Stephen Colbert’s Lesson on Failure: You Must Learn to Love the Bomb
Life is filled with moments of success and triumph, but it is also full of failures, and it seems that they could not be worse. Take it from humorist Stephen Colbert and learn to enjoy those moments.
You probably know Colbert as a former host of The Colbert Report, a former correspondent for The Daily Show and a future host of Late Night, but at one point he was just a young performer from the improvised Second City comedy troupe. In a recent interview with GQ, Colbert explained the most important lesson he has ever learned from his director Jeff Michalski right before his first pro show:
“You have to learn to love the bomb.” It took me a long time to really understand what that means. It wasn’t “Don’t worry, you’ll get it next time.” It wasn’t “laugh at it.” No, it means what is written. You must learn to love when you fail … Accepting this, the discomfort of failure in front of an audience forces you to penetrate the fear that blinds you. Fear kills thought. “
You may not be doing improv comedy on stage, but you are improvising every moment of your life. The times when you bombed are the defining moments of your life. Accept it, accept it, and learn to love it, because you are going to bomb again. Are you going to leave the stage or make sure the show continues?