Often, we find ourselves striving to be our best whether its about ambitions, life goals, or even a desire to move forward until the end of what we call achievements. It takes a very long time to perfect your self and accelerate in any field of interest, perhaps almost like a never-ending process. In the book “Born Standing Up” by Steve martin, discusses his life journey, becoming one of the most influential comedians within the 20th century. His efforts and point of views about comedy drastically changed humor giving it a whole new look. Although he gained fame and notice throughout his career, he struggled and worked hard to master what he at the end gave up and continued on with another goal. In Chapter 6 of mastery by Daniel H. Pink, Mastery can be done only as bad as you want it and as hard as you are willing to work towards it. Mastery gives us humans a drive to move forward from any given point of our lives. Steve Martin's biography "Born Standing up" gave us a point of view about his journey to become a comedian, who struggled to master comedy and succeeded but wasn't satisfied, given that mastery can be something that you can achieve whether it be in a month or over the course of years or possibly decades, but that it is a never-ending cycle.
Mastering comedy can be a source of mindset, a performance that can either go wrong or right. There are two types of mindsets, one thinking that intelligence is something that’s either given to you or not, and the other theory given that intelligence is something that can be developed. “… Learning goals over performance goals, and welcomes effort as a way to improve at something that matter”(Pink121). Martin believed that in order to get to where he wanted he would have to work harder than ever, that getting every bit of knowledge about comedy would help him grow and be less boring, and so he did. “ I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success”(Martin1).He illustrated that he worked harder than ever just to show the four years of fame he got from his comedy, took 14 years to perfect and master comedy. He read many books and took up every possible gig multiple times a day to fix his mistakes and avoid any possible awkwardness in his shows. Although getting to mastery starts off with the right mindset, there are also some struggles along the road.
Martin’s experience to fame and mastery in comedy has led him to be driven and successful in not just comedy but writing, acting, producer, and musician. He has exceeded in all categories and excelled in being one of the most influential people of his time. To achieve mastery, pain and constant battle comes into play. Martin explains, ”My act was eclectic, and it took ten more years for me to make sense of it. However, the opportunity to perform four and five times a day gave me confidence and poise. Even though my material had few distinguishing features, the repetition made me lose my amateur rattle”(Martin65-66). He explains that no matter the scenario is keep pushing yourself to perfection and eventually you will perfect it. This gives us an idea that “Effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it”(Pink123). He gave hours and hours of effort and little to no sleep for mastering comedy. His point of view for comedy seemed to get a lot of negative reviews from critics and little to no response in audiences earlier in his career, leading to a substantial amount of effort and work for what he was driven and determined for.
Although he’s driven himself to the fullest, has he truly mastered comedy? The actualization of mastery is that “you can approach it. You can home in on it. You can get really, really, really close to it but … you can never touch it”(pink125). This article explains that no matter how high your goal is there will always be something above that. This system of perfection and mastery is a never- ending process. You are always going to reach your goals but there will always be more goals created along the lines or a constant change of what you find your interest in. Martin Explains “Moving on and not looking back, not living in the past, was a way to trick myself into further creativity”(Martin202-203). He describes his time in comedy as well but not realizing how well it was to him before the hardships. He wanted more and different, which led him to broaden his creativity to do other thing, excel on it, and move on. Showing that when you hit the peak of possibly mastering something, it will always switch up. Whether there is a higher level to it or you grow a sense of something different upon your interests.
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