Dealing with Comedy Burnout

Get Hungry Again (Comedy Mindhacks #74)

While Bruce Lee is typically known for his influence in the Kung-Fu world, he’s less known for his views on and practice of strong mental awareness. Really, I’d call them “mindhacks.” And, if you’ve been reading my articles for any length of time at all, you’ll know that’s one of my things, “comedy mindhacks.” So, in this short write-up, I want to draw on one particular thought that was prominent in Bruce Lee’s mental toolkit: “Letting the cup empty.”

What Lee meant when he spoke of emptying the cup was emptying one’s mind of assumptions, pride, and fixed opinions. Emptying the cup means admitting that no matter how much you know, there’s always more to learn. It is, as I say all the time on this site, taking the posture of being a student first, even a lifelong student first. True growth requires humility. And here’s one of the reasons I’m bringing this up: this speaks directly to the exhaustion as comedians that comes from pretending to have everything figured out. Ugh!

I mean comedians love to make it seem like they’ve got it all figured out: networking, getting booked, producing, joke writing, performing, social media, opening, featuring, headlining, hosting, etc. But from my perspective as a comedian, letting go of those pressures actually creates space for curiosity, creativity, and genuine wisdom. Emptying one’s cup is great because it allows it to be refilled again and again.

When I first stepped on stage as a comedian, I had decades of public speaking experience under my belt. Naturally, I thought my jokes were good. What I was faking most was that this was easy. The audience paid with their time and their money. They expected a good result. So, I projected an ease to it all that I didn’t even fully possess. Was it deception? I don’t really think so. I think it was part of my responsibility as a performer.

But here’s what has literally saved me over and over from burnout: internally, I keep emptying the cup. I do that by maintaining, as I talked about in a recent post HERE, a student-first posture. I’ve watched comedians who can’t maintain that empty cup and, as such, take one of two paths: crazy arrogance or complete burnout. The difference is simple. It’s a posture. Student-first versus expert.

Now, there is truth to the fact that, sometimes when you project a confident ease as a performance tool while staying internally humble, you create a lived tension. But in my view, that sorta tension doesn’t exhaust you. At least it doesn’t me. Instead, it makes me hungry to get better all the time. Thus, the way I project this ends up shaping my long-term status.

This means real confidence isn’t faked. It’s built through the accumulation of small learnings. When a mechanic learns something new about a car, it levels up his knowledge and builds confidence. Multiply that over thousands of times and you have genuine expertise. As comedians, we all bring different experiences and skillsets to any stage. Maybe you don’t have confidence yet, maybe you have a little, or maybe a lot. But if you’re projecting confidence or ease that you don’t yet have, that’s fine. You’re doing what all performers need to do from time to time to put on a good show.

The key is maintaining that student-first posture. That’s what keeps the tension productive instead of paralyzing. Always be learning! Pretty soon after you start doing that, projected ease becomes real. But you must be on guard so you don’t let it derail you into arrogance, which is definitely a real threat. So, as Bruce Lee would say, “Go now, and empty your cup.”

JOKE WRITING COURSE: And, if you have any interest at all in upping your game and learning about your persona, how to write some jokes, or doing stand-up comedy, check out my online joke writing course, “The Joke Writer’s Lab,” HERE.