Six Japanese Motivation Techniques To Use In Your Comedy

The Japanese do everything better. Or at least, cooler.

Greetings, muses. You are my reason for writing this newsletter. I have been doing stand up since around 2001, and it has become my “ikigai.” Is it yours, too? Please mine my mind for the anecdotes, resources, lessons learned, contacts and knowledge I’ve acquired over the years. Many posts are free, or partially free, but I hope you’ll consider paying $7 per month and coming to count on me as not only one of your #1 comedy resources, but also as a coach and a purveyor of comedy life living awesomeness. I wish I had a me when I was first starting out in comedy! Heck, I wish I had a me now. How can I help you?

I saw a post on Instagram, and connected with it, as did some 31k others. A little research showed that some form of this post has been making the rounds online for a while.

Just one of many versions of this post I found.

I did a little bit of a deeper dive on each item to expand on it and the concepts it mentions, as follows:

IKIGAI - Inspired by a Japanese health and wellness / medicinal principle, Ikigai is a state of wellbeing that comes from having discovered your life’s purpose; your “reason for living.” If being a comedian is that thing, BOOM, you can already check this one off the list. If you’re not sure, or you’re like me and you’re currently revisiting and honing your voice and character, then it’s a good reminder to spend some quality time on this. Refer to the item below if and when approaching this, and any task.

KAIZEN - The concept of kaizen and kanban are actually extremely technical and sophisticated. Because, Japanese. But in a nutshell, supposedly, it advises that we