Ep 94 Rewrite Your Past, Rewire Your Future — The Comedy Cure with Merit Kahn

Welcome back to Morning Cup of Brand Spark, the Mirror Conversations. Today's guest is someone who's quite literally her entire life, on stage, under lights, and in front of a crowd. Merit Kahn is the playwright, producer, and performer behind Optimistic Personality Disorder, a hilarious, heart-hitting one-woman show about life's messiest plot twists. She's a keynote speaker.

an emotional intelligence expert, and a woman who took her entire 50-year story, broke it apart, and then rewrote it through the lens of comedy. Her mirror moments arrived in several different acts. This is a conversation about rewriting your past, reclaiming your narrative, and laughing your way into a future that actually fits you. So let's get started.

Merit, thank you so, so much for joining me today on Morning Cup of Brand Spark

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (01:27)
Well, I am happy to be here.

Before we dive in on all of the deep stuff, your one woman shows tagline is, if a Ted Talk and a tequila shot had a baby, it would be this show. I love it, it's awesome.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (01:41)
Thank you.

It's very accurate.

And since I always ask everyone, what's in your cup this morning or today? And don't tell me it's tequila yet.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (01:52)
It's not. I'm a coffee girl, so it's coffee.

now are you joining from?

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (01:58)
I'm in Denver, Colorado.

And if you could describe your week in one word so far, how was your week then? Yeah.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (02:06)
My week, oh my.

I would say momentum week. I am building the tour of my One Woman show for 2026. And so I've just mapped out where I wanna be for first quarter and Chet, GPT and I made a nice spreadsheet of, yeah, oh yeah. Just trying to find all the right theaters and.

Are you homies?

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (02:29)
who are the right contact people. And now I'm just begging theaters to call me back. It's like, hey, I would like to rent your place. I would like to give you business. And now I'm why people in the theater world are always starving because no one calls you back. So I don't understand. Yeah, it is strange.

Like, hello?

It's very strange.

And before we go into your mirror moment stuff? Where's your show? Is it all over the US?

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (02:52)
Yes, so I have already performed New York, Chicago, Denver, Florida, Charlotte, St. Louis, South Dakota, Nebraska. And in first quarter 2026, I am planning Salt Lake City area, Denver, more Denver shows, as well as Southwest Florida and Kentucky. So.

Ooh, of all places.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (03:14)
Yeah, it's a strange route, but I try to build my calendar around where my boyfriend's going to be teaching stuff so we can travel together.

are you coming over

When are you coming over here to Europe?

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (03:23)
Uh, you know, Europe's on my radar screen and, uh, yeah, I think I've got a lot of work to do in, uh, in the U S and Canada for 2026 and then 2027 we'll, we'll head across the pond.

one day.

Awesome, I'll help find you theaters here. So let's go into your mirror moment So if you take me back to 2014, that was your first standup workshop or so, right?

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (03:40)
Perfect! You're on!

Hmm

Yes, I took a stand-up comedy class because I wanted to learn how to be more deliberately funny to help my keynote speaking business. And it was life-changing. I had no idea. I thought I was just going to learn how to write a good joke. And what ended up happening was I did my first seven minutes of original comedy and I had never been so scared in my life. And I'm on stages all the time in front of thousands of people, but

this was a whole different ball game and I, I just was changed forever. just, the idea, the opportunity to hear people laugh at like your original content was just, just life changing. And I learned how to think like a comedian. think more than anything, that's really what was the moment. Yeah.

And that's really different.

I mean, a lot of my audience and a lot of my colleagues are women speaking on stage. how does that differ from standing on stage deliver a comedy?

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (04:47)
Well, in my keynote business, you pay for the content. know, I'm entertaining enough to help you understand and want to stay for the content, but it's the content, right? I speak to sales and leaders and it's about emotional intelligence and sales strategies. So it's about the content. On a standup comedy stage, the goal is you are laughing every seven to 10 seconds. That is a whole different ball game.

