Read the full transcript of Comedian and Actor Drew Lynch’s talk titled “Why Curiosity Gets You Farther Than Ambition” at TEDxNashville 2022 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Monkeys and the Wall
DREW LYNCH: Two monkeys are throwing shit against a wall. After an hour, the first monkey stops and says, “I’m exhausted. What if we can’t get any shit to stick?” To which the second monkey replies, “I don’t know, should we try mine?”
Now the thing that I want you to take away from that story is that I’m hilarious. But I also want you to explore the idea of living curiously versus living ambitiously and how a shift in that perspective has gotten me farther in my personal and professional journeys.
My name is Drew Lynch. I’m a stand-up comedian and I’ve stuttered almost my entire adult life.
Early Ambitions
Growing up, all I ever wanted was to be an actor. I was ambitious at an early age and so I attended a performing arts school that would require me to ride the city bus at 11 years old in Las Vegas by myself. Every day on those commutes I read all of Neil Simon, Tennessee Williams, Shakespeare and all of my hard work was paying off because the very first play I got cast in, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I landed the lead role of Oompa Loompa. I know a lot of people think that Charlie’s the lead, but you know what, if you don’t have workers, you don’t have a factory, so anyway.
After middle school, I got accepted into the Las Vegas Academy, which is a very competitive performing arts high school where I took musical theater TAF classes and taught myself piano.
Everything was going according to plan, so much so that in my first year of living in L.A., I landed an agent, booked projects with Disney, and was being considered for TV shows. One day, the comedy club was hosting a pickup softball game nearby, and so I went and elected to play shortstop.
The Life-Changing Accident
During the game, a grounder got hit my way, and when I went up to field it, it popped up and hit me in the throat. I fell back and hit my head on the ground. Now, not knowing anything about concussions, I went home and went to sleep that night, and when I woke up the next day, I was stuttering. I was immediately rushed to the hospital where doctors from all over came to study my case.
It was eventually explained that while the concussion was severe and my speech was different, it appeared to only be temporary and should return to normal in a few weeks. A few weeks goes by, and my voice has not healed. I can’t go on auditions, so my agent drops me. Friends feel weird about it, and they start to distance themselves.
My parents want me to move back home with them. It was starting to look like rock bottom until one day in the mail I receive my hospital bill. Now it’s rock bottom. So what do you do if you’re me?
This wasn’t the plan. This looked like the opposite of a plan. This is chaos. I was supposed to be an actor who people took seriously.
Now I’m a joke, feeling embarrassed, isolated, humiliated, and on top of that, the acting door was firmly closed. Funny thing about doors, sometimes you’ll watch somebody walk right into one because the door clearly says pull when they pushed. Do you really find out who they are in that moment? Because they’ll either lash out and get pissed at the door for not going the way they wanted it to go, or they’ll realize they goofed up and laugh at themselves.
Shifting Perspective
And laughing at myself is precisely what I was missing. I was so fixated on this obstacle that I didn’t realize how heavy it was making me, that I was becoming the thing that was impossible to move. So I shifted my focus to a more curious outlook. I thought, what if rather than kicking, screaming, and demanding this door open for me, what if I went and knocked on another one?
What if comedy could truly restore the balance after a tragedy? If rather than hiding my stutter in conversations, what if I was the one to make fun of it in plain sight? And so I joked with people about how tough it is for me at drive-thrus and going on first dates and what it would be like if my voice was the voice of your GPS. I like that you’re just getting that.
I noticed people feeling lighter about my situation because I was no longer burdened by it. Suddenly, this accident felt like a gift. This accident felt like it was on purpose, all because my perspective on it had changed. Professional opportunities started to happen again as well.
Not long after my injury, I won a local comedy contest. The video of that set got discovered by Bo Burnham, who asked me to open on his theater tour. Colleges started requesting me from all over the country. My life was back on track, and all of my hard work was paying off yet again because eventually I got on America’s Got Talent.
