Make it a Meme
How creatively using humor can help us access new mindsets and beliefs
I recently watched Roger Federer’s 2024 Commencement Address at Dartmouth College where he shared the “tennis lessons” from his storied career that can be applied on and off the court. The second lesson he emphasized was, “It’s only a point” saying, “When you’re playing a point, it has to be the most important thing in the world because it is. But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you. This mindset is really crucial because it frees you to commit to the next point, and the next point after that with intensity, clarity, and focus.”
It’s the kind of reframe that I’m often working to produce in my clients as they endeavor to create meaningful mindset shifts in pursuit of personal and professional goals. As we all know, it’s easier said than done. It’s all too addicting, simple even, to default to negativity, rumination, and a desire to dwell on setbacks, failures, and the many, many things in life that are proving difficult or not proceeding as we expected. We beat ourselves up and create an internal pressure cooker that makes everything seem all too serious and existential. We end up working against the goals that the negative mindset is working so terribly hard to make us achieve!
Regardless of the client, the goal is, in effect, the same - get them to look at their mindset more objectively, create the space to make different choices, and instill different beliefs over time. The trick, of course, is in figuring out the access point that will enable them to do that. I’ve had a lot of success with techniques built upon modern neuroscience and psychological research, which I’ve written about extensively here. I’ve found that some clients respond really well to sensory work (See - “Battling Frustrating on the Golf Course.”) Some learn to use curiosity to notice how unrewarding a particular mindset, belief, or behavior has become and thereby update their brain with new “data” (See - “A Case of the What-ifs”). Others find the space through the ability to relabel emotions and make sense of physical sensations in more empowering ways (See - “Believing is Seeing: Understanding Modern Emotion Science”).
As much as I love talking and writing about these more scientific and technical techniques, I was recently reminded of a more creative and simple tool this week. It dawned on me during the course of a session with one of my clients that we can learn to take the pressure down by playing with the desire to catastrophize. The tool at hand? Humor. Let me give you a few examples to illustrate:
When I’m blowing up on the golf course and hitting a succession of bad shots (*a frequent occurrence), I often think of a video from the golf content creator, surreal.golf, where he portrays his future adult self watching the high school version choosing basketball over learning to play golf, while fake crying in the the background and dramatically yelling, “Noooo!!!” The caption of the video is “Could’ve been in the PGA by now;” a feeling every adult that’s become obsessed with golf around ~age 30 can surely relate to. It makes me laugh every time and lightens my mood by reminding me that sucking during a recreational round of golf is truly not that serious. A few laughs later and I’m miraculously able to hit some better shots again! (I’ll also add that I definitely could have been in the LPGA by now if I’d started learning as a kid…)
Every entrepreneur is likely familiar with the tendency to freak out during slow periods and dwell on the fear: “I’ll never have a new client or sale ever again!” For whatever reason, one of the things that has helped me the most is thinking about the process of getting new clients like a dating show (picture any relevant reality TV format from MTV circa the early 2000s). If one client doesn’t end up being the right fit, I find a healthy dose of humor in thinking about it as the wrong “match” and mentally picture each of us swiping left. Not only does it remind me to stop catastrophizing, but it serves as a reminder that someone not working with you does not have to be a sign that you’re horrible at what you do, but rather that you simply weren’t the metaphorical “one” for them. Surely we’ve all chosen to not date someone that we thought was a talented and wonderful human being but wasn’t the right long term match! If you can stay serious while thinking about swiping left and remembering some of the truly insane and comical TV shows from MTV during the early 2000s, more power to you.
For those of us facing career crises or desperately wanting to leave a job and feeling stuck or nervous about the hiring process, there’s a lot of humor to be found in just how robotic and ridiculous the interview process can be. I give you a quote from an old article from the satirical news media site, The Onion, to illustrate my point.
“At this point, hiring someone who doesn’t use bulleted lists, strong action verbs, or boldfaced keywords is completely out of the question,” said public relations executive Max Werner, who has been looking for office managers and a CFO since 2008. “And if you’re going to end your cover letter with ‘best wishes’ instead of ‘sincerely,’ I don’t care how experienced you are—you won’t be working for me.”
After reading a few Onion articles or rewatching a few classic Michael Scott clips from The Office, you might not be cured of all career related anxiety, but I’m willing to bet that you feel a bit lighter.
My point is that maybe it’s not that serious and creatively using humor can give our brain the space to open up to new information and re-access the ability to think strategically and critically. There are plenty of truly existential and devastating things going on in the world. These comedic tactics are not intended to make light of that. My hope is that for the life events and circumstances that don’t have to be quite so existential, these tools give you access to a mental reframe leveraging a sense of lightheartedness and laughter.
If you’ve spent time any time on the internet recently, and you’re curious to try this strategy out, I invite you to experiment with a few tools the next time you find yourself ruminating, catastrophizing, or dwelling on the negative:
Think of a comedic video or meme that speaks to your current mindset and mentally picture it the next time you find yourself succumbing to the pressure cooker of negativity
Write an Onion style satirical article describing your situation
Compose a fake tweet lightly poking fun at yourself (he hasn’t been active on socials as of late, but I always thought PGA tour golfer, Max Homa, was exceptional at this, and I miss his content). For example, he roasted himself for shooting six over par on Sunday at the 2022 Masters with the tweet below:
As Roger said, “It’s only a point” and maybe humor is the thing that helps you internalize that. Commit to the next point, the last one is already behind you.
**And happy U.S. Open weekend to all who celebrate. I’m personally excited to see some of our favorite pros shoot significantly over par #oneofus!