Oh, and if you’d like to show some love, I’d be so grateful and honored if you’d order a copy of said book: Comedy Mindhacks: 100 Mental Shifts To Help Comedians & Creatives Succeed.

If you click HERE, you can see some sample pages. If you don’t yet subscribe to this site, you can still get a 10% discount at your purchase with the code: MH10LIVE. But, if you become a FREE Subscriber, you can automatically get a 15% discount.

Let's Do This! Sign Me Up!!!

If you sign up as a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a 35% discount. Also, when you join that inner circle, you’ll instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

That wasn’t the only unusual class I’ve signed up for over the years. Recently, despite not being a therapist and having no plans to ever become one, I enrolled in an online therapy course. I’ve found it fascinating. Psychology, communication, motivation, and personal growth have interested me for a long time. If there’s a class that helps me better understand how people think and grow, there’s a decent chance I’ll eventually sign up for it.

Speaking Of Signing Up: Add Me!

Looking back, I’ve noticed a pattern in my life. Whenever I become curious about something, I eventually end up studying it. Sometimes the topic connects directly to my work but sometimes it’s indirect or maybe doesn’t connect at all. Either way, I’ve always been drawn toward learning. The whole “lifelong learner,” yeah, that’s me. I think I’m that way perhaps because part of me is constantly looking for evidence that growth is still possible.

Well, that eventually led me to another class that, at the time I signed up, made very little life sense. It wasn’t connected to my career as a pastor and it wasn’t connected to my academic background or any long-term professional goal at all. In fact, it arrived during one of the more difficult seasons of my life. The class was on stand-up comedy.

The timing couldn’t have been stranger. I wasn’t twenty-two and trying to figure out who I wanted to become. I wasn’t fresh out of college with unlimited time and very little to lose. By that point, I’d earned five degrees, published more than thirty books, given a TEDx talk, delivered roughly a hundred academic conference presentations, and spent more than eight years in therapy trying to better understand myself and my story. From the outside, my life looked fairly established.

If I’m honest, I think most people would’ve looked at my resume and assumed the major construction project of my life was finished. But I think deep down that I knew better. I had a career, a family, responsibilities, and a reasonably clear sense of identity. Yes, my life had a shape to it, but without realizing it, I had basically started treating that shape as if it was permanent. To me personally, that’s kinda scary.

So, what attracted me to comedy wasn’t the possibility of becoming famous, the dream of a Netflix special, or sold-out theaters. If anything, I started stand-up at a time when comedy itself felt increasingly risky. There were constant conversations about hate speech, offense, cancellation, and what comedians should or shouldn’t be allowed to say. Yet something about the challenge kept pulling me toward it.

That’s also why what happened next wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t suddenly discover some hidden talent that had been waiting patiently for decades. And I definitely didn’t become an overnight success. What I discovered instead was what it felt like to be a beginner again. Ahh, yes! What a great feeling! Many people hate that feeling and I get why: It’s a little scary. So, for me, after years of operating from expertise, I suddenly found myself operating from the rookie level again. And it was invigorating.

One of the things I love about comedy is that it doesn’t care about how many books I’ve written or how many degrees I have on my wall. It doesn’t care about my TEDx talk or my conference presentations. It cares if my jokes work. If a joke works, people will laugh, and if it doesn’t, they won’t. For the first time in a very long time, as I ventured into comedy, I wasn’t the established pastor, professor, author, or speaker. I was the nervous beginner hoping a joke worked. I was the guy rewriting material after a bad set. I was the person learning a completely new skill from scratch. After years of competence, I suddenly found myself surrounded by uncertainty again.

That turned out to be one of the healthiest experiences of my adult life or my life at all. As I’ve mentioned on this site numerous times, every bombed joke and bad set became evidence. Every rewritten joke and awkward silence became evidence. Every small breakthrough and gain became evidence. And here’s a truth that hit me like a freight train when reflecting on this stuff recently: All of this was proof that I could still grow.

I think many people stop collecting that kind of evidence. Understandably (in a way), they become good at something and stay there. They build an identity and begin protecting it. They develop expertise and gradually avoid situations that might threaten it. The result is often success but also a life that becomes increasingly comfortable but predictable. But for me, comedy interrupted that way of living. It’s repeatedly forced me to risk looking foolish and to fail publicly, for instance. It’s also forced me to develop skills I didn’t already possess. Most importantly, I think, it’s reminded me that growth and becoming is a lifelong process.

That’s the best thing comedy ever gave me. Not stage time, laughs, opportunities, or even friendships (although I’m super grateful for all of those things), but proof. Comedy has given me proof after proof after proof that I can still become someone new (which, by the way, is one of the great promises of the Christian faith, too): We can all become new. The older I get, the more valuable that evidence becomes. And quite paradoxically, the older I get, the more I can become new.

Now, before you take off, let me say “Thanks!” for reading. And, if you’d like to show some love, I’d be so grateful and honored if you’d order a copy of my new book: Comedy Mindhacks: 100 Mental Shifts To Help Comedians & Creatives Succeed.

If you click HERE, you can see some sample pages. If you don’t yet subscribe to this site, you can still get a 10% discount at your purchase with the code: MH10LIVE. But, if you become a FREE Subscriber, you can automatically get a 15% discount.

Let's Do This! Sign Me Up!!!

If you sign up as a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a 35% discount. Also, when you join that inner circle, you’ll instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

It was the latter, being a comedian, that actually brought me to the event as the emcee. Looking back, I find my hesitation kinda fascinating. In that setting, to say I was a professor definitely held more prestige than saying I did stand-up comedy. But, again, I was there in the first place because of stand-up. So, here’s what I did: I led with, “I’m a comedian, but also a full-time professor.” It was right for the moment. Now, guess which one the folks standing at my table were more curious about? Stand-up, of course.

This Is Good Stuff! Sign Me Up!

But if I’m only doing stand-up in a part-time capacity, even though at this point I only do paid shows, if it’s part-time am I “really” a comedian? Again, even though it often feels like a second full-time job, and even if all my shows are paid shows, is that enough to actually call myself a comedian? The more time I’ve spent around folks in the comedy world, the more I’ve realized I’m not alone in wondering what actually makes someone a comedian and when it’s fair to call themselves that.

I’ve met paid regulars who’ve been performing for years but still struggle with the label. They’ll tell you about their shows, their showcases, their road gigs, and their writing processes but then they’ll suddenly get shy when the word “comedian” enters the conversation. It’s as though someone else is supposed to hand them the title. That gets back to the question I just raised: When does a person actually earn the title “comedian”? Is it after their first open mic? Is it after somebody pays them twenty bucks and a plate of mozzarella sticks to tell jokes? Everybody seems to have a different answer, which is probably why the debate never ends.

The money argument sounds pretty convincing at first. It’s objective, measurable, and easy to understand. Somebody pays a performer to do comedy, therefore they’re a comedian, at least that night. The problem with that is: I’ve known unpaid comedians who were far more committed to the craft than some paid ones. I’ve also met people collecting checks who seemed less interested in getting better than the open mic folks grinding away three nights a week. So, I’m not sure money’s the definer.

