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Personality Breakdown
March 22, 2023
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If the answer of how to be a personality wasn’t so simple, it might be real easy!
When we think of personality, we think of bigger than life people, i.e. Melissa McCarthy, Will Ferrell, Jim Carrey, Elon Musk, etcetera. When we focus on personalities being like this gang, it may make us curl up in a ball and rock back and forth in a corner, knowing we could never play at this level.
Most people can’t, but there’s terrific news in this revelation. You don’t have to.
In my childhood, there was a sitcom called Happy Days with a character named the Fonz, and he was the representation of cool, so that time that the actor who portrayed him was on the Tonight Show, I was baffled to see this image played out so opposite.
GET REAL
We can all think of that night jock or afternoon talent who got the chance to be in morning drive, or the ones who got numerous chances to be in mornings in many markets, but just couldn’t gain audience. If it wasn’t because the station and format itself was broken, I can guarantee that the reason why they couldn’t gain an audience, is because they were conveying a character and not a real person.
There’s a reason why those who watched Happy Days religiously in the 70’s don’t remember the times the Fonz was so cool, but instead remember the times when he wasn’t. For example, the episode where the Fonz couldn’t admit that he was wrong and even became paralyzed attempting say it. We remember this, because a character who was so far from being like us, suddenly became exactly like us, and it created familiarity in our being, and made him likable beyond the one-dimensional hipness that defined his character.
You aren’t make believe, but it is the same nuance that is keeping you from the Promised Land of penetrating the souls of your audience. In a nutshell, we lead with ego and the cool person we want them to believe we are, and then we’re baffled that the ratings didn’t go up. When a character doesn’t appear real, it’s because it isn’t.
When Nick Cannon was my morning guy in New York City, he had this natural swag that I admired and was honestly jealous of, because he may have been one of the most naturally Fonziest humans I had ever had the honor of working with. But one day on the air, he revealed the 8-year-old Nicholas Scott Cannon sitting in the back of a car playing with his Gameboy, while his mother was inside the bar partying it up, with no concern what could happen to the boy in the parking lot.
CANNON BALLS
At that moment, Nick shifted from a cool I could never be, to a vulnerable, transparent and now even more outrageously likable human revealing fear and heart, and a childhood that was loaded with hope and conflict, as he made the statement, “she was inside looking for my next dad.”
There is a defense mechanism buried just below skin surface which will steer us away from sharing these kinds of truths from our lives, or a voice inside our heads that will sound an alarm more annoying than an EAS test to warn us from full transparency.
Have you ever watched someone walking into a store, and you witness them tripping as they walk, but there was nothing in their way to make them trip? What do they do? They look back as to find a hump in the surface or a brick, or something that had to have caused this blunder, but all they find is a smooth walking surface, and as red begins to fill their face they gander out to the parking lot to see if they can see anyone who may have witnessed them in their human form. Most times, their embarrassment will make them miss the fact that, there you are in your car laughing to yourself about their clumsiness.
And you aren’t laughing because they are less than you. You are laughing, because they have revealed that they are exactly like you.
LIKE LOOKING IN A MIRROR
What is the thing you’re not willing to reveal? Where are you being like the Fonz, where you want them to believe you’re the cool thing inside a leather jacket, when in fact, you’re hiding a childhood of hurt, a present life of doubt and character traits you see as weak or full of flaws?
I promise that the abuse you endured, the very abuse you are hiding, the same which is at the base of your neurosis, is not the part of you that an audience will hate, but the very thing they will admire, because they’re hiding it too, and wondering where the resolve is. The day you begin sharing in story form, with purpose and not as if you’re lying on a couch, not only will you find that the sweat starts to decrease the more you’re able to reveal, but you’ll get that call, email or DM from the person with the shortest, most powerful feedback you’ve ever received. They will say, “Thank You.”
And without spewing the bad times or getting caught up in the ‘my experiences are worst than yours,’ you will simply say, “You’re Welcome.” And you will both know exactly why. You will have found purpose in a life that was always meant to help others, and they will have begun the journey of resolve.
The key in becoming a personality, is as easy as breaking it down to its root word, Personal, and then realizing, you’re not done, there’s still some more editing that we can do to take it further. Person.
PERSONALITY, MAKE IT PERSONAL. PERSONAL, SHOW YOUR PERSON.
CBS Radio had just signed Nick Cannon to a 5-year extension in 2011 when his health forced him to leave his NYC morning show.
To be a personality, you must make it personal, and the only way to make it personal, is to reveal the person.
If the answer of how to be a personality wasn’t so simple, it might be real easy!
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