Level Up! With Shay

Welcome to Level Up! With Shay!

Today, I’m going to tell you about something that I love dearly.

Comedy.

Comedy has changed my life. In all sorts of ways. I remember when I was a kid, I would sit in my living room with my friend and watch Jim Carrey nonstop – The Mask, Liar rLiar, Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, my favorite. I sat there inspired. I was not only fascinated by how good he was, but his way of making other people laugh. I knew as a little kid, I wanted to make people laugh.

And I did. All throughout my childhood, I was a class clown. Whether it was cracking jokes in the lunch line with my classmates and the lunch ladies, or during basketball or any other sports practice, I made people laugh. It was around that time I was also made aware that I liked girls. I realized I could use my humor as a mask. “If I make people laugh, they will like me. And this laughter can hide the fact that I have a secret. And even if they did find out that I liked girls, maybe they could overlook that because I was funny and made them laugh.”

I used humor as a mechanism to hide.

I did this for years, all throughout high school and college and let’s be honest, I still probably do it today here and there. I had no outlet for this humor. And I finally came to a crossroads in my life. I had just graduated with my MBA in marketing and international business, something I felt I did just to please others. I did not want a 9-5 marketing job where I sat behind a desk and stared at a computer all day. I wanted to live a life of freedom, on MY terms. So instead of a full-time job, I was working multiple part-time jobs. A personal trainer, barista at Starbucks, sometimes walking dogs. I had no idea what I was doing with my life.

While I was working at Starbucks, I met another employee there named Jason. I’ll never forget him because he was the first person to introduce me to improv comedy. I had watched Whose Line is it Anyway before and LOVED IT. So I thought, this could be something I’m good at! And use my comedy skills! So I started classes at The Improv Shop in St. Louis.

At first, I was super nervous. It wasn’t just the comedy that made me nervous, it was meeting new people, approaching performers at shows, getting vulnerable on stage. At first, I wasn’t even able to hold an invisible cup and take a drink out of it because my hand would be shaking so much. That eventually started to dissipate and I became more comfortable on stage.

I then moved out to Los Angeles to do even more improv comedy. More stages, more performers, a lot of competition. I went out almost every night to try to get on stage. Still nervous, but the consistent advice you get as a performer is that in order to get better, it’s all about reps. So I stuck to the fact that I needed to get reps in and pushed myself to do it. I eventually adapted to the environment. Made friends, got on teams, hosted shows. It was a lot of fun! But after years of doing that…

...something was missing.

I could continue going to improv shows and getting up, but I forgot what I was practicing for. Of course, some things you do because you love them. And I never want to discount doing something for the love of it. Shoot, this podcast I do because I love it. But I also deeply value growth and stepping out of my comfort zone. With improv, I felt I was stuck in my comfort zone. 

I see my comfort zone as a box and the building blocks of any box you’re inside of is made from expectations of your family, friends, the world, society, etc. Stepping out of the box is you becoming more yourself.  And the more I discovered new things about myself, the more claustrophobic that box felt. Improv was that box.

Even when I was on stage and in the spotlight, I felt like I was always hiding behind my humor. Nobody knew the real me. The part of me who was nervous or the part of me who really didn’t like myself. The part of me who had a past full of hurt, embarrassment, and disappointment that had never really been processed. I’d think “it doesn’t matter what your past looks like, you’re funny, people say you’re funny, go up there and make people laugh.”

I allowed the process of improv and other people around me to define who I was.  It wasn’t until I started stand-up this past year that I realized I could start defining myself and write a new story of my past. Go deeper. Go into the cracks and crevices that I had not talked about before.  In front of other people. Scary. 

I could be open and talk about my life, finally! My sexuality, how I was raised as a closeted lesbian in the church, and how I enjoy smoking weed! All of this stuff was *kind of * a secret before because the expectations of other people around me didn’t really care to hear about it and if they did, they would be disappointed. The hard parts of my life, the parts that were holding me back from being my authentic self, were covered by darkness and pushed to the side.

Stand-up comedy allowed me to bring it to center stage and shed a light on it. 

I just finished up a stand up class a few days ago and I was talking to a woman who had taken the class in the past. She is a photographer, had never done stand-up comedy before or any type of comedy, but she took the class to push herself outside of her comfort zone. I thought that was so beautiful. We got to talking more and I shared my experience. I thought it was so beautiful to see so many different people get up on stage and pour their hearts out – admitting that they have anxiety, talk about their sex life, or their messed up past with the church. And yes that was just me. No, actually there were a lot of us who shared varied experiences with the same themes. And not only were we talking about all that stuff on stage, we were making jokes about it. Not jokes to take your attention away from it, but to draw you in and see if you can relate.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “laughter is the best medicine” and that’s exactly what I felt. Getting on stage and talking out loud about my past and things I had covered up all of these years, started a healing process. The fact that I can laugh about things that really hurt and scared me in the past shows healing. And growth. And courage. And a willingness to not only move forward from my past, but to be incredibly grateful for it. 

You don’t have to be a lesbian to laugh at my lesbian jokes. You don’t have to be a pothead to laugh at my weed jokes. And you don’t have to like the church or not like the church to laugh at my church jokes. I can go on stage and be authentic as myself. Someone who can be funny, but also someone who can shed light on the hard parts of their own life and be relatable to others.

Comedy has changed my life. And admittedly, I had always used it as a tool to get somewhere, to gain success. But now, I look at it with a different perspective. It is a tool for me to grow, heal myself and heal others.

Katherine Mansfield, a highly influential writer in the early 1900’s has this quote:

“When we can begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.”

This doesn’t mean you have to take a stand-up comedy class. But I do encourage you to recognize the boxes you’re in and step out of them every once in a while. It’s amazing what you’ll find.

And of course…laugh along the way.

And if you want a space to laugh more and connect with others, I have just the thing for you. I’m hosting an online humor workshop where we will join together, laugh, connect, decompress and there are no prerequisites. You don’t need to be a comedian or think you’re funny or you don’t even need to have laughed before! Just the openness and willingness of trying! We will be on Zoom, but it won’t be a regular Zoom, it’ll be a cool Zoom, on Saturday December 4th at 10am PST / 1pm EST. I promise that you will leave the class feeling refreshed, energized, and lighter going into the rest of the weekend and the week. Go to www.shaydbeats.com to register!

Thanks so much for reading! Hope you have a great rest of your day and you know what time it is! It’s time to level up!

This blog post is also a podcast episode on Level Up! With Shay. You can listen here.

If you enjoyed this, share it to Twitter or your IG story and tag me @levelupwithshay

Please share with anyone who you think would get value from this. I’d love your help to spread the message. 

Sign up for my Tuesday email where I bring you value, inspiration, and laughter: http://eepurl.com/huY4JT

FOLLOW ME FOR MORE

APPLE PODCASTS: https://apple.co/31KJXh5​

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/levelupwithshay

TWITTER: https://www.twitter.com/levelupwithshay

TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@shaydbeats

YOUTUBE: https://rb.gy/dm4zwy