I don’t think audience recognition solves the problem either. Some people argue that a person becomes a comedian when strangers know their name or buy tickets specifically to see them. There’s certainly something meaningful about that milestone but, of course, it’s another money argument. In my view, however, that sort of scenario creates a strange conclusion. It would mean that a comedian who’s crushing it in a local scene somehow doesn’t qualify until enough strangers become aware of him or her. To me, that seems silly.

What about milestones? Is it a first open mic, first paid gig, first feature set, or first headline weekend? The trouble is that every time a comedian reaches one of those markers, another one immediately appears behind it. The finish line keeps moving because somebody always seems to be farther ahead.

Here’s something I’ve noticed outside the comedy world: Writers often don’t feel like writers. Similarly, business owners often don’t feel like business owners and professors sometimes don’t feel like professors. Human beings, in other words, are very good at postponing identities they’ve already started building. They keep waiting for permission from people who aren’t even paying attention, which leaves them waiting forever.

Lately, I’ve started wondering whether this might be the wrong question altogether. Maybe the title “comedian” isn’t primarily about achievement, money, fame, followers, or recognition but simply commitment. Maybe it becomes “real” when the thing stops being something a person occasionally does and starts becoming part of they you are. When I look back at the comedians I’ve respected the most, very few of them seemed motivated primarily by status. They weren’t waiting for permission to write jokes or for permission to think, talk, and obsess about comedy. They did those things because comedy had already become part of their identity.

And right there’s where the conversation gets uncomfortable for a lot of folks. Most of us want a clear certification process. We want a panel of experts to review the evidence and officially declare that we’ve earned the title; we’ve graduated. With the exception of academia and a few other realms, much of life rarely works that way. Nobody handed me a certificate declaring me an author one day or a creative or a joke writer. Those identities emerged gradually through repetition, commitment, and time.

I think stand-up comedy works much the same way. Bombing once at an open mic doesn’t make someone a comedian any more than jogging around the block once makes someone a runner. There has to be repetition and persistence. There has to be enough investment that walking away would feel like abandoning something meaningful. That’s the standard I’ve gradually landed on.

In other words, the title “comedian” becomes real when quitting would feel like losing a piece of myself. By that point, comedy isn’t merely something I do on Tuesday night. No, comedy’s influencing how I think, what I notice, and how I experience the world. The identity has already taken root whether I’ve acknowledged it or not.

That’s why I no longer think the title is awarded by other people. It’s not awarded by bookers, audiences, club owners, or even fellow comedians. Those people may recognize it, but they don’t create it. The title emerges through sustained commitment. It emerges when the behavior becomes part of who I am.

And so, maybe that’s why so many comedians struggle with the question. They’re waiting for a moment that never arrives or for a milestone that keeps moving. They’re waiting for someone else to validate something they’ve already demonstrated. But comedians are some of the worst at validating one another. You don’t earn the title when someone else decides you have, when the check clears, or when your name appears on a poster. Whether you’re in venues with heavy hors d’oeuvres or greasy mozzarella sticks, you earn it when you can’t stop.

Hey, before you go, let me say “Thanks!” for reading. And, if you’d like to show some love, please order a copy of my new book. Here’s the link: Comedy Mindhacks: 100 Mental Shifts To Help Comedians & Creatives Succeed.

If you click HERE, you can see some sample pages. If you don’t yet subscribe to this site, you can still get a 10% discount at your purchase with the code: MH10LIVE. But, if you become a FREE Subscriber, you can automatically get a 15% discount.

Let's Do This! Sign Me Up!!!

If you sign up as a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a 35% discount. Also, when you join that inner circle, you’ll instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault, including FREE access to one of my classes (see below) and access to “The Green Room” content.

But that’s not all, there’s way more:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Green Room: Access to all my private posts that look behind the scenes.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

Hey, before you go, let me say “Thanks!” for reading. And, if you’d like to show some love, please order a copy of my new book. Here’s the link: Comedy Mindhacks: 100 Mental Shifts To Help Comedians & Creatives Succeed.

If you click HERE, you can see some sample pages. If you don’t yet subscribe to this site, you can still get a 10% discount at your purchase with the code: MH10LIVE. But, if you become a FREE Subscriber, you can automatically get a 15% discount.

Let's Do This! Sign Me Up!!!

If you sign up as a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a 35% discount. Also, when you join that inner circle, you’ll instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault, including FREE access to one of my classes (see below) and access to “The Green Room” content.

But that’s not all, there’s way more:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Green Room: Access to all my private posts that look behind the scenes.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

Now, before I keep going, I should say that, to be fair, there are situations where leaving the green room isn’t an option. I’ve had bookers specifically tell me to stay hidden before a show. Their reasoning is understandable because they want the audience’s first encounter with the comedian to happen on stage. They want to build suspense and mystery because, well, that has value. Anticipation and surprise have value. And if/when a booker makes that request, I respect it and stay put.

This Is Great Stuff! Sign Me Up.

Whenever I have the freedom to do it, though, I’ve started spending more time out in the room before the show begins, even if it’s off in the wings. Sometimes that means introducing myself to audience members, which is easy to do at small shows. Sometimes it means simply observing and listening or asking folks a few questions and seeing where the conversation goes. What I’ve discovered is that there are some great benefits and advantages of doing this. Here are ten that I’ve been reflecting on.

Advantage #1: I can build rapport with people before the first joke. By the time I walk on stage, I’m no longer a complete stranger to everyone in the room. People have seen me, talked to me, or at least observed me interacting with others. That can change the emotional temperature of the room and make the audience feels less like a wall of strangers and more like a group of people I’ve already started connecting with.

Advantage #2: I might learn more about the room’s personality. Before the show starts, I can often determine whether the crowd is young or old, loud or quiet, local or visiting, sober or halfway through their third drink. Every audience has its own personality. The more I understand that personality, the easier it becomes to make good decisions once I’m on stage. Information creates options.

Advantage #3: Crowd work becomes much less blind. Instead of randomly searching for names, occupations, and relationships under bright and sometimes blinding stage lights, I already know some of those details. I may know who’s celebrating a birthday, who’s on a date, or who’s visiting from another state. That doesn’t mean crowd work becomes easy. It simply means I’m working with information rather than guessing.

Advantage #4: It can reduce anxiety. When I know absolutely nothing about a room, my imagination can start to rapidly fill in the blanks with all sorts of possibilities. After spending time with audience members beforehand, however, the room feels more familiar. Familiarity doesn’t eliminate nerves or adrenaline rushes, but it usually makes them much easier to manage.

Advantage #5: I can discover material. People say strange things, wear strange things, and do strange things. Some of my favorite crowd-work moments have started because I noticed something before the show ever began. The audience is often giving us material long before we pick up the microphone. We just have to pay attention.

