If you’re not a performer, you should be one for a night, just to understand why you shouldn’t trust anyone just because they happen to be holding a microphone. This is at least one one thing the punks were right about, and live storytelling is the easiest way to do it because everyone has at least one killer story.

Everyone should perform at least once

Everyone has one killer story. If you have two, you’re a storyteller. Either way, you can and should do at least one <a href="https://themoth.org/">Moth Story Slam </a>.

Everyone has one great story

You are smarter, funnier, and more interesting than you think you are. Even if you’re not, to reiterate, everyone has at least one killer story.

You have a right to tell your story

Character is forged in conflict, and the only way to meanigfully grow is to face our fears. If you’re like most other people, you have a serious fear of public speaking, which is much less scary than you think it is and thus a relatively easy fear to conquer compared to a fear of dry-diving off a skyscraper while being eaten alive by spiders.

You should confront your fear of public speaking

It has to be true. Although you’re, as we said, a wonderful specimen of humanity, you don’t have the talent of a <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23954018/hasan-minhaj-new-yorker-controversy-daily-show-what-happened">Hasan Minhaj </a>, a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-sad-and-infuriating-mike-daisey-case/254661/">Mike Daisey </a>, or even <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/timeline-rep-george-santos-fabrications-controversy-rcna66367">George Santos </a>that it takes to pull off a good lie in front of a large group. On stage, you’ll give yourself away, and even if you succeed as a fraud, that life is its own punishment.

Your story should be true

It needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Our minds are relentless pattern-matching machines that are always trying to connect dots and make sense of the ice-cold absurdity of existence. Life is a mess, but as the auteur of your story, you can decide where it starts, where it ends, and what happens in the middle, as long as what happens in the middle is a) surprising in a way that b) makes sense and c) keeps raising the stakes so we stay engaged and entertained.

Learn how to structure a story

Rehearse the hell out of your story. When you get on stage, you’re going to go blank, so it’s better, as a rookie, to memorize the story, word for word. You can afford to loosen up later on, if you want.

Before you perform, PRACTICE

Use humor judiciously. If you blow a joke, or if you make a joke that seems forced when it’s supposed to be spontaneous, that will suck the energy out of the room. If you kill, you’ll get a lot of laughs, which is a high-quality problem but will seriously eat into your time. At least in LA, they enforce the five-minute limit fairly strictly. The judges will ding you for going over, plus it’s just rude, selfish, and narcissistic to outstay your welcome on stage.

Use humor judiciously

Don’t talk about pain that’s too fresh. We like you, and we don’t want to be actively concerned for your welfare.

Process your pain, THEN tell your story

Moth Story Slams are essentially open-mic performance showcases where almost anyone can tell a true, personal story. You should do one, and here's why...

If you're not a performer, you should be one for a night, just to understand why you shouldn't trust anyone just because they happen to be holding a microphone.

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How to Tell a Story and Do Live Storytelling at a Moth Story Slam (and Why You Should)

Beth Lapides is a writer, comedian, erstwhile performance artist, host of the long-running variety show Uncabaret and the ensemble audiobook So You Need to Decide, and one of the founders of the alternative comedy movement on the West Coast, which emphasizes storytelling, vulnerability, and process over setups, punches, and polished product.

LA's coolest creative consultant

It’s okay if these questions don’t have easy answers. It’s even better if they don’t have answers at all, as this is how <a href="https://fs.blog/finite-and-infinite-games/">infinite games </a>begin. But even then, you need to decide, so limber up.

Love the questions

Let’s say someone else tells their version of your story first. Will you seethe with envy? That’s a sign that it may be the right project for you.

Why you? Why now?

If you’re frustrated or bored, or your apartment is full of junk, have some adventures. Set your baggage on fire. Or start small. Tend to the little adventures you’re already having.

Live more

Nothing good happens in a vacuum — you just suffocate. We are who we are in relation to others. Find something to show up for and commit to delivering, especially if you don't feel ready.

Deadlines are lifelines

Practice should be practical. It’s not an affront to the muse when you choose to work on ideas you have reason to believe you can sell. Accept the realities of your business, focus your efforts with remunerative rewards in mind, and then be as weird as you want within those parameters. Your voice will come through, and someone might hear it.Success is a healthy thing for an adult to want. Now more than ever, the world needs honest artists. Speak up and get a nice enough megaphone that your voice can be heard. Your self-righteous self-starvation is a luxury you  (and we) can ill afford.

Be poetic, but practical

When you free yourself to feel the music, the magic, and the flow of the way things go, life starts working out for you in ways you would never have premeditated.

Follow the green lights

Finding your people requires an open heart and a discerning, realistic frame of mind. Do not show your work to people just because you want them to like you. Some people secretly, or not-so-secretly, want you to fail. Others won’t get it. You must be picky as you create the conditions for the right people to adore what you do and come into your life.

Find the others

By taking my work more seriously, I’ve learned to take myself more lightly. To notice more is to fret less. The best commitments are the ones that set us free.

