The Two Mindsets

I wholeheartedly believe the following two things:

Can one learn to be funny? Yes.
Can being funny be taught? No.

Soooo… what’s that all about? An author who wrote a book about comedy writing doesn’t believe that being funny can be taught? Doesn’t he want his book spread by word of mouthIf you like ComedyMindset, please share it! Just don’t walk up to a budding comedy writer and say: “Here! You really need this! and make lots and lots of monies?

Yes I do. And yet I don’t think that being funny can be taught.

For that matter I don’t believe anything can be taught.

I do believe in learning. And learning is something one has to do on his or her own.

A teacher can only show. Show you how it’s done, show you where you went wrong, show you how to do it differently or better. Show you how much progress you made. Show you flaws in your technique.

But one has to learn on her or his own.

So what I aim to do with this book is, to the best of my abilities, to show you stuff that I found helpful. In the hopes, that you will consider them, take some techniques like they are, tweak the other stuff to your liking and disregard the rest.

Now, can everybody be as funny as Nate Bargatze, Mike Birbiglia or Maria Bamford?

Probably not. Not everybody has the same physical ability to play basketball like Michael Jordan or be a tennis ace like Venus Williams. And I would wager the same goes for comedic ability.

But I believe that like anybody can learn to play tennis to the best to their abilities, anybody can learn to be funny to the best of their abilities.

I also believe the person who works hard, beats the person with talent who is lazy. But the person with talent and hard work will crush them both. And because we can’t know how much talent, how much potential we actually have, the only option is to work hard, have fun while doing it and hope for the best.

And although we can’t change our genetical makeup, we can achieve way more than we think if we just have the right mindset.

Introducing: The book that changed my mind.