My quest started from being called funny, to growing and learning more about myself in ways that lead to me being called a good number of those other things you mentioned. Even if only once. And I cherished those times dearly.

However, when my mentality breaks down every so often because of depression, like I’ve been going through lately, I always just go back to “funny” and work my way back up, while reminding myself that I just need to keep putting in a touch of effort to make it back up out of the “funny guy” rut again.

I’m not any sort of specialist on this, and am not saying this is a way that works for everyone though, just sharing my thoughts and experience in the matter as I definitely empathize with your TED talk.