“If someone offers you an amazing opportunity to do something and you’re not sure you can do it, say yes. Then learn how to do it later.” — Richard Branson

“Yes” has magic within it. So often we are afraid of life — we fear failure, we anticipate the worst, we don’t know what to expect.

In doing so and often by saying “no” to opportunities, we reject many of life’s brilliant chances. These are often disguised as a new career prospect, an opportunity to step up at work, a surprise request from a friend, or any type of unfamiliar challenge. Anything that creates a spark of curiosity within us or generates some desire that typically lays dormant within our familiar days, is often our intuition guiding us to say yes (or at least to learn more).

But we let our fears, instead of our creativity and love, guide us and rationalize a “no.” I have seen it hundreds of times. Typically people who say “no” to opportunity love to convince you (or themselves?) why it was right for a list of reasons. I am here to say, yes can often be right! Deep down, we know when it is.

By saying yes, we often need to say no to others. This is not about being a “yes person” or feeling pressured to do things we don’t want to do. It’s about having the courage and conviction to do the things we know we really want to do. So much so sometimes, they scare us. Here are nine reasons to say yes to opportunity in your life:

1. You block the miracle if you don’t:

Opportunity sometimes knocks gently and does not wait for perfect timing. The truth is — there is no perfect timing! Marie Forleo says, “start before you are ready.” We need to trust that the universe has a bigger plan for us — one that we can only understand with hindsight. When we say no, we reject more than the opportunity, we reject the fun it brings, what it teaches us and the further gifts that can unfold if we don’t allow the initial yes.

2. There are an infinite number of reasons to say no — something is stirring the yes within you:

For something to be a question mark — a very considered decision — something, often deep inside of us, is saying yes. A no should be clear and obvious. Pay attention that little cheerleader for the yes for a while. Listen to what is has to tell you. It is often correct.

3. Someone believes you can:

To have the option of saying yes, someone or something believes you can do achieve something. North Face is not going to sponsor you to climb Everest in their clothing if it is wildly out of the question that you are capable. Take the opportunity as a compliment and harness the confidence other people have in you.

4. Yes leads to more doors (no is often closing the door):

When my husband was asked to transfer to New York City at age 23, many people thought it was too soon and that it was not a good idea. We are in our sixth year here and we agree almost every day it is the best thing we have done in our lives. The subsequent opportunities it has provided us have been truly abundant and humbling.

5. Opportunities do not always arise again — or at least the same ones:

Life and luck favor the bold. Sometimes when making a decision and considering both outcomes, the “no” outcome is connected to regret somehow. Regret is sometimes the biggest risk of all.

6. Life is richer, fuller, more vibrant:

When we say yes, we do more, create more, live more.

7. It attracts positivity:

The word itself is inviting and empowering. It’s like saying, “World, I got this!”

8. Stretch yourself:

Why are we all here if not to live the highest, fullest version of our lives? By saying yes, we invite possibility into our lives and the ability to learn what we are capable of and just how far we can go.

9. Life is short. Ask not why, but why not?

One of my favorite quotes from a young Steve Jobs is, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” A little perspective helps us abandon our fears.

Ask yourself for a change: What is the best that could happen? Think upon it. How does it feel? Marinate on that for a while. A yes might be your only option.

Where an improviser is going, there are no roads, only possibilities. The stage is an empty space that becomes anything at all. A choice is made and another one builds upon it, creating a world that only exists in the collective imagination of the players and the audience. For example, a player sits facing another player, also seated, leaning on an elbow as if there is a table between them. “Sorry I couldn’t take you to someplace a little nicer than this run-down old diner,” he says, then motions to a corner of the stage and tosses an imaginary quarter to his partner. “Go play a couple songs on the juke box.” “A real life juke box? From the olden days?” the other player responds, revealing that this character is much younger. “Yup, like in the olden days, when your mom and I went out on dates before you were born,” the first player says. Now we know they are a father and son. Their tone of voice, eye contact, and physicality establishes a dynamic. This simple, brief interaction is the heart of a human story generated by people having an impact on one another. We see this happen in real time.

An improvised story is created at the same time it is told. The players discover the dynamic along with the audience. The improviser’s skills use emotion, action and imagination to produce a story, characters, props — and a world — out of thin air. This rich creative experience is powerfully satisfying to the brain, which feasts on the activity and the joy of discovering moments and scenes that range from wildly comic to wonderfully compelling. The process of brain-to-brain and social-emotional interaction makes improvisation training uniquely effective for strengthening the capacity to cope with uncertainty, manage anxiety and boost the creative thinking that is so essential to navigating an increasingly complex world.