And me being naturally ambitious, I decided I was going to win the show. I decided. The final night came down to me and one other contestant, and just before they announced the winner, I realized I’m now moments away from being validated for all of my hard work. And then I lost.
Another door closed. Another chance to prove I was good enough. Another reminder that I wasn’t. So let’s talk about monkeys.
The Monkey Metaphor
The ones from earlier, specifically. We all know the old adage about throwing against the wall until something sticks. But I assign characters and dialogue to it because I believe looking at things in a playful way is the inherent lesson in my adaptation.
The first monkey, the one who was adamant on getting shit to stick, represents drive. This monkey is all about the destination, the goal, the gas pedal. The second monkey, the one who had the idea to try something else, represents curiosity. This monkey is all about the journey, the adventure, the steering wheel. Now you might think monkeys that represent destination and journey are opposites, but they’re actually teammates, using each other to navigate obstacles and experiences in order to move forward.
That’s the unique distinction here. We often look at our goals linearly, as if a sign that says road closed is deterring us. But what if the detour we are forced to take was never presented as a detour? If you never knew that road was closed, you would never know that wasn’t the original route in the first place.
You would just assume this was part of the journey. How quickly that second monkey accepts blocks as bumpers used to direct their journey, not derail it, is the important difference here. So don’t take the sign for what it says. Take the sign for what it is.
A sign. The day I lost America’s Got Talent is the day I realized ambition can only get you so far. It’s the day history repeated itself for me, where I wound up in a situation yet again leaning on drive to get across a literal finish line. Only this time, I came up short.
Embracing Failure and Curiosity
The feeling of losing something important was all too familiar for me. But rather than demand answers, I asked questions. I thought, how is it you can do everything right and it still ends up going wrong? Well, that’s because it didn’t go wrong.
It just didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. We’re conditioned to believe if we don’t achieve exactly what we set out to do, exactly the way we envisioned it, that it’s a failure. I’m thankful that it didn’t work out, because that drove me to my next idea, turning the wheel and hitting the gas again. People think I grew my audience on America’s Got Talent.
I actually grew my audience on YouTube. When I got done with AGT, I had 80,000 subscribers, which is a lot. Now I have over 2 million. Only this time, I didn’t make a plan to arrive at that number based on a destination using calculations like before.
This time, I embraced my opposite, making decisions based on impulse alone, based on the way I felt, not the way I thought. I bought cameras that I couldn’t afford. I got editing software that I knew nothing about. All I knew was that I knew nothing.
The concept for the show was simple. I would sit down in front of the cameras and vlog with my dog Stella about my life. She, along with an excellent resting bitch face, would have captions over her head throwing shade at me. The difference was this time, my goal was personal.
I would just vlog about a new experience once a week. And if I couldn’t do it, that meant my life was too predictable. My curiosity was not peaked, and therefore my journey was stagnating. This proved to be more challenging than, say, getting on TV, because I realized it doesn’t end.
It doesn’t have destination gratification. You just have to do it. I know there are people in here who need real evidence that something works before they start believing it, but that’s what makes the second monkey so much more successful. They believe it before they see it.
They accept it before resisting it. And I could tell you that two years after launching my YouTube channel, I hit a million subscribers. But I could also tell you that in that time, I ate at a Michelin star restaurant, got stuck on a zip line in Puerto Rico, and my dog met Conan. Sorry, Conan met my dog.
This play-based work formula was perfect, because not only did I have it generate new experiences for me, but my stand-up was also evolving. My work was improving because I was playing. How much more fun I was having making jokes about my life, and how much more successful and dynamic those stories proved to be. I’m not up here trying to convince you to be something you’re not.
I’m saying using your natural and unnatural tendencies is the key to unlocking your supernatural self. I’ve talked a lot about my professional life, and now I want to share something personal with you. I hate being interrupted. No one likes it, but it cuts a little deeper for me, because of the ten years I spent battling a stutter, and how tumultuous my relationship with it has been.