Advantage #6: I can create future callbacks. If I learn something interesting before the show starts, there’s a good chance it can become useful later. Audiences love when earlier moments return unexpectedly. A conversation before the show can become a callback twenty minutes later. Those moments often create a feeling of connection that a prepared joke can’t always replicate.

Advantage #7: I might become more memorable afterward. Following a show, some people may be much more likely to approach someone they’ve already met. Instead of being “the comedian,” I’m now the guy they talked with before the performance started. That may not seem important, but relationships matter in comedy. People tend to support people they remember.

Advantage #8: I get better reads on who to engage and who to avoid. Not every audience member wants to participate in crowd work. Some are playful and conversational. Others clearly want to be left alone. Learning those differences beforehand can save a lot of awkward moments later. Good crowd work begins with good observation.

Advantage #9: It improves my people skills. Most comedians spend years learning how to talk to audiences. Far fewer spend time learning how to talk with people. Listening, observing, asking questions, and showing genuine curiosity are super valuable skills that can improve crowd work, as well as my comedy more broadly.

Advantage #10: Spending time with audience members before a show makes it much harder to blame the crowd afterward. It’s easy to complain about “the audience” when they’re a faceless group sitting in the dark. It’s much harder to say “that crowd sucked” after you’ve shaken hands, heard stories, and had conversations with actual human beings. The audience stops feeling like an obstacle and starts feeling like people.

There are some lessons I’ve taken from leaving the green room when I can. While many comedians spend years thinking about how to perform for audiences, and rightly so, I’ve also been wondering whether I should spend more time learning how to connect with them. So, the next time you have the opportunity, try leaving the green room and walking into the room itself. You might discover that the show starts long before you ever touch the stage or microphone.

Hey, before you go, let me say “Thanks!” for reading. And, if you’d like to show some love, please order a copy of my new book. Here’s the link: Comedy Mindhacks: 100 Mental Shifts To Help Comedians & Creatives Succeed.

If you click HERE, you can see some sample pages. If you don’t yet subscribe to this site, you can still get a 10% discount at your purchase with the code: MH10LIVE. But, if you become a FREE Subscriber, you can automatically get a 15% discount.

Let's Do This! Sign Me Up!!!

If you sign up as a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a 35% discount. Also, when you join that inner circle, you’ll instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Green Room: Access to all my private posts that look behind the scenes.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

A few weeks ago, I got booked on a Nateland lineup in Nashville, TN. By all measures, it’s a fantastic gig. I was excited when I got the email, excited when I got the details, and excited right up until I looked closely at the schedule. That’s when I noticed something my ego immediately wished it hadn’t noticed: I had the shortest set on the entire lineup.

Comedy has a funny way of making hierarchies visible. In most professions, status is hidden behind office doors, job titles, or organizational charts. In stand-up, the hierarchy is often sitting right there on the schedule for everybody to see. Who closes, who features, and who gets the longest set all tell a story about where people stand. When I saw my time slot, I instantly knew exactly where I ranked that night, at least in the booker’s mind and everyone else’s mind.

For a few minutes, I found myself doing what countless comedians do when they stop focusing on the work and start focusing on the scoreboard.

Read more

When I published my first book about fifteen or so years ago, I imagined release day would feel like arriving somewhere. What actually happened was much less dramatic. I celebrated for a little while, but was already thinking about and working on the next project. And…that’s how it’s been ever since. I guess that’s because books have never been the point for me. Comedy isn’t the point either. Teaching isn’t the point. That’s who I am and that’s my vocational calling. Writing, speaking, podcasting, publishing, and performing all matter to me, but they’re just vehicles for teaching. One great upside of that is, if I’m teaching, that means I’m also learning and growing.

And that’s something that’s fascinated me for years: Growth. It’s strange to me how people either continue moving forward or gradually stop. I’ve spent enough time around comedians to know that most of them aren’t primarily afraid of bombing, hecklers, bad crowds, or negative comments online. Those things can sting, but they’re usually temporary. The fear that seems to linger much longer is the fear of stagnation. It’s the fear of waking up five years from now and realizing they haven’t improved, their skills haven’t developed, and their dream has quietly settled into neutral.

If I’m being honest, I’ve wrestled with that fear myself. I’ve felt it as a comedian, a writer, a professor, a podcaster, and just about everything else I’ve attempted. There are seasons where progress feels obvious and exciting. There are other seasons where growth feels invisible and difficult to measure. During those stretches, it’s easy to wonder whether the effort is producing anything meaningful at all.

That’s one reason this book exists. Over the past year-and-a-half, I’ve collected observations, mental models, perspective shifts, and lessons from comedy, teaching, psychology, logic, rhetoric, communication, and everyday life. Some of the insights in the book came from conversations with comedians. Some came from studying motivation and human behavior. Others emerged during long drives home after shows when I had far too much time alone with my thoughts. What connected all of them was a simple question: What helps people keep moving forward?

The answer, at least from what I’ve observed, rarely involves giant breakthroughs. Most growth happens through smaller shifts in perspective. A comedian, for instance, stops blaming the crowd after a bad set and starts examining their material. A writer stops waiting for inspiration and starts building habits thus vanquishing the myth of “writer’s block.” A performer stops chasing everybody’s approval and starts doing what ignites them, which in turn helps them start to find their audience. Looking back, many of the most important changes in my own life simply started with a different way of looking at the same problem.

That’s what I hope readers find in Comedy Mindhacks. I don’t expect every idea to resonate with every comedian. I don’t think there’s a single framework that solves every problem. My hope is much simpler than that. I just hope somebody reads a chapter, sees a situation differently, and takes another step forward that they might not have taken otherwise.

As I sit here on release day, I’m grateful for the people who’ve been part of the journey. Some have been reading these articles for a while. Some listen to my podcast, attend my workshops, or come to shows. Creating things is always a gamble because nobody owes me their attention, which makes every bit of support feel meaningful. The funny thing is that release day doesn’t really feel like an ending anymore. It feels more like a checkpoint along the road. The book is finished, but the work continues. There are still jokes to write, shows to perform, lessons to learn, and ideas worth exploring. If anything, today simply reminds me that momentum is built one project, one insight, and one step at a time.

If you’d like to show some love and order a copy, here’s the link: Comedy Mindhacks: 100 Mental Shifts To Help Comedians & Creatives Succeed.

If you click HERE, you can see some sample pages. If you don’t yet subscribe to this site, you can still get a 10% discount at your purchase with the code: MH10LIVE. But, if you become a FREE Subscriber, you can automatically get a 15% discount.

Let's Do This! Sign Me Up!!!

If you sign up as a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a 35% discount. Also, when you join that inner circle, you’ll instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

And…before you go, check this out…my new book is ready for preorder: Comedy Mindhacks: 100 Mental Shifts To Help Comedians & Creatives Succeed. Secure your copy HERE. It goes live on 6/8/26.

If you click HERE, you can see some sample pages. If you don’t yet subscribe to this site, you can still get a 10% discount at your purchase with the code: MH10LIVE. But, if you become a FREE Subscriber, you can automatically get a 15% discount.