Yeah, you're teaching. ⁓

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (05:13)
And yeah, that I think though, learning to think like a comedian was the best therapy I've ever had. And I didn't know it at the time how badly I would need it. But at that time my marriage was tanking and it would be two years later when my comedy coach, ironically, was the one who told me my marriage wasn't going to make it. Not my therapist I had been with for five years. yeah. yeah. Well, because comedy mirrors life and the brand of comedy that I practice is, is I write original comedy, you know, like

Wait, what? How did that happen? Tell me.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (05:40)
Some well-known comedians have made very good careers out of like, what's the deal with old people backing out of the driveway? But my comedy is very personal. So you learn a lot about me and I look at the things in my life that frustrated me. And then I look at them through the lens of comedy and it no longer frustrates me because I have found the funny and it just shifts your perspective.

Yeah.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (06:04)
once I learned to think like a comedian, just everything in my world changed. And it was because my jokes were getting really mean about my husband at the time. And my comedy coach, like, I remember one joke. I wish I could remember what the joke was, I'm sorry, but she said, she's like, you're not allowed to do that joke on stage. Like you've crossed the line, you're gonna make your audience uncomfortable. And that is no longer like funny. That is harsh.

You have to dig in somewhere somehow, sometime.

or it's just funny to 5%.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (06:34)
And so, yeah, yeah. So

I was like, all right, well, yeah. And then she told me my marriage wasn't gonna make it. six months later, I filed for divorce because she was right.

Wow, and then you also chose to bring some of those life stories into your comedy act from that point on, didn't you?

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (06:51)
Yes, so my next big moment was 2019 when, so it was my 50th birthday and I wrote, I rewrote my life story through the lens of comedy. And it's, it turned into a, you know, it's a 75 minute one woman show. It's got heart, it's got life lessons and you are laughing throughout my entire life story.

because I learned to laugh through my life story. And like anybody, know, everybody has ups and downs. If you make it to 50, you have had a roller coaster ride of some sort. And I just think by the time you get to 50, you got to kind of look at all of it and go, all right, that was ridiculous. Yeah.

We've all had that, right? Like we've all had these experiences and

to be able to laugh at yourself or to look at it through that lens, I think there's a really huge power in that.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (07:51)
And what I thought was an unintended consequence, I mean, I just thought I was writing a comedy show and I have had more people come up to me after being in a comedy in that show's audience and saying how much it impacts them and how they saw themselves in my story and it gave them some peace around their own story and they are going to start to look at things a little bit differently. And that was happening more.

than any of the keynotes that I was doing. No disrespect to all the keynote work that I've done. It's all very good, but it was amazing the impact you can have, because it wasn't my intention to impact. It was my intention to entertain. And through that intention, the purity of that intention, the real life heartfelt moments and lessons really shined through. And now the next iteration of that is I'm actually doing things, something I call the work show experience.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (08:43)
So, you you can be in the audience and be entertained by the show, but before and after that experience, I'm going to pull back the curtain. I'm going to show you exactly how I found the stories in my life, how I did learn to think like a comedian, how I was able to rewrite my stories, not so that you could, you know, perform them on a stage necessarily, but so that it gives you a little bit more freedom to really shift the future because your future is your...

Mm-hmm.

⁓

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (09:12)
creating your future based on the narratives you have of your past experience. So if you can shift that and look at your past experiences with some humor, then it really gives you some new possibilities in your future.

Yeah, you talk about being able to rewrite your past, to rewire your future. Is this what you mean? Yeah. And is there one particular story in your life that you have completely rewritten yourself? What is the most important one? the most impactful to you? No!

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (09:28)
Exactly. Yeah.

Oh, yes, I have. have bunch of the stories. The most important one. Oh my, I don't want to give away my, I don't want to give away my whole show, but, um,

I mean, there's obvious ones like, you know, I was married to a narcissist for 17 years and, you know, partly I'm kind of embarrassed about that, to be honest, you know, it's like, how does a strong, capable, independent, empathetic woman, you know, allow herself to be in

such a dysfunctional relationship for so long. And, you know, I was quite embarrassed how I really like lost myself over all that time. And it really wasn't until I started, you know, understanding more what being in an emotionally abusive relationship entailed and all of the hallmarks of that, that I was able to then...

find some humor and some light around it. And I think that was probably, I mean, it was one of my most important relationships in my life. we have a child together and that was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. infusing some comedy in that relationship loosened the grip.

for me and it allowed me to, you instead of being frustrated by some of the things, you know, that he would say or do, I was like, ⁓ well, it's hilarious that I thought it was going to go to, I'll give you an example. You know, we had a frustrating marriage for a long time. And I remember, and I've always been a journal writer. So I have hundreds of journals from my past.