Notice what you notice

Unique creative inspiration from one of the most interesting and poetic voices in comedy.

Advice from alternative comedy guru Beth Lapides, founder of Uncabaret, on creativity, art, and life, for actors, writers, performers, and artists.

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The Wit, Wisdom, and Insight of LA's Coolest Creative Consultant

Each individual, Friedrich Nietzsche believed, has a responsibility to become their own hero. Less human dissatisfaction comes from weakness than from the denial of strength. An honest life requires refusing any recourse to the shelter of permanent victimhood and leaning wholeheartedly into your passions and abilities.

Embrace your Will to Power

Exercise : Make a list of your most profound desires. (Be sure to include the ones that may seem shameful or taboo — the things you want even though you don’t want anyone else to know you want them.) Are you actively pursuing them? How can you begin to integrate your desires with your current activities? Or do you need a big, radical shift?

Discover your true desires

Exercise : Identify a major challenge or obstacle you faced: a mismatched job, a poisonous relationship, or anything else that required a concerted struggle to overcome. Reflect on how it shaped your character and resolve. How can the discipline you learned from that experience help you get the life you want?

Overcome obstacles

Exercise : Spend 15 minutes daily in quiet reflection, contemplating your strengths, weaknesses, and goals.

Cultivate self-awareness

Exercise : Choose one area of your life (work, fitness, relationships) and make a plan to build trust in yourself by maintaining your standard of excellence, whatever it takes.

Pursue excellence

Exercise : Examine your moral beliefs, paying special attention to the ones that seem so obvious to you that you barely notice them. Do they serve you, or vice versa? Are there any you’d like to reevaluate or challenge? Remember: According to a Nietzschean worldview, you can believe what you want, and it’s better to do it on purpose.

Challenge herd conformity and conventional morality

Exercise : Write down your strongest and most unusual qualities and talents. How can they best serve you in your quest for self-realization and personal growth?

Be yourself

Exercise : Engage in a creative activity (writing, painting, music) to express your inner desires without the usual filters. If it helps, maintain a private journal or folder where you can exercise your creativity with minimal worries of being “canceled” or otherwise judged for the power of your creative courage.

Get excited about your creativity

Exercise : Identify a fear or insecurity that holds you back. Take a small step today to confront it.

Conquer fear

Exercise : Write a personal manifesto outlining your core values and intentions for authentic living.

Live authentically

Fortunately, the rewards are worth it, many times over. All it requires is… everything you’ve got.

To come into your full power requires accepting some heavy responsibilities, letting go of self-limiting beliefs and excuses that keep you small, and a willingness to get excited about your life again like you were as a child.

This process is not without risk. When you break social norms, no matter how gracefully or respectfully you do it, there are people around you who will resent you for breaking their tacit prohibition on doing things they choose to believe they don’t have the power to do themselves.

The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche provides a uniquely powerful toolkit for discovering and acting on your true potential.

How to apply Nietzsche's concept of the "will to power" in your personal and professional life to achieve success.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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9 Life-Changing Self-Empowerment Moves from an Unlikely Source

The cool thing about a compost heap is that you can throw whatever organic matter you want on it. (“Hold on to your anger,” Thich Nhat Hanh told bell hooks, “use it as compost for your garden.”)

The Compost Heap Of Creativity

If you’re just throwing stuff on the compost heap, you don’t have to worry about being pure, or perfect. (“Writing…always,&nbsp;always&nbsp;only starts out as shit,” David Rakoff said. It’s like “reverse-engineer a meal out of rotten food.”)

Eschew Perfectionism

And, as Brian Eno told us, “Beautiful things grow out of shit.”

Use Your Fertilizer

I am a compost heap - Austin Kleon

The repeat-intake of opinioneering stifles original thought even as you believe you are receiving more and more insight. (Hint: insight doesn’t arrive in quantity.) In actuality, bingeing on opinion-affirming media is an emotional and physical fix more than an intellectual one, even though the tools are words, facts, and arguments. It is ersatz learning, no more nutritious to your intellect than consuming a bag of chips is to your body — and probably with equivalent health costs over time.

Insight doesn't arrive in quantity

Set a goal to pull the plug on habitually reading opinion-adjacent news or political media.

Reject "comfort media"

How do you know when you’re imbibing comfort media? Repetition. It’s when the argument is one you’ve read before and are reading again to restore a sense of validation.

Don't read the same arguments multiple times

Actors and opera singers often do their worst work in the presence of absurdly friendly crowds, and their best in the presence of crowds which sit silent and unmoved.

Challenge your mind

We derive a visceral thrill and probably a dopamine rush from reading things that affirm what we already believe. This is especially true of emotional subjects like religion and politics. “Opinion…

How to Tell a Story and Do Live Storytelling at a Moth Story Slam (and Why You Should)

The Wit, Wisdom, and Insight of LA's Coolest Creative Consultant

9 Life-Changing Self-Empowerment Moves from an Unlikely Source

I am a compost heap - Austin Kleon

Reject “Comfort Media”

Emerson Dameron