What makes improvisation delightful to experience also gives it a degree of difficulty that sounds intimidating to many people. Deep listening, focused attention, and openness to others’ require effort, emotional risk, and engagement. “When learning is challenging, you have to pay more and better attention to each idea, causing your brain to build stronger connections between neural networks, which embeds the new knowledge for later recall,” write Mary Slaughter and David Rock in Fast Company’s “No Pain, No Brain Gain: Why Learning Demands (A Little) Discomfort. “ When an experience has just enough discomfort to trigger the brain’s natural problem-solving capacity — just not so much that the prefrontal cortex shuts down — it stimulate a lovely burst of dopamine, the brain chemistry associated with reward that is linked to motivation and learning. Add to that the laughter and social bonds generated by this kind of imaginative interaction and we have all the elements of a healthy change-promoting process.

In the workplace wellness programs I design and run, all the classes use Applied Improvisation to deliver a concept folded into a creative, socially-rewarding experience. The program’s objective is to give employees information and tools that are inexpensive, accessible and effective for better health. In real terms, this means providing tools for change. To give something up — like smoking or sugar — or take something up — like exercise or meditation — can be difficult and fraught with ambiguity. We may want the benefits of the change but not feel up to its challenges. A balance of readiness for the discomfort that is an inevitable part of any transition and skills to get through it are necessary to sustain the change.

Our aim is to try to shift the mindset of people who fear or dread the hard parts of a change process. In one of our classes — “Say Yes To Something New” — we do 2 simple improv games to explore another way to think about change. A game called Radical Acceptance has each participant name 3 things in a random category — animals, colors, chain restaurants — and the entire group shouts “yes” after each thing is named. Then we complicate it just a little. A player is assigned a category. A partner does mot some kind of movement, anything at all and not intended to resemble any actual thing, and the player names that movement in the category after which the group again shouts “yes.” The purpose of this games is threefold:

1. provide a jolt of positive emotion from a vocally supportive and enthusiastic group response to the execution of a simple task;
2. break up linear thinking and experiment with the radical acceptance of an activity and word that do not go together in any conventional sense;
3. produce a rapid cognitive shift into a positive mindset;

Just playing this game transforms what are often a tired, disconnected group of employees into a team rooting for other people they hardly know, if at all. We want to rapidly and dramatically demonstrate that the “new” can wake up both our thinking and emotional brain in a positive way, redirecting the dread and inevitable doubling down into resistance to playful curiosity and a sense of experimentation.

This “yes” exercise is an expression of wholesale acceptance. It is not about approval or judgment. It is, in fact an exercise in approaching the unknown from what is the opposite of fear and dread. The “yes” of improvisation is a connection with what is. A radical acceptance of what is offered. To live in that mindset is to bring the full force of our intellect, emotion and spirit to the moment, which expands our field of awareness so we can build on what is offered, to respond consciously and creatively. “Yes” is an acknowledgement of what is. The “and” is how we shape the next step.

The next game is “This Is Not An Umbrella” in which participants have to transform an umbrella into some other object — swing it like a golf club, carry it like a bouquet of roses, write with it as if it is a pen for a giant. Again, this asks them to do something and somewhat performative, but not so much that the task is overwhelming. This “goldilocks” combination of challenge and unequivocal support is an ideal delivery system for ideas and information. It is therapeutic and change-inducing through engagement that is both simple and fun and sophisticated in terms of its impact on the brain and mind.

Improv training emphasizes the mutually positive embrace of other peoples’ ideas and responses, which can rapidly defuse the anxiety that is an undeniable part of stepping into the unknown, no matter how benign. The openness and receptivity generated by positive experiences expands the field of awareness that enhances our ability to make connections between ideas and make meaning. This translates into greater adaptability and resilience in the face of stress, and receptivity to ideas that we can use to shape our lives in new ways. The fact that we do it together, as a collective, heightens the likelihood we will absorb new information. “The brain is the organ that learns, so it is designed to be changed by your experiences,” writes Rick Hansen of UC-Berkeley’s Greater Good Center, in How To Grow The Good In Your Brain. “Intense, prolonged, or repeated mental/neural activity — especially if it is conscious — will leave an enduring imprint in neural structure, like a surging current reshaping a riverbed. In the saying in neuroscience: Neurons that fire together, wire together. Mental states become neural traits. Day after day, your mind is building your brain. This is what scientists call “experience-dependent neuroplasticity,” which is a hot area of research these days.” In his book Brain Rules molecular biologist John Medina explains that “when the brain detects an emotionally charged event, the amygdala releases dopamine into the system. Because dopamine greatly aids memory and information processing, you could say it creates a Post It note that reads ‘remember this.’”