Let's Do This! Sign Me Up!!!

If you sign up as a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a 35% discount. Also, when you join that inner circle, you’ll instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

At the start of every semester, one of the things that surprises my college students most is when I tell them I give no quizzes or tests. In nearly twenty years of teaching at the college level, I’ve rarely ever given any kind of exam. That’s mainly because I just don’t find them particularly helpful to anyone in anyway; in fact, I find them counterproductive. In most cases, all tests do is measure short-term information retention. But they pretty much completely overlook long-term transformation. I’m not especially fond of homework either. My philosophy has always been fairly simple: Show up to class, put in the work while you’re there, engage the material, and leave still thinking about it after class is over.

I'm Motivated: Sign Me Up!

That approach didn’t emerge by accident. During and after my PhD studies, one of my abiding interests became “Motivation Theory,” which I’ve talked about on my website before. I’ve presented conference papers on motivation, written about the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and spent years thinking about what actually causes people to change. The more I’ve studied the subject, the more skeptical I’ve become of approaches that depend primarily on external pressure.

Fear, for instance, can produce action. And rewards can produce action. Deadlines can also produce action. But none of those things necessarily produce lasting change. In recent days, I’ve been thinking about “The Effort vs. Automaticity Curve.” The idea really shows up everywhere. I see it in writing, exercise, parenting, faith, and so on. Most of all, I see it in the difference between people who start something and people who stick with it.

When most people think about growth, I think motivation also comes to mind. Folks assume that successful people are somehow better at staying motivated than everyone else. If I had a nickel for everyone someone said to me, “I don’t see how you do it all!” I’d be much better off than I currently am. But it’s not really accurate to say that motivated people keep improving while everyone else falls behind.

You see, motivation is good when it shows up. It helps us start new projects, pursue ambitious goals, and take risks we might otherwise avoid. Every comedian remembers the excitement of those early days when every open mic felt like an opportunity and every joke felt like a breakthrough. Every writer remembers the rush of a new idea. Every entrepreneur remembers the energy that comes with starting something from scratch.

The trouble begins when people expect motivation to carry the entire journey. The reality is: Motivation is emotional and, as we all know, emotions fluctuate. Like everyone else, some days I feel energized and productive. Other days I feel tired, distracted, and far more interested in doing almost anything else. So, if my progress depends entirely on motivation, then my progress becomes fragile because it rises and falls with my moods. And that’s precisely where “The Effort vs. Automaticity Curve” becomes useful.

At the beginning of any worthwhile pursuit, effort is incredibly expensive. Every action requires conscious attention. A new comedian has to force himself to attend the open mic. A new writer has to force herself to sit down and write. A new runner has to talk himself into putting on the shoes. The new behavior feels difficult because, well, it hasn’t yet become normal.

Many people quit during this phase because they assume the effort is evidence that something is wrong. The easiest example to prove this is New Year’s Resolutions. But here’s where we all go wrong: Telling ourselves and assuming that the people who don’t finish must lack discipline, talent, or commitment. That’s wholly wrong! The real issue here is simply that, in such instances, people are experiencing the natural cost of unfamiliarity. That’s it. And there isn’t a worthwhile habit that doesn’t begin this way. Indeed, every worthwhile pursuit demands a season where effort exceeds automaticity.

But here’s the secret: The people who continue growing eventually cross an invisible threshold. The behavior doesn’t become effortless for them, but it becomes more automatic. The writer writes because writing is what writers do. The comedian goes and performs because that’s what comedians do. The runner runs because that’s what they do. The activity, in other words, gradually shifts from something they force themselves to do into something they simply do. It’s all about habit formation.

And that’s why I think motivation is best understood as a bridge rather than a dwelling place. Its purpose is to get us going, to get us moving. Motivation provides the initial force necessary to begin the journey. It helps us survive those early stages when effort is high and automaticity is low. Once the habit begins taking root, however, motivation becomes less important because the system starts carrying part of the load. And, ah, that’s a great place to be in!

I see this constantly in comedy. The comedians who continue improving year after year aren’t necessarily the most motivated people in the room. They’re often the people who stayed with the process long enough for it to become part of their identity. They stopped negotiating with themselves every week. They stopped waiting to feel inspired. They built habits strong enough to keep moving even when enthusiasm temporarily disappeared.

That’s encouraging because it means growth doesn’t depend on maintaining perfect emotions. It also means progress isn’t reserved for people who wake up excited every morning. And it means momentum can continue even during ordinary weeks when inspiration is nowhere to be found. The goal, my friend, isn’t becoming someone who feels motivated all the time. The goal is becoming someone whose habits keep carrying him or her forward long after motivation has completed its assignment.

Now, let me just say, before you go, that I’d love to share two comedy resources with you. The first one, which is FREE, is my fifth joke “Joke Writer’s Lab” joke writing workshop live stream on 6/6/26 at 12pm EST. You can click the image below to access the link or click HERE. If you’re free and have a joke you’d like to workshop, I’d love for you to attend.

Also, check this out…my new book is ready for preorder: Comedy Mindhacks: 100 Mental Shifts To Help Comedians & Creatives Succeed. Secure your copy HERE.

If you click HERE, you can see some sample pages. If you don’t yet subscribe to this site, you can still get a 10% discount at your purchase with the code: MH10LIVE. But, if you become a FREE Subscriber, you can automatically get a 15% discount.

Let's Do This! Sign Me Up!!!

If you sign up as a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a 35% discount. Also, when you join that inner circle, you’ll instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

What’s interesting is that most people frame the conversation around restrictions, limitations, and boundaries. That’s never been how I’ve experienced it. I’ve never spent much time thinking about what I can’t say and I’ve certainly never thought of limiting another comedian’s speech. Most of my attention has gone toward figuring out what I actually want to say and how to say it better. That distinction may sound small, but I think it’s key because it shows high regard for the art (and science) of comedy; it is, in other words, a creative choice. That said, here are ten reasons I work clean.

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1. It Aligns With My Faith: First and foremost, I’m a Christian. That reality affects far more than what I do on Sunday mornings. It shapes how I think about people, relationships, truth, responsibility, and pretty much everything. Because of that, I’ve never wanted a version of myself on stage that is disconnected from the person I am everywhere else. If my comedy requires me to become somebody different than who I actually am, something feels out of alignment. I don’t want to step out of who I am in Christ to be someone else. Now, that doesn’t mean every set turns into a sermon or that every joke needs a spiritual lesson attached to it or that I give altar calls at the end of my shows. That’s not the case at all. It simply means I care about consistency in my life. I want the person holding the microphone to resemble the person my family, friends, students, and church members know. Working clean helps me maintain that connection between belief and behavior.

2. It Forces Me To Know Who I Am: One of the unexpected benefits of working clean is that it forces identity work. Lots of identity work! When profanity, shock, and taboo topics aren’t carrying the load, the audience is gets left with my perspective, my stories, my observations, and my view of the world. In many ways, they are left with me. That also gives me fewer places to hide. Every comedian eventually faces the challenge of figuring out what makes them unique. Working clean pushed me into that process earlier and more often than I might have chosen otherwise. The result has been a clearer sense of my persona, the various voices I channel, and a better understanding of what I actually bring to the stage.

