You’ve got to keep fighting – you’ve got to risk your life every six months to stay alive. – Elia Kazan
I’ve done a lot of scary things in my life–skydiving from 11,000 ft, ski racing at 85 mph, performing live music in front of an audience of 1000, even eaten 3-week old lasagna once.
Nothing is as terrifying as doing stand-up comedy the first time.
Because when you do stand-up comedy, you’re about as naked as you can be in front of others. You’ve got nothing to hide behind except a mic, and that will amplify any weaknesses in your act, not compensate for them. It’s just you, your personality and your thoughts. No band behind you, no theatrical ensemble to support you, no script by Shakespeare to prop you up, just your own sorry ass. And when the room isn’t laughing, it’s about as strong of a condemnation of your entire essence as you’ve ever endured. But when it’s going well, there’s no greater high in the world. (And I do include sex in that.) If you’re a connection junkie, you’ll be hooked.
But even if you have no intention of becoming a professional comic, here’s why you should do it anyway. (Yes, even if you bomb.)
1) You’ll walk away more courageous than ever.
From here on in, life will have to try harder to intimidate you. Asking out that girl in the grocery store now seems like a walk in the park after staring into 30 critical faces with a bright light on your face.
2) You’ll learn something new about being funny.
One way or another, you’ll discover something. Either by succeeding with a joke, or failing or just by watching your fellow open-mic’ers take their swing, you’ll realize the subtle differences between “killing” and “bombing.” Was their timing better? Did you need a better setup thought first? Was your segway too abrupt? Should you have been more physical on stage? Was your joke too familiar to other comics’ territory? Was that one joke just based on a more honest human truth?
3) You’ll get better at connecting with people.
From making eye contact to pacing to having inflection to editing your thoughts, to drawing people in to want to listen, you’ll become a better communicator.
4) You’ll gain a new sense of humility.
Whether you kill or bomb, you’ll have more respect for professional entertainers. You’ll realize this shit sure ain’t easy. And whether it’s in music, or as a public speaker, or even a congressman at a podium, you’ll have more sympathy for those who don’t always “kill” on the mic. And sympathy means humility and gratitude, which we men could generally use more of.
5) You’ll know how to use a microphone for the rest of your life.
Whether roasting your best friend at a wedding, delivering a speech at an annual conference, or just singing karaoke, you’ll be in the 5% of humans who actually understand how close you need to be to a mic to make it work. And how to not “over-work” it by speaking too loud or having it touch your chin too much. Your audience will be forever grateful.
6) You’ll be a better communicator in anything else you do.
Maybe you’re a bartender. Or a contractor. Or a salesman. Or a doctor. In pretty much every career on earth, how well you interact with someone has a major impact on either your success or at least about how fulfilled you feel at your job. And by going through the experience of doing standup, you’ll read people better. You’ll notice when you’re truly finding common ground with them. Or when you’re losing them. And you’ll have a new appreciation for the fact that sometimes what you think is interesting is not interesting to them, and you have to change course. The best standup comedians are those who’ve become experts at finding a way to engage with a stranger.
If nothing else, trying standup gave me a new appreciation for the idea of getting out of your comfort zone. Every time I get off that stage, I have more empathy for my fellow human beings than I did before I got on that stage. It’s hard to be authentic, even harder to find ways to make others laugh and see life through new eyes. There’s a strange but beautiful reflexive law of comedy: the more you try to show the world your perspective, the better we become at seeing the world through theirs.
The world could certainly use more of that.
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