Dealing with Interruptions
I was initially mocked for having it, and then later called a liar for succeeding despite having it. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. I’m telling you this because one day, Comedy Central asked me to submit a half-hour stand-up routine. The problem was, people kept heckling me during the show, and so I would have to stop in order to address it.
Eight consecutive shows I filmed, and couldn’t get through a full set without being interrupted, which, interrupting someone who stutters, that’s like tickling someone who’s gaffy. It’s a huge risk. I didn’t expect that laugh to be so big, and so now… Your joy has thwarted me. And my memory.
Can we do a version where they don’t laugh, so I can get back on track, please? They are screwing this up. Let me just go back so I can remember here. Sorry. Bear with me. These are 15 minutes long. Some kind of criteria they have. I so badly… I got it, by the way. Just remember where I was for continuity. I don’t think I ever did this gesture.
I don’t think I ever did this gesture once. Well, that’ll never happen. I so badly wanted to go off on these people who were interrupting. I wanted to unload years of trauma, tell them how they’ll never know what going to speech therapy is like, or the carousel of mental health professionals I saw.
How I went to meditation retreats to manage my anxiety, and visited support groups, and took singing lessons, and micro-dosing, acupuncture, chiropractors, yoga, tai chi, sound baths, float tanks, alcohol, marijuana, life coaches, religion, and self-harm in order to cope with my situation. But instead of unpacking all of that, I went against my natural inclination. I stayed playful, and I addressed those interruptions in a fun way. Despite that footage being totally unusable, I stayed patient, and I asked questions.
I thought, what is the lesson here? Why do I have such a visceral response to this? Sure enough, a lady came up to me after one of the shows, and she said, “I loved what you wrote, but I want you to know that my favorite part was when you went off script.” And that’s when it clicked that the recurring theme for me was, and was probably always going to be, that I met my best when things don’t work out.
And then I had a deeper appreciation for all of the times the universe interrupted. I never got on Comedy Central, by the way, but I did release those audience interactions on my own channel, and as some of you may know, that led to even more people discovering me. If you’re so dead set on a path, you’re unable to zoom out and see that the universe could be showing you yours. It’s like when one monkey…
Yes, I’m back on monkeys. It’s like when one monkey keeps throwing his peels behind him as he’s walking, eating nanas. You can try to follow that same path, but if Mario Kart has taught me anything, it’s that you’re going to slip, and that Bowser’s a little bitch. People have asked me all the time how my stutter has gotten better, but as any person who stutters knows, it’s never truly, fully gone.
The Journey of Growth
And I know as I read that list back, it sounds exhaustive and inconclusive, but that’s my point. I got even more out of my initial goal because now I’ve got experiences, stories, and relationships along the way. I had a neurologist tell me soccer was good for brain health, and so now I have a new hobby. I had a friend recommend yoga for calming nerves, and so now I have a daily practice.
These are things that have brought me out of my head, away from planning my life, and more into my body, closer to living it. I think the less I’ve thought, the more I’ve done, and the more I’ve done, the less I’ve cared. And when you’re carefree, you’re not worried about what you sound like, where you’re going, how you’re getting there. You’re truly just along for the ride.
I want you to know I was terrified of this talk today. Not because I’m afraid of public speaking, not because it’s a format I’m not familiar with. I wrestled with this talk because I knew deep down the lesson I’m teaching is one I’m always resisting. I didn’t want to deliver this speech as an imposter, and so I knew that meant I would have to revisit the advice and accept it.
I was ambitious enough to take on this professional opportunity, and now I have to be curious enough to see where it takes me personally. Mastering the balance between ambition and curiosity is a lifelong journey. But if the mastery of your target performance is at this junction, the journey itself becomes the destination. So, if you’re naturally ambitious, you need to embrace your detours, and if you’re easily distracted, you need to confront your deadlines.
You have the resources of both monkeys, but we often forget that we’re neglecting one. So I say, if you need inspiration, play with your monkey. And if you need motivation, spank your monkey. Thank you.
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