In August 2008 Marc Hogan was bet £1 that he couldn’t become a stand up comic in less than 12 months and perform a one man comedy show at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in August 2009 for 21 nights. He won the bet!
I can’t make you thin, confident or more successful, only you can do that but perhaps this will help?
Last week, my wife Kirsty asked me, “So what are your New Years Resolutions?”
2009 had been a momentous year. I had in 11 months became a comic and had performed a one man, 1 hour comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival the world’s largest comedy festival for 21 nights.
I can honestly say it was the most exhilarating, depressing, terrifying, and hardest 11 months of my life…
As a public speaker I now share that story with businesses to help them achieve their goals.
I recently came across some research by Professor Richard Wiseman on the subject of motivation
Professor Wiseman tracked more than 5000 participants from around the world who were attempting to achieve a wide range of goals including losing weight, gaining a new qualification, quitting smoking etc.
One group was followed for 6 months, the other for a year. At the start everyone was confident of achieving their goals, however by the end only 10 percent of participants had achieved their goals.
The successful 10 % used the following techniques:
1) Made a step-by-step plan;
2) Told other people about their plan;
3) Focused on the good things that would happen when they achieved their plan;
4) Rewarded themselves for making progress;
5) Recorded their progress.
Now whilst I didn’t use all of these techniques, I did do the majority of them. For me the biggest influence for achieving my comedy goal, was telling other people, simply because I couldn’t bare the thought of failing in front of everyone.
Even when friends, other comedians and business customers thought I was mad and told me it couldn’t be done, I continued to broadcast what I was doing. I found that telling everybody I met increased my commitment and made me persevere.
So this year I’m making public that I am going to write a book. It may be a thin book, but it will be a book that I will have typed with my own fair hands at 3 words per minute.
Apparently the average book is 30,000 words long, so that’s 10,000 minutes, which is about 166 hours.
If I can write for 1 hour a day I should be finished by June!
So what are you going to achieve this year? Feel free to tell everyone!
I also want to loose ½ a stone… Now where did I put that Paul McKenna book?
Marc
