The Art of Being YAY

I can’t believe that we all made it through 2021. There were good times and bad for everyone, but we were resilient and it’s a new year to “put our best foot forward” as my Granny used to say. It’s the time for New Year’s resolutions to be made, if you do that sort of thing, and hopefully kept. Looking forward, now is the best time to set your intentions for the “Yay-est Year Yet” and I wanted to shine a light on my dear friend Aidan Park.

I met this magical individual when I had the opportunity to share the stage with him at the world-famous Laugh Factory in Hollywood and Long Beach for his LGBTQ+ night “Rainbow Pop!”  It was my first time venturing into the realm of stand-up comedy, and I’m so grateful I said YES to that experience. He brings me the UTMOST YAY and I’m sure he will have the same effect on you.

Aidan Park is an award-winning, internationally renowned keynote speaker, happiness coach, headlining comedian and bestselling author of, The Art of Being YAY: NSFW Memoir and Guide to Authentic Joy (with a foreword by Margaret Cho).

You have made a career out of being a hilarious stand-up comic. Knowing you and your story, most people would not turn to comedy like you have. How does being able to make people laugh help you?

Making people laugh through my story helps me feel less alone in the world. We all go through life feeling like we are all alone in our experiences. Or that our experiences are so weird, twisted, or shameful that if other people found out about our experiences, they would judge us or see us as broken.

In my act, I put it all out there. I was a homeless, undocumented, HIV positive teenager and a widow. I’m one domestic abuser away from being a Lifetime TV movie. But I found that as I started sharing about these “things one should not discuss,” I found such support, love, and acceptance from audiences who had similar experiences.

I think the worst thing in the world is to feel alone in your pain in this world. I am so grateful that comedy gives me a venue through which I never have to feel that way. Whatever you have been through, there are others who have been through it and eager to love you when you are open to it.

Your book, “The art of being yay,” is a formula for working on yourself and having a positive attitude in life. Why do you think so many people struggle with this?

I think that genetically we are all wired to look for problems. Think about in the cave dweller days – we would be out collecting berries or climbing trees or whatever, and a bear would appear and we would have to fight or flight!

To survive we had to stay alert! So, we have many years of looking for problems and potential dangers to remain alive. However, nowadays most of us are not in imminent danger but this habit has carried down through generations and we all still look for problems. We look for problems with our families, our jobs, our lives, our cars, our government you name it. This keeps us in a perpetual state of fight or flight.

To be able to CREATE the lives that we want to create, we must get out of fight or flight mode. We need to calm ourselves out of our survival instinct and become aware of our animal brain tendencies that do not apply in this new world anymore. It takes a great deal of awareness and intentional habit creation in order to effect change in our lives.

Past trauma from family, society, and many other places seem to affect so many people. How have you overcome those traumas in life?

First order of business was to start sharing that which I felt ashamed of. Shame can make one feel completely alone in the world. For example, I was raised in a very religious household and I felt like being gay made me absolutely unlovable. No matter how much I received from mom, or grandma or anyone else I always felt that if they knew this THING about me that was so unacceptable… I would be abandoned.

I think having someone to talk to about all those things that we feel ashamed of within ourselves is a must. I mean… I was molested when I was five years old and I thought it was my fault for 25 years! Unbelievable. So, I really believe that the first step is to share the trauma with someone and feel less alone.

Once that happens, then you can find strength in the fact that you are not alone, there is nothing wrong with you, there WAS nothing wrong with you and make choices based on what you want, rather than making up for a lack in character!

There are a smaller group of people in the world that are TRULY joyful aka “YAY!”. Do you think that people are born that way or is it a quality that must be worked for?

Joyfulness is a journey that must be worked for. I think to have joy, one must make joyful choices! At each moment everyone has a choice to pick a thought that feels empowering and positive or pick thoughts that justify the unfairness in the world. Every time you go to Starbucks you can express gratitude and be kind to the barista, or you can just take your drink and ignore them. 

At first when I decided that I wanted to be joyful I was mindful of my thought patterns, and deliberately chose actions and thoughts in my life that I thought would serve my joy. It is a journey that takes some effort and focus, but the rewards of living a life of “YAY” is totally worth the small amount of daily effort. 

It’s 2022, and we’ve both made it through some highs and lows this past year. What, if any, are your new year’s resolutions or what will you manifest for yourself in the year ahead?

The new year brings a wonderful opportunity to assess and start on a path of everyone’s greatest joy. First, I want to say that a joyful life is not possible unless an exciting vision of the future is present. A lot of people don’t really know how to set goals in a way that honors who they are as individuals with preferences/tastes, and worse yet, a lot of people don’t know how to manage the inner saboteur. 

Personally, I want a closer relationship between myself and money, my health, and my emotions. This sounds very “woo-woo” but I look at money health and emotions as entities which I have a relationship with. The more choices that I make daily that can honor my health, my money or my emotions, the closer relationship I will have with them, and the more success I will enjoy!

So, I’ve been being really conscientious of that! If I find a penny on the floor, I have been honoring it, because I honor money. If I go to the gym, it is an act of love for my healthy body, and so forth.