects you because it involves people, which creates humiliation and shame. They are directly caused by others seeing disappointment in you. You are scared that people might think you are incompetent. You would be labeled mediocre and unimpressive. And you know why you give people so much importance? Because you measure your self worth by their opinion, and not your material, your skill, your finesse. In your mind you know skill takes time, lractice, training, it's not built in a day. If you know that, then why would you care about their reactions? Because you care what people think about you on a personal level.
A stand-up comic's mindset is wired to think that they are judging my content, my product, not me personally. So when he bombs, he goes strait to knowing that his content needs refinement, more work. This separation of receiving criticism will make you very stable in real life.
First thought: What this person judged me on was my level of skill, which teaches me I need more work to become impressive. Great!
Second thought: this person judged me which means I am a disappointment, I'm not good enough. Dumb!
People are incredibly fickle minded with extreme short memory. They forget. It's you who remembers, they forget, because people are most involved in and busy with themselves. They will change their opinion the moment they are impressed by your product. They will forget that you were once incompetent, naive or inexperienced. So, to hell with people. Don't rely on an entity that changes it's opinion in a matter of seconds. Instead use their response to determine the quality of your product, that's it. To hell with their approval. Live to please yourself not strangers. And that's what a stand-up comic does every time they get up on that stage - the audience changes, people are faces , all they care is the quality of their product and the response of that audience, not approval, their response. Their satisfaction is in knowing if their product is killing it or not, once the performance is over, they don't give a damn about people. And that's what you learn from stand-up comic's. Self improvement by failing continually.
