Stage Frighting Your Way to Success - Failure IS an option

As someone who studies Success on a daily basis, I can confirm that I often learn as much from my failures (and the failures of others) as I do from my successes - perhaps more.

Below you will find a recent example that proved this to me once again - but before I begin this new blog, I wanted to mention this - don't forgot to watch for our upcoming interviews (in upcoming issues of Island Business News) with Musical Comedian Jimmy Flynn, Star Search Winner Tracey MacDonald and Leading Organization PEI Mutual.

So, back to the task at hand.

In 2006 I found myself competing in the Yuk Yuks Great Canadian Laugh Off Competition.

With about a week's notice, I found myself booked in this year's (2010) Laugh Off Competition with little time to prepare and a whole lot to prove. Not to mention the fact that I had to conduct 5 Business Interviews, release our latest issue of Island Business News, and facilitate 3 speaking engagements the very same week.

Now, last time around Mr. Lahey from the Trailer Park Boys was one of the judges and despite the fact that he seemed to enjoy my performance, overall my set left something to be desired.

This year's competition (which actually took place two weeks ago now) was my chance to prove that I could deliver (with short notice) if booked again to compete in this prestigious competition.

Add this to the fact that a fellow Haligonian (Mark Little from Picnicface) won the entire competition last year and you can see why I was excited about the opportunity.

I arrived the night of the competition with my material in hand (well, in pocket and head actually).

I had tested it (my material that is) recently at Joker's Comedy Club and Yuk Yuks with a pretty solid response and therefore despite carrying around a bunch of little butterflies as I walked around the club chatting it up with other comics, I was slightly more confident than last time.

Turned out one of my fellow Halifax Comedy Connection Troupe Members (Halifax Comedy Connection is long extinct by the way) was one of the judges.

To make a very long story very short, my time to perform came near the end of the show and I quickly made my way to the stage.

Despite getting several laughs from the audience I personally felt my timing was off as I plowed through my material at faster than normal speed.

An hour later, as my buddy (and emcee for the evening) Andrew Albert was announcing the winners I wasn't surprised that my name wasn't announced. For some reason my timing was off and I didn't deliver it as I had planned.

Now, what is the point of this blog?

A lot of people would see this as a failure and a reason not to try in the first place. Others would just say I failed that night.

I mean my goal was to make my previous performance in the competition look stale by comparison.

But here's the thing - I learned more from this less than perfect performance than I would have by delivering at the level I did in the two previous test performances.

For starters, it proved to me once again that I don't have to win everytime to be a winner.

I mean for the 7 minutes I was on stage that night I managed to put smiles on the faces of some of the audience members (and as they say laughter is the best medicine), I learned more about the areas I need to work on with this newer material going forward, and just by showing up, I'm one of perhaps just 100 people (of a population of close to 1,000,000) who has performed comedy on a regular basis in Halifax in the last 5 years.

That's a pretty small group of people who have experienced this major life experience on multiple occasions - despite the potential for failure (to get a laugh) every time I take the stage.

Why is this signifgant?

In interviewing more than 500 Business Leaders in the past 3 years alone and in working with hundreds of companies as a trainer and speaker, I can confidently say that the top 3-4% of achievers I have worked with had to face many (so called) failures or steps backward before achieving great success, and had they not, most noted they would have never been able to reach success in the first place.

So the question I have for you is this? Are you ready to join the top 3-4% by making failure an option on your path to success?

A quote from my recent Island Business News column says' it best:
"Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm." Publilius Syrus

As a complete side-note, we're getting ready to update all of our websites so feel free to take a look at our main one before it goes through a major change to be more specific to my core focuses as a speaker / trainer - feel free to copy and paste the following website link below or click on the right side of this blog on the link called Speaking Related Website.

Website URL: http://www.coreypoirier.com

"what I'm reading right now?" - The Action Sandwhich by Alan Frew (Glass Tiger)