I was writing in my journal about how frustrating this divorce process was. And then I wrote something like, you know what? I, I really feel like this is going to go well though. I feel like in the end we're going to still be friends and this will be smooth. And then I looked at what I wrote and I'm like, my God, I think I have a, I think I have a serious problem with optimism. I think I have, yeah, I think I have optimistic personality disorder. And that was that.

They're like, hello?

That's where it came from, the show name.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (11:42)
that, you know, the fact that I thought my marriage, like when we were in love and we didn't get along, but in divorce, we were going to be friends and this would be smooth and easy. Like that's, that's insane. Right. No, it doesn't. So that was, you know, and then I looked back on my life and I'm like, I've always had optimistic personality disorder. but the, twist is that, you know, I think being an optimist is a

Because it never ever, ever happens. When has it ever happened? Never.

fun.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (12:10)
is a good thing, but you need to be a little rooted in reality and I have learned better to do that. Yes, yes.

You have learned that, yes.

As women, we're often told to move on, not rewrite. can you think of a reason why women struggle to give themselves this permission to reset or retell their story in their own way, their own narrative?

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (12:32)
Well, that's a great question. think women are, you know, we're hard on ourselves and there's so many iterations. don't like to generalize and say like all women are like this or all women are like that. But I do think for me personally, I have an aversion to quitting, right? Like I don't wanna quit something, but, I'm kind of a good girl, you know? Like I wanna hang in there. I want everybody to be taken care of. I wanna keep the peace.

course.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (12:58)
And so I might be more inclined to stick with something and not really address all the ways that it's unhealthy to stick with that. And I think certainly mothers, we definitely do this, we put everybody before ourselves. And so I think there were a whole host of things that were going on. And it wasn't until I really...

Yeah, we totally do.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (13:22)
was looking at my life story. Now at that point, I had already been divorced. So I got divorced in 2017. My life-changing show was written in 2019, but it was that process of going back through my journals and reminding myself like who I really am. I found myself, it was sort of like, you know, it was the story became the journey back to who I've always been.

And you found yourself in that, huh? Right? Yeah.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (13:48)
And who I've always been was a performer and an entertainer and I lost that. And so getting back to that, I think is, was important for me. And I like to be able to help women and men too. think, you know, men get short shifted. I'm the mother of a son. I feel like there's a lot of resources for women to do these creative things and get in touch with themselves and men kind of get a little short changed, you know, but.

That's awesome.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (14:12)
Like my boyfriend is a military vet and I see a lot of value in being able to take the process that I went through and take people who have been through traumas to be able to find some humor in those experiences to give them a little bit of a looser grip on what drives them and what has been frustrating.

Mmm.

Yeah.

I think the world would be a much better place if we can actually come to terms with a lot of the stuff. I mean, what is it? Nine out of ten people have had a traumatic experience? the amount of people who have been through something is insane. Yeah, ten out of ten? Ten out of ten. That one's lying.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (14:43)
about, right? I don't know who that last one is. Who's the last one? Who's that guy?

Totally. Yeah.

So I think

having way to release that, I whether it's going to a show or whether it's trying to find a way to actually come to terms with your own, gosh I can only just imagine. And also in business as well. I mean we're all under a lot of stress. I mean we're all business owners too. Being able to come to terms with some of that and finding the release and laugh at some of the shit that happens there too. I mean we're all human, right? All of us.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (15:02)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta learn to laugh. I always say laughter lightens the load you hold, you know, we're all holding so much. If, if you can lighten it up, lighten your grip on it, lighten the weight of it, then you really can hold more. And that's, you know, that's just always been my motto.

