If there is one secret to get better at standup quickly, it’s watching tape of yourself doing it. This silly thing is an overwhelming experience and not easy for anyone. If it is easy for you, you are either lying or a total narcissist. This is my journey into getting comfortable with watching and listening back to myself. I have known this truth for a while so I set out to find ways to get myself to do it. I found things that worked, but more that didn’t work. I am still not fully able to do it painlessly, but I can do it and do it a lot more than ever before.

“Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear.” ~John Madden

As a kid my friends and I would film/photograph each other, watch it back, and then edit it to music. We called it making skate videos, but really it was a way of getting better faster. I would get so inspired every time I watched the footage of me skateboarding. It made me feel like I was a real skater, seeing myself doing the tricks like the pros I saw in skate videos. The photos and video made me feel legitimate in what I was doing. When I started off I saw just how bad I was and how much I had to improve. But very quickly it started to look better. I got better at capturing the angles and at doing the tricks. I got to a point where whenever I would go watch the footage, I would get so excited and want to do it more. This is one of my favorite experiences, getting to relieve those moments and feel proud of what I did. This has not my experience with standup comedy tape review. My experience was usually I want to quit and never do that again. I did that in front of people!? I want to crawl into a hole and die.

I know that this is probably the most important part of developing as a standup. Yet for me it’s honestly the most painful part. It’s the best way to see all the little things you are doing, doing right and doing wrong. It helps to bring awareness to nervous tics or unconscious things in one’s performance. That mirror to all those things can be overwhelming, especially at first. The good news is that it gets better. I don’t know if it’s me just normalizing the experience or me getting better, but it’s a lot less painful now than it ever was. I would like to think it’s me getting better, so I’m gonna go with that.

Watching tape is never going to feel the same as performing live. It’s not the same because when I am performing live there is a rush that I get form the experience of just getting in front of a crowd of people and saying anything. That rush is not going to happen when I watch it back and I think part of me thought it would. Coming to terms with that was the first step for me.

Almost every set I’ve ever done I have recorded either video or audio only. I would say in the last 10 years I have watched/listened to about a quarter of them and that is being very generous. I noticed early on that the ones I recorded tended to not go as well, so I just decided to record every time and I did. I recorded them all, but rarely listened to them. I wanted to figure out how to use this to get better.

I tried so many things that did not work.

I tried watching it the next morning and writing only things that I felt I did well. This didn’t work at all for me. It was so painful every time. I could only handle so much punishment before it stopped. I couldn’t get the habit to stick for me.

I heard about exposure therapy. From my understanding exposure therapy is to expose someone to the source of their anxiety over and over until it no longer affects them. I set out to do this to myself. I shot every one of the shows and open mics I produced. Then I edited the footage. Having the outside obligation of sending the footage to other people really helped me get over that initial resistance. So much of this was about avoiding doing it and if I started I would usually finish it. I would wake up the next morning and just edit it. If I accidentally watched my set then it was a win! In fact often I did have to watch it. I just would focus on color correction and sound quality to distract my reactive “want to quit” thoughts. I had to focus on getting this done you know for the comics I promised it for.

An aspect of recording every show was that the camera no longer felt “special.” At first, I would get nervous knowing that it was being taped. After a few months of this, they were no longer “special” and it didn’t feel any different when the camera was present. I would say start filming everything as soon as possible so it no longer feels special when there is a camera.

The biggest shift came with affirmations. I resisted affirmations for a long time but wow this worked well for me. I just needed them to have a different title. I thought of it as telling a different story. No matter what you call it, it works. It’s retraining my subconscious mind with a desired story. If every time I watch myself I say “oh this is awful, I want to die.” My brain interprets that and jumps to that conclusion faster every time I watch one. Making it painful even at the thought of maybe watching one. It’s about retraining those mental pathways. It was clunky at first and I rolled my eyes for a few days before slowly, it started to shift, like magic I changed. I legitimately started to get excited to watch them! My new story is:

“I feel inspired when I watch my tapes.”

I wrote this on the mirror of my bathroom and just said it every morning when I woke up and when brushing my teeth before bed. It only took me about a week to take effect. But wow something shifted. When I went to edit my videos and saw myself, not only did I not feel bad, but I got excited! I have been wanting to get that feeling for so long. I wanted to feel about my standup the same way I did when I saw myself land a long grind on my skateboard. This works because I retrained the pathways in my brain to a desired feeling of excitement and growth. It is all about the stories I tell myself every day. Being aware of what pathways I am training in.

"Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're probably right." - Henry Ford.

The whole purpose of me watching myself is to get better. It wasn’t to become full of myself, it's to be excited to grow and improve. I no longer use it as ammo to hurt myself. The things that worked for me: filming every set (make it not special), having an outside obligation to deliver recordings to others, watching them on a regular basis, and telling a new desired story every day until I believe it. I feel inspired when I watch my tapes. I am not perfect, I have painful thoughts when I watch back from time to time, but it’s significantly less.

If you enjoyed this or know someone who would enjoy this please share it with them, You are doing great!

Bjorn RG

How I Convinced Myself to Watch My Tapes.