A 2017 study published in the Journal of Mental Health looked at improvisation exercises as a therapeutic intervention and found significant improvement in symptoms of anxiety, depression, and reduction of perfectionism — which is a significant source of stress. We apply this knowledge in our wellness class “Changing Mindsets” in which we use games like “Awkward Family Photos” and “World’s Worst” to explore the power of our social networks to shape our behaviors, habits and sense of self. In Awkward Family Photos, group members sit together as a family with a very definable way of being and connection, e.g. a family of cheerleaders, or a family of cat-lovers. Then we add another level of complexity to the family photos, e.g. a family that is extremely competitive, or intellectual, or videogamers. Then we discuss what it would be like for someone from the videogamer family to join the intellectual family, or someone from the cheerleader family to join the cat-lovers. What is it like to join a group that requires us to behave in a way very different from what we have done in the past to belong? What can each character bring with him/her to the new group? What will have to change completely? The issue of belonging is central to the the change process. Beliefs are linked to belonging, which shape our perceptions, all of which power or paralyze our capacity to make change.

The Applied Improv games we use in wellness classes and therapy groups have all the elements that make improvisation look like magic when performed onstage. Through adding details about character and setting to what another player offers, improvisers create a world together. Their commitment to the imagined reality ignites the imagination of observers, who enter a world that is invisible by any rational standard. To co-create an imagined reality with no script nor external direction nor guarantee of success, an improviser relies on a set of thinking and relationship skills that fine-tune the ability to communicate ideas clearly, rapidly assess what others are communicating and respond in ways that support and expand on those ideas. This method that relies on imagination and collaboration to create an entirely invisible world teaches us a mindset and toolkit for coping with the reality we share in daily life.

Four years after my first workshop, I’ve realized all the conversations I never gave myself permission to have and the connection I once avoided out of fear are there on stage. Though I might still prefer to hide in the audience, improv pushes me to meet my own internal challenges. Uncomfortable emotions and foreign topics are open for exploration.

As for everyday life and “sane” people: eventually the line between it all blurred. Life seeped into improv and improv into life. I find myself slipping into characters and games in regular conversation. Now, my mom suggests sketch ideas. My dad creates characters. Timid friends let their goofiness show. Other people play along naturally, just as eager to share bits of their unexpressed personality and to connect through play.

After spending my life feeling subject to the world around me, saying “yes” to improv has given me courage to be myself and agency to shape my world.

Growing up, I’d play pretend constantly. Whether I was hosting a royal ball in my bedroom or singing to a crowd of thousands from our apartment balcony (deepest apologies to our neighbors), playing pretend helped me explore, imagine, and get creative––while also providing an escape.

I know I’m not alone in this. Playing pretend as a child isn’t groundbreaking. In fact, I’d bet most everyone did it. The real question is: with all the benefits it has to offer, why do we ever stop?

Something happens when we get older that makes us believe playing pretend just isn’t a ‘grown up’ thing to do. Societal pressure? Lack of time? Fear of being judged? Well I’m here to say: f*ck all that. Playing pretend is for everybody––ånd it’s really freakin’ good for you.

So, how do you jump back into the land of make-believe as an adult? The answer is simple: improv.

 

Unleash your imagination.

When we play pretend as kids, we get to be anyone, anywhere, doing anything we want––the options are only limited by the boundaries of our imagination. A jellyfish at a job interview? You got it. A princess lost in an underground jungle? Yes please. A superhero that can shoot fruit roll-ups out of their eyeballs? Sure, why the heck not?

But unfortunately as we get older, our wild imagination often gets stashed away, replaced instead by predictability and routine. Days start to look the same and blend together. Coffee, work, dinner, repeat. Boriiiiing. Meanwhile, our imagination is buried under a zillion errand and bill-related cobwebs begging to be rescued, dusted off, and put to good use.

Improv provides an outlet for tapping into your imagination on the regular. Every scene is a new opportunity to build entire worlds, try on different characters, and spin up unlikely circumstances alongside other improvisers.

Plus, there’s no room for routine in improv––it’s all made up on the spot so you have no idea what’ll happen next. This way, you’re pulled right out of the dull and predictable and thrown into practicing a flexible mindset that’ll prep you for just about anything that might come up in your everyday life (cough, cough… pandemic, anyone?).

