Recently I noticed that I am either getting better or getting worse. It is never just sustaining. Like if I am letting the little things go like dishes pile up, laundry, and bed just out of control, I am more stressed and more depressed. But on the flip side, if I am taking care of all the things I am happier, less stressed and have more energy.

“The way you do ANYTHING is the way you do EVERYTHING” Tom Waits.

I heard this or some version of this on a podcast and decided to try it out and the results were much better than I ever expected. It was truly incredible. I decided that for a week I would not pass things. If I saw something I would deal with it right then. No longer leave them for future Bjorn to deal with or hope someone else would. With this small shift in mindset, I noticed that other aspects of my life were positively affected.

Every time I skip a workout or bail on a show, that becomes the new habit. Every time I look annoyed at the dishes or pile of laundry or unmade bed and don’t do it, it becomes who I am. I’m the guy who doesn’t do the dishes. I want to be the kind of person who does the dishes. Who pushes me to do a workout when I don’t feel like it. Who shows up every time. During the pandemic I gave myself a lot of slack. I changed the way I approached things. I did not push myself. I went back to the old me that just searches for comfort. I have to practice being the guy who does it now, every day. Every day is a new challenge. The resistance is real and it's damn creative. It finds little back door excuses, like I don’t have time. Well I guess I am prioritizing 2 hours of Instagram reels over the dishes in the sink. I know that the dishes in the sink sounds like a small thing, but that’s the key to all this, it's the small things. It starts with the small things. And builds from there.

It actually is the path of least resistance when I am doing it all. When I am clearing my to do lists. I am astonished at how much time I actually have and how good I feel. I use this and sit with it to get myself to remember how it feels. I really what to have that feeling again. I am amazed at how often I can rally and find that extra energy I thought was not there. I have been going around with all this extra in the tank.

The way this applies to comedy is in showing up and being prepared to perform. Fully prepared. I recently did a show and I did not prepare at all. I showed up, chatted with my boyfriend and then waited to write a set list until the first comic was up performing. I didn’t prepare my headspace at all. I was complaining about work stuff with my man, and then went up with 3 half cooked ideas for jokes. I thought that I would just be able to pull the funny out of thin air. This was not an easy show with a huge audience, it was a work for it, small audience. That is not the time to be searching for punchlines. How you do anything is how you do everything. So now I am preparing something. I think about it throughout the day before the show so I am prepared. I also focus on creating the right mental headspace before I perform. I need to be in a good creative silly mood, not a critical upset serious mood. I find it interesting that for me it’s the act of preparing something. It doesn’t matter if that is what I actually do, I just have to do the work to get excited to share whatever it is with this audience. That is the headspace I need to be in.

Something that I didn’t expect when I started this was how it affects those around me. It is hard to just sit around when the person around you is cleaning up all the time. It is hard to skip a workout when your partner is down there hammering away at the elliptical. It’s a lot harder to bail on a show when your co host is there working hard. It taps into this small competitive side we all possess. I normally try to avoid comparison but I know that if someone is pushing, I want to push too.

I constantly need to come back to this statement. I have it printed out and posted at my desk and I write it in the first page of every notebook. I am still working on keeping up with applying it every day. Every day I have to learn to do it again. We are designed to seek comfort, the path of least resistance, but I choose to fight it. I like to be better, it always feels better on the other side. I use this to motivate me to push it.

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Thank you for reading, you’re doing great.

Bjorn RG.

How you do anything.