Comedy Debut & After Thoughts ~ Show Up, Stand Up, & Be You!

It’ll Be Alright on the Night

Following my comedy debut 2 nights ago I’m having lots of thoughts about what I missed out and how much better it could have been if I’d remembered my set and practiced it. I only found myself writing my stand up set just a few hours before I was due on stage. I’ve learned to not see my 'lastminute.com' approach as procrastination and instead trust that I’ll engage in things when I do and all the thinking and worrying about what I’m not doing is an absolute waste of my energy and life. As it happens the set I thought I was going to write out and practice isn’t the one that got written so if I had started the process earlier only to find this new material arise than that really wouldn’t have been a helpful use of my time. That being said, my last minute approach was great fodder for my insecure personal mind as I opened the door and stepped through into the venue and saw rows upon rows of chairs laid out and a mic resting on the microphone stand at the front.

I also arrived at the venue later than planned due to a delayed train. “You’re up first Sara,” said Matt as he greeted me (Matt was one of our brilliant comedy course facilitators). "Holy crap" was my reaction as the realisation I wouldn’t have time to memorise the material kicked in. The voices in my head were like echo’s bouncing around. The repetitive sound reverberating in my echo chamber included “you should have started this sooner”, “you won’t remember what to say”, “you’re going to be shit and all because you didn’t plan and practice”. These words were on a constant loop and the level to which I could hear them went up and down as I danced between the awareness of the present moment and then being flooded with insecurity of what might happen in the future, or dwelling on the past of not having the material written sooner. 

I had time to run through my set to myself in the green room twice before the inevitable need for a nervous wee thoroughly took hold and ordered me to stop and do what was required. On my return to the room it was game on and the showcase started.

Here’s a pic of me just before my name was announced:

Now bearing in mind this was my first ever stand up, first time delivering the content, which I had no idea whether was amusing to anyone other than me or not, I would say based on the audience response I did a good job.

I’ve not watched the video yet but here it is in case you feel drawn to watch a virgin performer get through their first comedy 5min set. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE!

Following the gig I knew I’d missed bits out and that my mic control left a lot to be desired but I also knew I heard laughter and surely that’s all that matters with stand up right? So it’s interesting to notice the thoughts that arose focussing on what was wrong with the performance and how it could have been so much better.

Due to the understanding I have about the nature of Thought I know not to take these transient thoughts in my head seriously or personally. For all I know (and I'm just making this up but hey it might be true) perhaps the personal mind has thoughts about what went wrong and how we can improve as some sort of inbuilt protection for survival? Maybe it’s some way of helping us strive for improvements to be better? What I do know however is there is nothing that I need to improve about myself. What and who I truly am is whole, perfect and unbreakable.

The thoughts in my head, however compelling, are not telling me anything true about me, or the world. It’s been 2 days now of noticing repetitive thoughts of how I wasn’t as good as I could have been on my comedy debut but as I type this blog post and also have thoughts of some sad news I heard last night I see those thoughts are drifting off.

Prior to not really seeing the neutral nature of Thought and how transient all form is including the thoughts in our head I could dwell on unhelpful thinking for days, weeks and months even. I could seemingly create all manner of stories and meaning about the thoughts in my head and spiral into symptoms of depression, as well as make all sorts of assumptions about what it said about me, my ability, and what I can and can’t do. I’ve given up on many a creative endeavour because I wasn’t great at it from the get go and the persistent thoughts of “you’ll never be good”, “don’t bother” etc seemed so real, I listened and stopped before I’d even started.

Now there’s nothing wrong with giving things a go for the fun of it and then changing and doing something else. What I’m talking about is buying into insecure thinking and even though you’d like to continue to engage you don’t dare go for it. A fear of not meeting expectations used to be a big insecurity for me.

I used to have great expectations of how things should turn out and how quickly I should achieve my goals etc. What I see now is how expectations are the killer of creativity. I used to think it was all on me to be creative but now I look in the direction of where creativity comes from. Every one of us has access to an energy of creative potential, like a well of pure potentiality - the mystery of the unknown where from nothing comes everything (formless into form). What I've noticed is, by knowing all of life is creative potential in action, I can hold things lightly, try stuff out with nothing on it, and have less of me on my mind. I get curious to see what will unfold rather than having a fixed idea of how it should turn out. There's nothing wrong with having results in mind. All I'm saying is in my experience being open to how and when results might be realised, and open to outcomes looking completely different to what you imagined, has paradoxically led to more productivity and results in business and other areas of my life.

So, remember I said the repetitive thoughts keep reminding me of what I missed out? I’m writing the missing piece out below to show that it really isn’t important. Would this missing piece have made the set more interesting? Maybe yes maybe no. Who cares! It really doesn't matter.

The missing section from my debut:

“…I’ve come to the conclusion that great ideas are available to everyone, they’re in the ether just waiting for someone who can be bothered to show up, take hold, and run with them. Like eBay, facebook, or Spanx (that’s supportive underwear in case you don’t know what Spanx is) any of us could have had those ideas and maybe we did? You just can’t remember, because you didn’t bother to catch the idea and write it down.

Being here tonight for my comedy debut started as an idea. An idea to try something scary, a little bit edgy, and this idea I followed through on (not literally, well not yet anyway) and here I am….”

It makes me chuckle to see the missing piece written out. The thoughts made it seem like the END OF THE WORLD. How funny thoughts are. Thank goodness I look in the direction of where my experience is coming from and what and who I truly am. Psychological freedom is an amazing gift available to all of us and I love stretching the boundaries of what I perceive I’m capable of. I had the story for a very long time that stand up comedy is not something I could do.

Well turns out I can. I wonder what I’ll engage in next?

Is there something you feel drawn to engage in? Is anything really stopping you?

Much love

Sara