3. It Forces Me To Be A Better Writer: Constraints have a funny way of making people more creative. When I can’t rely on shock value to generate a reaction, the writing itself has to do more work. The setup has to be clearer and the punchline has to be stronger. The surprise has to come from the structure of the joke rather than shocking language surrounding it or holding it up. I’ve found that many of my strongest jokes emerged because I had to keep digging. What I mean is: When the easy version wasn’t available, I had to keep writing until I found something better. That process isn’t always fun in the moment, but it has helped me grow. Every constraint removes one path and forces me to discover another.

4. It Lets The Comedy Speak For Itself: Years after a show, I want people remembering the experience and the joke rather than the language. When audiences talk about my material, I’d rather hear them describe a premise, a twist, a callback, or a surprise. I want them talking about the idea that caught them by surprise. Put differently, I want the comedy itself to carry the weight because the comedy is the thing I’ve spent the most time building.

5. It Builds A Different Kind Of Audience: One of the biggest lessons comedy has taught me is that not every audience wants the same thing. Some people want edge, controversy, and provocation. Others want something they can share with a spouse, a coworker, or their kids. Many are parents and professionals and are involved in churches or community organizations. They aren’t necessarily looking for safer comedy, just comedy built on a different foundation and comedy that they can often share with their family and friends in good conscience.

6. It Respects The Audience: When people buy a ticket, attend a show, or spend time reading my work, they’re giving me something valuable, namely, their attention. I don’t take that lightly because attention is one of the most limited resources any of us have. Once it’s gone, I don’t get it back. Respecting an audience doesn’t mean avoiding difficult topics or pretending life is easy; I don’t do that at all. Respecting the audience just means being intentional about how I approach those topics. I want to challenge people with ideas, observations, and stories. I don’t want to rely on shock simply because it’s available.

7. It Challenges The Stereotype: I’ve written on this site before about how people assume clean comedy is safe, predictable, watered down, or somehow less capable of producing big laughs. I’ve heard every version of that argument at one point or another. The assumption seems to be that if a comedian isn’t using profanity or explicit material, they must also be avoiding risk. I totally disagree. Some of the smartest comedians I’ve ever watched worked clean and left audiences exhausted from laughing. Every time a clean joke lands hard, it reminds me that great comedy isn’t built on vulgarity; instead, it’s built on surprise, tension, emotional truth, and release.

8. It Ages Better: Comedy is, in many ways, a time capsule. A joke written today might still be floating around ten or twenty years from now or hundreds of years from now. Cultural references change, trends disappear, and some topics simply don’t travel through time very well at all. I think observations about family, human nature, relationships, frustration, embarrassment, and everyday life tend age better because they’re stable across generations. Working clean doesn’t guarantee longevity, of course, but it often pushes me toward subjects that age more gracefully than the newest and most vulgar sexual acts, for instance.

9. It Reflects The Kind Of Comedy I Want To Create: At some point every comedian has to decide what kind of contribution they want to make the craft and to the world. For me, the older I get, the more that question always seems to linger. I want to build a body of work that reflects what I believe and what I believe comedy could be. My comedy philosophy, which I’ve mentioned on my website many times, is: Laughter > Outrage. I believe people need more opportunities to laugh together than they need reasons to rage and divide into tribes. I also believe comedy can tell the truth without becoming cruel and that’s something our society desperately needs.

10. It Opens More Doors: Ironically, the reason many people think about first is probably the reason I think about least. People often assume working clean is a sacrifice that closes opportunities. In reality, my experience has largely been the opposite. Because my material can travel, I’ve been able to perform in comedy clubs, churches, colleges, conferences, corporate events, theaters, and at community events without completely rebuilding my act every time. That flexibility has been incredibly valuable. In the same season, I might perform stand-up in a club, emcee a professional event, teach a workshop or class or camp, and speak at a conference. The opportunities are different, but the material remains rooted in the same voice and perspective. Working clean didn’t create those opportunities by itself, but it certainly made more of them possible.

What’s interesting is that this final point only works because the previous nine came first. If I worked clean merely to expand my market, I probably wouldn’t have lasted very long. The opportunities came because my writing has improved, my audience has become clearer (and still is), my identity has become more fine-tuned (still is), and the work has aligned with who I ultimately want to be in life. The practical benefits have shown up as a byproduct of my deeper commitments.

I’ve never held the view that every comedian must or has to work clean. That’s each person’s choice. Some comedians haven’t worked clean, of course, and they’re exceptionally good at what they do. Comedy is a broad and there’s room for essentially an infinite amount of approaches. For me, then, working clean has made me a better writer, forced me to develop a clearer voice, and created opportunities I never expected when I started. Most importantly, it has helped me build a comedy career that feels consistent with the rest of my life. Looking back, I don’t regret that decision for a second.

And let me just say, before you go, I’d love to share two comedy resources with you. The first one, which is FREE, is my fifth joke “Joke Writer’s Lab” joke writing workshop live stream on 6/6/26 at 12pm EST. You can click the image below to access the link or click HERE. If you’re free and have a joke you’d like to workshop, I’d love for you to attend.

Also, check this out…my new book is ready for preorder: Comedy Mindhacks: 100 Mental Shifts To Help Comedians & Creatives Succeed. Secure your copy HERE.

If you click HERE, you can see some sample pages. If you don’t yet subscribe to this site, you can still get a 10% discount at your purchase with the code: MH10LIVE. But, if you become a FREE Subscriber, you can automatically get a 15% discount.

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If you sign up as a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a 35% discount. Also, when you join that inner circle, you’ll instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

And…before you go, check this out…my new book is ready for preorder: Comedy Mindhacks: 100 Mental Shifts To Help Comedians & Creatives Succeed. Secure your copy HERE.

If you click HERE, you can see some sample pages. If you don’t yet subscribe to this site, you can still get a 10% discount at your purchase with the code: MH10LIVE. But, if you become a FREE Subscriber, you can automatically get a 15% discount.

Let's Do This! Sign Me Up!!!

If you sign up as a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a 35% discount. Also, when you join that inner circle, you’ll instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

For the last 14+ months, I’ve been studying and writing about stand-up comedy intensively and publicly. As I’ve written about what I call “Comedy Mindhacks,” I’ve been deep in social, psychological, rhetorical, literary, and performance sciences, to name just a few. And I’m pleased today, to share that my first comedy book, Comedy Mindhacks: 100 Mental Shifts To Help Comedians & Creatives Succeed is now available for preorder HERE. Clocking in at just under 300 pages, the book should start rolling off the presses within the next week. Below you can see the front and back cover, which has this description:

For the aspiring creative or comedian who lies awake wondering if their current skill level is as good as it will ever get, this book offers a vital lifeline out of the dreaded plateau. It tackles the deepest fear of the everyday performer: Not the terror of bombing or facing hecklers, but the quiet, dangerous drift of giving up little by little until the dream fades completely. Bridging the gap between rigorous theory and real-life practice, author T. Michael W. Halcomb offers numerous strategies designed to create continuous growth and momentum. Written by an established professor and comedian, this book cuts through empty hustle-culture fluff to share honest, hard-won evidence that progress is always possible. Ultimately, it serves as a gritty, deeply human guide that uses the mechanics of stand-up comedy as a vehicle for personal growth and transformation.

