Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Should I be funny? Should I be kind to get you to do what is in your self interest?
As a ‘writer’ I struggle with one thing: It is hard to be funny in writing. For me.
I can be funny in conversation, but writing is different: I imagine the echo. And imaginary echo doesn’t echo, does it? lol
While when I talk to a living breathing human, it is in a particular state of emotions, so I know where I throw my volley… and I know what havoc it wreaks… so it is easy for me.
I can shock, I can mortify, I can wake up, I can do a lot of things that make what funny does… make you pay attention by jolting you.
I am in the process of downloading nine seasons of Seinfeld. My teacher says that a lot of his funniness in writing comes from Seinfeld. We shall see. One thing is for sure: Seinfeld, the person, can be funny. Exactly that ‘jolting you’ kind of way.
Muscletest I am funny-ish, 40% on the funny scale. Jerry Seinfeld, on the other hand is 70%.
I once knew a Hungarian standup comic, who hit an 80% on the funny scale. Laugh so hard you weep, and even laugh when you remember it. After 40 years… funny. Very political. Bold. Daring.
That brings up what woke me this morning. The dream I woke up from was that all the gurus I reviewed, vibrationally, sent me emails. Especially my once favorite teacher who has fallen from favor with me.
I woke up before reading the email.
Writing those reviews is one thing… it is like telling you that the speaker has spinach stuck to his teeth. But telling the speaker… that is a scary idea. He won’t like it. He will be embarrassed, and he won’t blame the spinach, he’ll blame me. So you don’t tell them… because you are all about yourself, your safety.
And this is how ‘I am not my brother’s keeper’ attitude of our times is born. If the other mucks up, you’ll look better.
The theory of life as a heap of humans that you get on the top of… The highest human wins.
But here is the rub: if you pay more attention on the other than yourself, you cannot win.
You compare… and comparison is a double edged sword: you are more, better, different from some people, and you hang out with them, because it makes you feel good. But less, worse, and different from other people… and you don’t like to hang out with them, because it is uncomfortable.
As long as you are comfortable, you are not growing, and you are the king of the losers… at best.
There are two ways to grow: compare yourself to some specific people who are ahead of you, and aim to match them.
The other: get clear on where you are, all your measures, or just the measures you care about, and make them better.
Neither of them is comfortable.
I am of the second school: I don’t compare myself with anyone, even though I use other people’s stuff to teach me. Like funniness, or telling a story in my writing, or the machine-like speaking of that Landmark Education leader I watched the other day.
I have asked my students to read or listen to the book ‘How to win friends and influence people’ as a tool to resolve upsets, both in their present life, and in their past.
All upsets, all wrongs come from words, so mastering words, mastering speaking in a way that removes upsets, both for you and another, is necessary, if you want to clean your past from wrong.
And a clean past means an empty future… a future in which you can create… also with your words.
And because integrity, for me, is to do what I teach, do what I ask my students to do, I am also listening to the audio of ‘how to win friends and influence people’. Remarkable.
Will it work? We shall see. I don’t know. Listening/reading something is only useful, if the ‘moves’ taught are practiced. No practice, no results, no learning.
And this applies to me too.
I am VERY good at critiqueing… but it often sounds as criticism. And criticism hurts… and I have been known to leave some students hurt, having to work on that hurt in their partner calls.
So my job is to learn to give feedback in a way that it doesn’t hurt. Tall order for a Virgo like me. But if that is what it takes to take my little group to ‘heaven’, so be it.
Interestingly, in a private one-on-one, or even in a group call, I am not as scathing as in my feedbacks, when I cannot feel how my feedback lands… And I am sooo right… ugh.
So here you go. I am learning to be funny in writing and supportive in my feedback.
I know, I know, what does it have to do with the price of tea in China? Nothing… I am not really concerned with the price of tea in China. I am concerned with becoming the best I can become, with the bad characteristics I am given.
If you are a parent, an employer, a service provider, I recommend that you don’t ask anything of those you lead that you are not willing to do yourself, what you are not doing yourself.
Tall order? Yes, I know.
But your life, the quality of your life, it seems, depends on “other people” as much as anything.
As Freud said, and i can’t find the quote right now, is the biggest issue in our quest for happiness is the other. Other people.
But if you can manage communication on your end, the way Dale Carnegie teaches it, then the other is ‘neutralized’ as the problem 60%. The remaining 40%: you have to learn to live with.
Unless you are a learner, unless you read books that teach, you are NEVER going to change. If the effort of learning, reading is too much for you, I have no hopes for you, and you should not have either.
Was that harsh? Yes. Was that useful? I don’t know. It was meant to wake you up to the grim truth: unless you read, unless you learn, nothing will change. Nothing. In fact, things will get worse.
Even if you are in one of my classes. Ugh… right?
So what should you do now?
I recommend that you sign up to my subscribers only area, where you can download the stuff I talk about. Watch movies, etc.
It’s $5 a month… You can download the books I mention and recommend in this article. But if you don’t read them/listen to them, nothing will change. You’ll have just more junk on your computer.
Go and get it…
