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TEDxSpokane speaker built a career on teaching others to laugh at their problems
A TEDxSpokane speaker explains how standup comedy, hypnosis and mindset coaching became her unconventional career path.
By Alisa Volz | FāVS News Reporter
Main Points
Brooklyn Dicent, who spoke at January’s TEDxSpokane program, hasn’t always been known as the “Chief Happiness Officer.”
She was working as a corporate trainer in Portland, Maine, when she discovered standup comedy. She had never been to a comedy club before.
“I decided to watch a show and thought, ‘People are paid to make people laugh?’” Dicent said. “This is my job.”
Dicent said she took a comedy class and her life was changed.
“I discovered that the tools that we were learning as comedians can really help change the world because there are comedic tools that are really designed to help people reframe challenges in their lives,” she said. “That’s what I call turning problems into punch lines.”
HR accidentally hired a comedian
Organizations began to hire her to bring humor to their workplaces through performance. Then it became something bigger, she said.
“It was really like, ‘how do you really transform and change how you think?’ so I changed the title from ‘humor at work’ to ‘happiness at work,’” she said. “And of course HR loved it, so I was getting booked.”
In the evenings, she found success performing her improvisational set, “Comedy Unscripted,” in comedy clubs throughout Seattle.
“There was no preparation for it — It was just improvised comedy by working with the people in the room,” she said. “I’m a little intuitive and psychic as well, and I just started to blend it all.”
During her shows, Dicent began to bring people up on stage and help them find humor in their problems, she said. Once they learned how to laugh at their challenges, Dicent said they felt better.
“I started bringing that to corporate America and teaching people how to overcome their challenges by reframing how they see things using the tools of comedy,” she said.
When punch lines stopped working, she studied the brain
During one performance, Dicent said she couldn’t reach the participant on stage to find how to solve their problem. Dicent then decided to learn about psychology.
“I need to figure out how to get inside participants’ minds,” she said.
Dicent first sought out Marisa Peer, a therapist and author, to learn about hypnotherapy, a therapeutic method that relies on deep, trance-like focus. She then studied Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), a practice that focuses on language and behavior.
“Now I’ve got the skills,” Dicent said.
Dicent uses her skills to help people who are dealing with change, burnout and a lack of mental energy at work.
Teaching people how to have their own agency is one of the most powerful tools, Dicent said. She recommends people practice shifting to a positive mindset, regardless of what the environment is like.
“I teach people how to shift their energies themselves, no matter what the culture is, no matter what’s going on,” Dicent said. “It’s not the boss, it’s not the job, it’s you.”
She started to read the audience like a human mood ring
Then, when Dicent would bring people on stage, she experienced something she calls “the awakening.”
“All of a sudden, energetically, I would know things about them that I really shouldn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know them and I was getting this information. Then the right side of my brain felt like it was freezing a little bit, like, this cold, and I was just saying things. I’m like, ‘Am I freaking channeling?’”
Dicent said the work she has done as a hypnotherapist allows her to see subtle energy shifts in people’s emotions that give her insights about their fears, doubts and worries.
“When I’m in the room, people can feel it,” Dicent said. “People feel like, ‘this person can help me somehow,’ and that’s what was happening over at the TEDx.”
Charlie Wolff, a licensee and curator at TEDxSpokane, said Dicent’s positivity and enthusiasm stood out.
“The curation committee pulls together anywhere from 10 to 20 speakers or performers,” Wolff said. “We said, ‘Gosh, this happiness chief happiness officer sounds like a great addition to what we’re talking about.’”
While Brooklyn’s comedy drew attention, it was her experience in hypnotherapy that provided the fresh outlook TEDxSpokane curators were looking for, Wolff said.
“Her application was more along the lines of hypnotherapy, and how what we really need to do is start the day thinking about what we want to accomplish and how we can lead people just by changing our own attitude at the beginning of the day,” he said.
The Chief Happiness Officer is here to help
Dicent said she attended a VIP gathering after the TEDxSpokane program, where people began confiding in her about their lives.
“I had a flight that night and I almost changed it because people wanted to talk to me about their life, what’s going on for them and how my story resonated with them,” she said. “They were right on the precipice of wanting to do something else, but just didn’t have what they thought was courage. I was like, ‘No, it’s your mind. You’re just not wired to do the thing that you want to do.’”
Dicent said when people aren’t sure what to do, their brains’ neural wiring pulls back and they feel fear.
However, the Chief Happiness Officer is there to help.
“The irony is that courage happens after you do the thing, so then how do we get to that place?” she said. “I discovered that energetically, I can see what’s getting in the way for people and talk them through that and then get their brain to go, ‘Oh, I can do this, and here’s how we make the connection.’ I help people to shift their mental wiring.”
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