If you click HERE, you can see some sample pages. If you don’t yet subscribe to this site, you can still get a 10% discount at your purchase with the code: MH10LIVE. But, if you become a FREE Subscriber, you can automatically get a 15% discount.

Let's Do This! Sign Me Up!!!

If you sign up as a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a 35% discount. Also, when you join that inner circle, you’ll instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

Oh, and if you want to hear real, raw, and candid thoughts about some of my journey in stand-up comedy, before you go, be sure to download your copy of my brand new audiobook, Road Chronicles of a Comedian: 30 Hours to Somewhere for just $3.99. Click the image below, or click HERE.

I also want to invite you to upgrade to a paid subscriber of MichaelHalcomb.Live today. When you join the inner circle, you instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

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Somewhere on the drive home that night, I found myself thinking about that conversation more than the set itself. Then I started to think about I’ve long assumed that comedy’s basically a numbers game. More laughs means you had a better set. More followers means you’ll have more opportunities. More people liking my material means I’m heading in the right direction. That thinking makes sense on the surface, but it also creates a strange kind of pressure. What I mean is, when I’ve looked at things that way, it also means I’m subtly looking at every crowd as a test of whether I can get as many people as possible to approve of what I’m saying and doing. The same goes for social posts or blog articles and so on. That’s exhausting!

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But I’ve come to the conclusion that while approval and connection can look similar from the stage or from social follows, they’re actually not the same thing at all. For instance, I’ve had nights where audiences laughed consistently from beginning to end (approval), yet nobody seemed particularly invested afterward (no connection). The show ended, people left, and the whole thing felt strangely forgettable. Everyone moved on and went their separate ways just like the encounter I mentioned above. I’ve also had nights where the laughter wasn’t quite as frequent (less approval), but conversations happened afterward and real connections were made. Those two experiences taught me that even though some laughs disappear quickly, some connections continue long after.

Every successful comedian seems to understand this at some level. Jeff Foxworthy connected with blue-collar America. Larry the Cable Guy connected with an audience that recognized itself in his worldview. Jim Gaffigan built material around family life, food, and everyday frustrations that allowed him to connect with exhausted parents. Nate Bargatze found a lane with people who wanted sharp comedy without constant vulgarity and connected with those folks. None of those audiences appeared by accident!!! Each comedian became increasingly clear about who they were.

Now, actually doing that, it’s way harder than it sounds but like most things in life, comedy requires exploration. Over time, the clearer my perspective becomes, the easier it is for certain audiences to connect with me. But the opposite happens, too, because some people simply won’t connect. Now, here’s a golden takeaway I got from all this: Early on, I interpreted a lack of connections as failure but now I think of it more as a consistent revealing of who my material is actually for. That is a HUGE mental shift!

And, ultimately, that’s a good thing. At least, I think it is. But I’ve also been thinking about this for a while and asking questions like Who’s my audience? Who are my people? Where are they? I came to terms a long time ago that not everyone will be a fan of what I do or of me. Like one of my heroes, the Apostle Paul, I’ve come to the realization that it’s not my job to try to please everyone or anyone for that matter. I already have some haters out there. But there are some people who like what I do and appreciate it. I’m trying to find more and more of those people.

I want to find “my” people. I want to find “my” crowd because expecting every audience to respond identically is like expecting every radio station to play the same song all day. That’s just stupid! And the goal, at least for me in all that, isn’t universal appeal, but meaningful connection. Just to be completely honest here, and I can only be honest because I’ve been there and currently am there, I think this is where many comedians get stuck. They chase bigger audiences when what they really need are specific audiences. They want more followers when they need specific followers. They want broader approval when they need clearer identity. Ironically, the pursuit of universal acceptance often produces the exact thing comedians fear most: Becoming forgettable.

The audiences that have supported me most consistently have recognized something familiar in the material. They understood my perspective, connected with my view of the world, and saw a little of themselves inside my jokes. That kind of connection is hard to build, but it lasts much longer than a single laugh. And that’s goal for me right now. I’m not collecting the largest possible audience, but I am becoming clearer on who those people are and how they know they’ve found their comedian. Perhaps I’ll say more about how I’m doing some of that in a future article. For now, however, if you’re seeking to get the attention of everyone, stop wasting your time and energy. Focus on who you are so you can figure out who your people are. Then connect and move forward together.

If you’ve found this helpful and you want to hear more real, raw, and candid thoughts about this journey of stand-up comedy, before you go, be sure to download your copy of my brand new audiobook, Road Chronicles of a Comedian: 30 Hours to Somewhere for just $3.99. Click the image below, or click HERE.

I also want to invite you to upgrade to a paid subscriber of MichaelHalcomb.Live today. When you join the inner circle, you instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

But I have to admit, the phrase feels off to me. And I think saying it is one of the easiest traps comedians can fall into over time. Things like: The crowd was cold. The audience was distracted. Nobody got it. Everybody was too tired, too drunk, too sober, too old, or too emotionally dead inside to appreciate the apparent brilliance. I guess, to me, blaming audiences starts becoming like an emotional comfort food at some point. It’s a way to protect one’s ego if disappointment shows up.

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Look, I get that crowds can be difficult sometimes. No doubt about that! And while all crowds are different, there are some generalizations that can be made. For instance, a just-off-work Monday night crowd behaves very differently than a packed Saturday-night comedy-club crowd. Crowds at free shows feel different than paid shows. Church crowds respond differently than dive-bar crowds. Crowds in venues where food and drinks are offered are different than rooms where people are halfway through appetizers when a comedian’s trying to drop punchlines. Room conditions and crowds genuinely matter in stand-up comedy.

I think some of the recent obsession over crowd work online has complicated this even further. It seems like people are constantly arguing now about whether audience members are planted at shows or whether certain crowd-work moments are staged ahead of time. Magicians have long done this, and comedians sometimes do, too, I guess, because entertainment has always involved some degree of orchestration. But what gets lost in all those debates is that crowd interaction still depends heavily on reading energy correctly in real time. Even the best crowd-work comedian in the world can look completely average if the room’s energy feels tense, distracted, exhausted, or emotionally closed off that particular night. And if you lose them at some point, that only compounds the difficulty.

But recognizing difficult conditions is very different from emotionally hiding inside those conditions afterward. And THAT’S my point! That realization hit me hard, like a ton of bricks, after a rough set where I spent the entire drive home trying to mentally prosecute audience members afterward. “They just didn’t get it!” “That audience sucked!” “Those people don’t understand comedy!” Every single thing I said was a way to try to protect my ego. But something else hit me, too: While I was doing that, I was also preventing myself from learning anything useful from the experience. In other words, I walked away emotionally intact while my comedy stayed exactly where it already was creatively.