And if there's someone listening today who feels stuck in their story or stuck narrative that they didn't choose themselves, What is one tiny shift or one thing that you would recommend that they could try today to get past that?

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (15:50)
Yeah, one of the exercises I do in the work show experience program is I have you do an inventory of your beliefs and many beliefs I call hand me down beliefs. Like you just, you can identify them. There are things like, you know, money doesn't grow on trees or I'm too young or I'm too old or right. Like there's just, you know, I don't look the part. there's just many beliefs that we have about many different things in our lives. And when you can write them down and just kind of look at them.

you get a chance to see, this belief serve the future that I want for myself? Or did I get handed this even as a young person and now it's time to hand it back? Like the old sweater that you got from your cousin that never really fit you, that was a hand-me-down sweater, so hand it back. And yeah, the point is that those beliefs, just because you've had them for a long time, doesn't make them any more real.

Goodbye.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (16:43)
than the belief that you instill in this moment, brand new. Like, why is the old one any more true than the new one you would create now? And there is no evidence for any one of, you know, the old one being more of the truth, or the truth at all. So I think that gives people a lot of freedom to be able to really look at the beliefs and choose them newly. know, choose the ones that you have that support you and...

hand back the ones that don't support you for where you want to go.

That's very good advice and helps people to reframe it a bit, right? After everything you've rewritten in your own life, through your story, through your journey, through your comedy, through your businesses, all the different things that you've done, what's one belief that you refuse to carry forward into the next chapter of your life?

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (17:33)
I don't know. thing that is coming to me now is that it has to be hard. Like you have to pay your dues. I feel like I've paid my dues, you know, in my sales business as a keynote speaker. You know, there's comedians. I mean, I do stand up comedy and I tour with a group called Moms Unhinged, which is a lot of fun. And I have my one woman show, but I feel like I've talked to other actors who

I bet.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (18:02)
have their own shows and they're like, well, you got to pay your dues, you got to do this, that, and the other thing. And I'm like, or I can do it a whole different way. And, you know, I mean, I, I'm not opposed to doing the hard work, but I don't, I don't have 20 years to be, you know, like learn the theater world, like crash course, let's go, it's game on, you know? And, you know, I, I think that, the new belief that I am

really working to embrace is this can be smooth and easy. I can attract the right sponsors who want to get in front of the audiences of primarily women, you middle-aged women and have a live endorsement from somebody who, you know, has built a relationship with all the people sitting and watching the show. And I feel like, you know, there's a really good story to tell.

and the right sponsors are gonna find their way to me and be thrilled with a partnership where I can promote them and then the show can do some good. And yeah, and I think that that will make it easier for me to do the work that I'm supposed to do in this world.

and you're still doing the work because just being there, just being out there, just doing the show, you're already impacting people's lives. So, thank you so, so much. Where can people find you?

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (19:21)
Thank you.

Go to opdshow.com. So it stands for optimistic personality disorder. You could also type the whole thing in optimistic personality disorder.com and you'll learn more about the show. There's always a let's talk button. you can send me a message there. You can book time on my calendar. Anything that I've said sparked you. If you have a theater or you're interested in sponsoring a great show or partnering with me in some way or.

seeing the show, can buy tickets there. It's, the hub of all things, opdshow.com. and I'm just Merit Kahn on LinkedIn and you'll find me there too. I also have Merit Kahn at Instagram and Facebook. So it's all Merit Kahn

Well, I thank you much for joining me. It was a pleasure.

Merit Kahn, OPDshow.com (20:09)
Thank you, Gina.

Well that was today's Morning Cup of Brand Spark with the brilliant, hilarious, and deeply human Merit Kahn. a reminder that you may not be able to change the events of your past, but you sure absolutely can change the story that they tell about you. When you rewrite the narrative, you rewrite the future. If this episode made you smile, breathe.

or rethink your own plot twist, share it with someone who needs a reminder that their story is still editable. Until next time, keep your coffee warm, your mirror close, and remember, sometimes the only way through it is to laugh at it. And let yourself.