Laugh At Yourself

Your sense of humor can improve your growth.

The most important ingredient for a life of growth is ignorance.

Yes, you read me correctly. What makes your growth more guaranteed than any other thing is the ability to know that ignorance exists within you, and still have the confidence to go ahead despite knowing that this ignorance might become so palpable that it’ll cause you to fail and even get laughed at, but all the same, not giving any care in the world about the potential of being a laughing stock. This is the exact definition of greatness.

If you develop the ability to laugh at yourself; recognizing your foolishness, lack of capacity, knowledge, or skill, nothing else will faze you. Not the fear that you'd fail and become the object of other people’s laughter, not the worry that you'd look foolish before the world, not the potential of exposing your ignorance, because you would have recognized all of this and acknowledged your weakness before you move in the first place. You will not be caught off-guard because you have been brave enough to first internalize the reality and prepare yourself enough to laugh at your failures.

Nothing will ever stop a man who recognizes his ignorance and puts it out in the world for learning. First for laughing, then for learning.

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There are several reasons why you might never want to be laughed at, and why you never want to be put in an 'awkward position' for growth, and I thought we could review some of these major reasons.

It could either be that you are not very much interested in growth, or you could be taking life too seriously, being overly conscious, overly meticulous, or you are ruled by your sense of self and false ego, or you really, truly believe that you are perfect and should know it all.

All of these reasons are inversely proportional to our growth as individuals. Let's take them one after the other.

Nonchalance

The first is nonchalance towards growth. I want to believe that there's nobody who reads these newsletters today who just lives life on the streets of By and By and expects to arrive at the House of Something. Things never just happen. There have to be conscious, deliberate efforts towards growth. You could be growing old and not growing up if you aren't doing anything to effect an upward trend in your life.

We just finished reading the Laws of Luck, and if it is anything to go by, one major thing we learned from the book is that luck is triggered by principles that you deliberately put in place in your life; laws that you painstakingly abide by. Luck is not luck as we think about it. Your life right now is a summation of the actions and decisions you made in the past.

If you want to make anything tangible of your life, you must start taking your growth seriously. However, I wouldn't belabor this point as I believe there's nobody who reads this newsletter who isn't passionate about growth.

‘Over-chalance’

The second is over-chalance towards yourself. You take yourself too seriously, and perhaps it is a result of how you have grown up, your personality type, or your inability to process humor, but the thing is, being too high-strung snuffs life out of creativity, and there is no growth without creativity.

The effect of taking yourself too seriously is that you would rarely ever try new ways of working, you would never be an early adopter of anything because you’re too meticulous, too careful, an overthinker who rarely makes decisions just because he doesn't want to make the wrong one. Do you see now, how this can have an adverse effect on your growth?

The fewer the things you try because of over-meticulousness, the fewer the opportunities you get, and the lesser your chances of success.

False-ego

The third is your ego. You're proud and full of yourself, so you think other people are full of you too. You think the world revolves around your…life (I have to confess, it was the lyrics to that song that came to mind). You think if you make a fool of yourself and try things and fail, you are the one everyone will be talking about for the rest of the year.

I know I've said this before, but I'll repeat it. Nobody thinks about you the way you think they do! At best, you're a passing thought. If you fall off the stairs, you'd feel embarrassed all month thinking everyone is looking at you as the guy that fell off the stairs when in fact, you didn't remain in their mind for more than a minute (and this is me being generous).

It is your pride that won't allow you to get into positions of growth because you worry too much about potentially becoming a laughing stock, and not curtailing this will cause immense damage to your chances of growing as an individual.

Perfection

Finally, the last bit, which is the most rampant is our need for perfection. We want to be perfect so bad, we think we are perfect and give zero room for error. We never want to make mistakes and fuck up because we don't think we are meant to fuck up.

The sooner you own your imperfection and get on despite it; the sooner you realize that you HAVE to make mistakes to grow into fewer mistakes, the better for you and the easier it is for you to laugh at yourself.

I was listening to a sermon a few days back, and the preacher said, "Everyone you see and admire today has something they were brought out of." You could re-phrase by saying everyone looking stellar today at a particular venture was once absolutely and ridiculously foolish at it, but they took the chance, made the mistakes, and laughed at themselves amidst the laughter of other people, and today, it looks like they could never make a mistake anymore, and funny thing is, you'd be wrong. They still make mistakes, but they make fewer, negligible ones now because they dared to make the really big ones at the beginning.

Be daring. Learn to laugh at yourself. Put yourself in awkward positions that would spur your growth. Nobody expects you to have it all together. Even the ones who'd be laughing have been and would be laughed at, at some point too.

Get rid of the nonchalance! Tune down the over-chalance, beware of the pride, curtail the need for perfection, and increase the chances of your growth!

To your growth,

Your Coach,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired. ✨