That’s the seductive part about blaming audiences after weak sets. It offers immediate relief right when disappointment presses hardest against a comedian’s identity and insecurities. If the crowd’s always the problem, then I never have to examine my pacing honestly or question whether the setup dragged too long or if my joke just sucked. I never have to consider whether the premise felt much clearer inside my own head than it sounded out loud to strangers hearing it cold. Defensiveness freezes curiosity faster than almost anything else in comedy because protecting one’s ego always feels easier than adapting publicly.

Over time, I’ve learned to take rough sets less personal and treat them much more like a diagnostic tool. That is, instead of mentally shutting down after jokes failed, I’ve learned to started ask better questions afterward about what the room might actually have wanted or needed from me. And I ask questions like: Did I rush the setup for this particular room? Did I fail to establish enough trust before moving into sharper material? Did I move too quickly between ideas without giving audiences enough time to process transitions naturally? Did the crowd need stronger emotional grounding before following me into stranger observations and perspectives? Those kinds of questions have helped my comedy growth far more than blaming strangers ever has.

Here’s another thing: For me, comedy became so much psychologically healthier once I stopped viewing audiences like enemies waiting for me to crash and burn. More often than not, the audience showed up to laugh and they want every comedian to do well. That’s also helped me overcome the desire to have every crowd like me and my jokes in order to validate my identity. Ironically, audiences usually respond better to that version of me anyway because my confidence breathes better once defensiveness has exited the room.

If you’ve found this helpful and you want to hear more real, raw, and candid thoughts about this journey of stand-up comedy, before you go, be sure to download your copy of my brand new audiobook, Road Chronicles of a Comedian: 30 Hours to Somewhere for just $3.99. Click the image below, or click HERE.

I also want to invite you to upgrade to a paid subscriber of MichaelHalcomb.Live today. When you join the inner circle, you instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

I realized today how quickly my brain wanted to magnify those two moments and to do so in a very disproportionate way. What I’m getting at is: Rejection has a strange ability to grow emotionally larger than affirmation even when the math does not support it. Everyone’s probably experienced this. You go to an event and get ten supportive comments and one negative remark and the only thing you can remember is the one negative statement. That’s disproportionate! And I think that imbalance says something important about human psychology, especially in fields full of creative work.

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I noticed myself mentally replaying both situations of rejection while completely minimizing several objectively positive things, several great successes that have happened in the last week. Today, while I was standing outside grilling hotdogs for lunch, I suddenly had this weird internal conversation with myself. I literally stopped and thought, “Michael, in the last eight days you performed at Nateland Live at The Lab at Zanies in Nashville, emceed a forum inside an arena in Virginia, performed stand-up in Kentucky with friends showing up to support you, appeared on international news discussing spirituality and AI, and gained a bunch of new subscribers to your website, including three new paid subscribers, and were booked for a future show.”

Suddenly, the emotional proportions started changing a little bit. For every rejection that happened recently, there were at least three times as many affirmations sitting right beside them. What made the timing of today’s rejection even stranger is that right after it happened, I literally received an email from the person who ran last week’s economic forum. Part of the email said, “We are so grateful for your preparation, professionalism, and enthusiasm. It truly showed! We hope to have the opportunity to work with you again in the future.” That landed differently because it arrived right after disappointment had started trying to dominate my perspective mentally.

In this scenario, one voice was basically saying, “No thanks!” Another voice was saying, “You did excellent work and we’d love to work with you again!” Life moves like that constantly. And, of course, I don’t say any of this in some cheesy motivational-speaker way either. I’m not trying to pretend rejection magically stops hurting once positive things happen nearby. Rejection still stings because disappointment is real. What I’m saying is that sometimes I need to put myself back in emotional check when my mind starts acting like rejection is the only thing happening in my life.

There are certainly seasons where the rejections massively outnumber the affirmations; I’ve gone through many of those seasons. Anybody who’s done comedy long enough understands those stretches where you have bombed jokes, failed bookings, unanswered emails, rougher-than-usual crowds, producers ghosting your conversations halfway through, and so on. Comedy can feel emotionally brutal when enough of those moments pile up close together.

But there are other seasons where opportunities quietly start stacking, too. Good sets happen, new connections are forged, strange doors open unexpectedly, and somebody reaches out with encouragement at exactly the right moment. The danger is that my brain often remembers rejection more vividly than affirmation because rejection feels more threatening psychologically. It reminds me of something I used to teach my kids while playing basketball, something I was taught while growing up: “Never leave the court on a missed shot.” Or more positively: “Always leave the court on a make.” In other words, don’t let failure become the final emotional memory; end with confidence, momentum, and something that reminds you you’re still capable.

Comedy requires that mindset constantly because rejection can stick in my mind aggressively if I let it. One awkward interaction can replay internally for hours while an entire successful set somehow disappears emotionally in fifteen minutes. I think comedians sometimes accidentally train themselves to obsess over failure while overlooking evidence of growth happening right in front of them.

A while back I wrote about what I called “The 20-Year Rule.” The basic idea was simple: If something will not matter to anybody twenty years from now, I should not spend more than twenty minutes emotionally obsessing over it. Honestly, I still think that is helpful. Lately though, I’ve started thinking about an even smaller version of that idea. Maybe it’s more of a “Minute-for-Minute Rule.” However many minutes I spent writing the email, preparing a pitch, doing a set, or taking a shot is how many minutes I allow myself to stay frustrated if things go badly afterward. Once that emotional clock runs out, I move forward instead of mentally building a campsite inside disappointment.

That’s basically what I did both times with rejection this past week. I let myself feel the frustration honestly because pretending rejection doesn’t bother me would just be fake. Then eventually I stopped replaying it and got back to work. Comedy moves too fast emotionally to stay parked inside every disappointment forever. Fact: Rejection only gets the final word if I hand it the microphone. Notice what I did here, in fact: I took the rejection, processed it, converted it to something positive, then wrote about it to help others, which is an additional positive.

I’m old enough and have been through enough life to know that some opportunities close down because timing is wrong and some people pass for reasons that have nothing to do with my worth or talent. But if I keep creating, keep writing, keep performing, and keep taking swings anyway, then rejection becomes part of the process instead of the conclusion of the story and, if I’m wise, I only let it linger for a few seconds or minutes.

If you want to hear more real, raw, and candid thoughts about this journey of stand-up comedy, before you go, be sure to download your copy of my brand new audiobook, Road Chronicles of a Comedian: 30 Hours to Somewhere for just $3.99. Click the image below, or click HERE.

I also want to invite you to upgrade to a paid subscriber of MichaelHalcomb.Live today. When you join the inner circle, you instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

Before you go, be sure to download your copy of my brand new audiobook, Road Chronicles of a Comedian: 30 Hours to Somewhere for just $3.99. Click the image below, or click HERE.

