POV: 18 years from now

What if we judged our actions today from the perspective of ourselves 18 years from now?

I’ve decided that it might be fun to give stand-up comedy a(nother) try. (Fun like getting a Brazilian wax or plunging into the balmy 50ish-degree waters of the San Francisco Bay kind of fun.)

Many many moons ago (ok 18 YEARS if you’re into accuracy) I had moved from San Francisco, CA to Reno, NV to be with my then-boyfriend (spoiler alert: now husband) and I was having a wee bit of a tough time adjusting to the Biggest Little City (read: crying every night for nine months straight.) So whether it was to break up the nightly tearfest or just to have something to do (literally anything dear lord please) I signed up for a class on “How to Do Stand-Up Comedy” at the Truckee Meadows Community College.

Our teacher was an octogenarian named Mike Price who had been in the business a long long time and spent most of class name-dropping comedians he had worked with -like Lenny Bruce! WHOAH!

Our “graduation” was to perform a three-minute set at a local bar.

I worked on that set so diligently and practiced out loud to my audience-of-one so much, that on the way over to the “graduation”, my audience-of-one turned to me and said…”babe, I don’t know how to say this, and maybe I’ve just heard it too many times, but I’m not sure if this is funny anymore”

Well.

Isn’t that just what every nervous performer needs to hear?

Luckily, it WAS that he had heard it too many times because I got laughs. A lot of laughs. Big ones. I got so many laughs that in my nervousness about getting booted off stage at exactly three minutes (as Mike Price threatened he’d do) I stepped on many of the laughs so I could get through all of my material.

Driving home I obsessed about that and every other mistake I made during the performance. And when I got the DVD of it back a few weeks later I was HORRIFIED to see myself on video and zeroed in on every little misstep, like this weird mouth noise I kept making *SMACK SMACK* (BTW a DVD for those of you too young to remember is a device used to play video content on a special kind of flat, round physical object that lets you watch movies from a physical disc instead of streaming or downloading them- cool right?)

But almost two decades have gone by since I saw that tape and last week when I found the DVD and hightailed it to my grandma’s to watch it (babushka for the win!) I saw it through very different eyes…

Wow I was young, and kind of a knockout, my hair was so thick, I had this great figure - my boobs were PERKY… I had… a spark! An energy and vivaciousness. And it was obvious how I much I loved performing.

Yes, there were definitely some minor improvements that could be made, both to the material and the delivery, but looking at myself at 24 as I’m about to turn 42 (kind of a fun little inverse thing happening there) all I felt was…pride. That girl DID IT. She got up on stage to perform her own material (even though it made her nervous enough to barf), she followed through on a class learning new things, doing homework and applying them, and she pushed through a ton of insecurities and doubts to end up on that stage. I was SO proud of her.

It’s easy(ier) 18 years later to feel that pride towards myself in a way that it’s not always easy to do in day-to-day life.

So what if, we play a little game of make-believe?

What if, every time you have to review your actions, whether that’s looking at a presentation you gave at work, or a video of you on the beach with your kids, or your nightly review of everything you’ve done wrong that day (what? just me?) you pretend you are the you 18 years from now.

So for me, a 60-year-old Yuliya will now be the arbiter of what is good enough for 42 year old Yuliya. I have a feeling that 60-year-old Yuliya will be A) amazed at how young I look today and B) so freaking proud of the woman who was brave and did hard things and put herself out there.

And I have a feeling that you too will be a lot kinder to yourself today from the POV of YOU 18 years from now.

Give it a try, let me know how it works for you!

PS want to learn more about my latest creative adventure - stand-up comedy? Follow along on my Instagram as I document the whole truth and nothing but the truth, enjoy!