I also want to invite you to upgrade to a paid subscriber of MichaelHalcomb.Live today. When you join the inner circle, you instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

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There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

Having driven around 30 hours this week for three different shows, I can tell you there’s a kind of emotional whiplash built into the road. What I mean is, one minute I’m standing in front of strangers trying to make a room laugh then a few hours later I’m alone at a gas station buying bottled water and beef jerky at one in the morning. Then I get back in the car and start replaying every moment of the set in my head again. It’s a little bit crazy! Maybe a lot bit crazy! But comedy is, for me at least, very often seeming to bounce between opposites, between noise and silence, between audience laughs and interstate exits, between feeling completely seen and completely invisible.

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As I just mentioned, over the last week, I spent an absurd amount of time driving across multiple states for comedy and speaking events. I went from Asheville, North Carolina to Nashville, Tennessee and back. Then to Wise, Virginia and back then on to Versailles, Kentucky and back. One room was a comedy club, another was an economic forum in an arena, and another was a winery packed with old friends, former Sunday school students, and strangers drinking wine while I tried to hold a room together for 30ish minutes.

Somewhere between all those miles I put on my pickup truck, I realized the road was also becoming the story. Honestly, it was MOST of the story. I guess it just hits you after enough hours alone in the car. It reminds me of Chris Carrabba’s band name, “Dashboard Confessional,” one of my favorite all-time musicians/bands. A line in one of his songs says, “On the way home, this car hears my confessions….” I kept hearing that line over and over in my head this week. I mean, at first, like any day I was just driving. Then, eventually, my thoughts started getting louder because there was nowhere left for them to run or hide.

When I’m driving like that, I practice my sets before a show. Afterward I start replaying jokes and everything else, the conversations, decisions, insecurities, goals, and all sorts of questions. My grandpa was a truck driver and I finally realized why truck drivers have CBs. It’s not just to warn about traffic and give a heads-up about this or that; when you’re on the road that much, you need people to talk to. I mean, I called many people on my trip Monday and caught up, so it would’ve been odd to call them back later in the week. Or, while I’m driving during the day most people are at a day job and when I’m driving at night most people are sleeping. It can get lonely.

Being on the road like that has a way of stripping things down to the studs as it were. That’s where so much of the work of comedy happens, but it’s the part that gets no applause. There’s no audience there to clap for that, lol. By and large, when I’m on the road it’s just me, dashboard lights, rain on the windshield, and whatever I actually believe about why I’m doing this in the first place. After enough miles, comedy starts feeling less like performance and more like a pilgrimage and, of course, pilgrimages typically require some suffering and hardship and lots of introspection.

That’s also what led me to create The Road Chronicles, Vol. 1: 30 Hours To Somewhere. It’s not a comedy album in the traditional sense at all. It’s not a course either. It’s more like a windshield memoir about a single chaotic week of trying to balance comedy, travel, family life, exhaustion, performance, responsibility, and whatever strange pull keeps making me get back in the car again. But as with these posts, it’s introspective and, I hope, insightful. It’s definitely real and raw.

The audiobook runs about an hour and a half and captures the hidden side of comedy people rarely see and that they don’t hear many comedians talking about: The drives, the waiting (oh my goodness, there’s so much freakin’ waiting!!!), the weird hotel rooms, the emotional swings before and after performances, the moments where I genuinely wonder whether driving ten hours for six minutes of stage time makes any rational sense whatsoever, and so on. Again, the audience remembers the laugh, but comedians usually remember everything it took to get there, the pilgrimage.

I think that’s one reason the road matters so much to comedians. The road exposes things. Weak material gets exposed. Weak confidence gets exposed. Ego gets exposed. But the road also reveals what remains when nobody is clapping and nobody is watching and you’re forced to deal with who you are and what you’re doing. Basically, I’ve come to realize that some of the most important parts of becoming a comedian happen completely outside the performance itself. They happen in silence, exhaustion, repetition, bad weather, unfamiliar rooms, awkward conversations, and lonely interstate drives somewhere after midnight. That’s the part of comedy I wanted to capture honestly with this project because that’s the part audiences almost never see. I hope you’ll listen. I think you’ll benefit. And it’ll help me a little. Download your copy and listen for just $3.99. Click the image above, below, or click HERE.

I also want to invite you to upgrade to a paid subscriber of MichaelHalcomb.Live today. When you join the inner circle, you instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

There's So Much Good Stuff Here. I'm In!

Hey, before you tune into the episode, let me share a short story with you. About 18 months ago, I went to an open mic in Hawai’i. Not a single actual audience member showed up. The room was just filled with other comedians, arms crossed, waiting for their turn. Maybe you’ve encountered something similar. Anyway, since all these comedians had already heard my material several times, I decided to throw my jokes out and use my 7 minutes to practice crowd work. Yes, crowd work on other comedians.

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It pissed one guy off so badly that he started cussing at me, while I was on stage, in front of the booker and other comedians. He was furiously telling me to “do real comedy” and to stop wasting everyone’s time. The fact is, he was wasting my time on the mic. Y’all, comedy can be cutthroat, and even open mics can be a battlefield!

The truth is, many comedians operate on a toxic, “limited good” mindset. They believe that if you get stage time or fame, you are stealing it from them. So, they try to stop you. They criticize you to weed you out. It sucks!!! I’m trying to create the opposite: an environment of encouragement and camaraderie. Anyway, I confronted that guy in the parking lot that night right to his face, but the real victory came months later. We ended up booked on the same lineup for a weekend string of five real shows for Don’t Tell Comedy. Afterward, he came up to me, shocked that I had actual jokes and that I completely killed. He actually apologized, which is rare in comedy.

In that moment, I realized something vital: I could’ve shrunk back during that set where he interrupted me weeks earlier. I could’ve been a weasel in that parking lot. I could’ve quit. But I didn’t let his criticism determine my ending, nor did I let his apology determine my future. Why? Because I was sure of myself. And I was sure of myself because I know joke mechanics, joke structure, and I have an unmatchable work ethic.

I left the open mic scene about a year ago. It’s just not for me. Maybe you want to get out of that scene, too. Well, you can. If you are tired of toxic open mics and want access to the exact, field-tested tools I’ve used, tools that have helped me bypass the gatekeepers, haters, and critics and turn raw thoughts into great jokes and sets, I want to invite you to upgrade to a paid subscriber of MichaelHalcomb.Live today.

When you join the inner circle, you instantly unlock my entire premium comedy vault:

• The Joke Writer’s Lab Video Course: Unrestricted access to my step-by-step joke writing course on Udemy.

• The Comedian Spotlight: A feature and promotion to my entire audience in an upcoming newsletter!

• The Joke Blueprint Playbook: My 17-page manual for structuring your thoughts and polishing your jokes.

• The Premium “Round-Up” Newsletter: My exclusive weekly deep-dive delivered every Sunday.

• The Round-Up Repository: Full access to my private database containing every past and future newsletter.

👉 Click HERE to Upgrade Your Subscription & Unlock the Vault.

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