 

Get silly.

Think back to your childhood self. Did you dance around without reason? Try out a funny voice to make people laugh? Pull goofy pranks on unassuming siblings? I know I did. Now, take a moment to reflect––when was the last time you took part in an act of complete and absolute silliness?

Been a while? That’s okay, the good news is improv is all about making big, bold, and silly choices. Maybe you’re in a scene as a talking alarm clock who’s tired of ringing. Or perhaps you’re an alien that only speaks in three-word phrases. Or an archaeologist that’s just discovered a rare species of heart-shaped dinosaurs. No matter the choices you make––you’ll be pushed to think outside the box and get comfortable laughing at yourself. What’s more, you’ll have scene partners supporting you with their own silly choices the whole way through. In fact, don’t be surprised if the talking alarm clock and alien somehow end up in the very same scene. (Yes, really)

 

Silence your self-doubt.

If you’ve spent any time around kids, you know that they hardly ever think twice before whatever they have to say has made it out of their mouth. For better or worse, kids don’t filter themselves. If they have something to say, they say it, committed and proud. But somewhere along the way, we start to second guess everything that runs through our minds. Will people think it’s funny? Will I sound smart? Will anyone even care?

Luckily, in improv, there’s technically no such thing as a wrong choice. If what comes out of your mouth makes no sense whatsoever, it’s still the right thing to say as long as you do so with confidence. It’s a test in believing in yourself and your scene partners and knowing that whatever comes next will be great as long as you don’t hesitate to commit to the information you’ve shared.

 

Tune in to the moment.

Kids live in the here and now. They don’t spend a ton of time thinking about how a play date went last week or planning where they’ll go for next year’s summer break. They’re in tune with the present and excited about what’s happening exactly where they are in that moment.

As an improviser, no matter how much you tend to live in the past or future in your day-to-day (sound familiar?)––you’re challenged to let that line of thinking go when you’re on stage. Why? Because a core tenet of improv is active listening. To successfully ‘Yes, and’ a scene partner’s choices, you have to listen, make eye contact, and stay fully present. If your mind starts to wander, you might miss critical information you need to keep the scene moving. That means your brain isn’t stuck ruminating or thinking ahead, it’s actively engaged in the present moment.

 

Embrace your emotions.

When kids are feeling something, you can see it all over their face.  They cry when they’re sad. They cry when they’re hurt. They cry even when there’s really nothing to cry about.

And the thing is, adults do too. We just happen to be a bit quieter about it. Well, a lot quieter. We hold back our feelings to avoid being vulnerable. If we show that we’re sad, we fear looking weak. If we feel happy, we start to wonder how long it’ll last before something terrible comes along to balance things out.

Improv challenges you to get out of your emotional comfort zone. When you get up on stage, you’re taking a giant leap of vulnerability and putting trust in your scene partners to have your back as you try on disappointment, shock, joy, fear, excitement, and every emotion in between. And they’re trusting you to do the same.

And sometimes, what you might be feeling under the surface can help fuel some of your emotional choices on stage. Don’t worry, it’s a good thing––see it for what it is, an opportunity to channel your emotions into something fun and ridiculous to help work through them, rather than bottling them up.

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So, whether you’re 18 or 88, there’s a whole made-up world out there waiting for you. I encourage you to keep on playing, pretending, and embracing the silly, there’s more than enough of it to go around––and your inner child will most definitely thank you for it.

 

Want to give improv a try? Take a peek at our event schedule to sign up for our next free workshop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a human being of the nerd persuasion, I sometimes don’t know what is and isn’t a reference I can throw into an improv scene.  Thanks to superhero movies, the widespread acceptance of video games, and TV shows like “Game of Thrones”, nerdy knowledge is more accepted than ever and it might seem like I should be fine being Spock and saying “Live long and prosper,” in a scene.  And while this is true to a certain extent, I still sometimes grapple with the line between the colloquially accepted Batman reference and the super obscure Moon Knight one.  

And on the opposite end of the spectrum, I can be caught clueless when it comes to most contemporary pop culture.  More than once in a scene, I’ve been staring down the barrel of having to be a musician or movie star that I only have the most fleeting of ideas at who they might be.  

So why are you bringing all this up you may ask? Well, you probably didn’t ask that, you’re probably just reading this like a normal person.  I’m sorry for being presumptive.  But I bring this up because it has come to my attention that I’m not alone in this.  Maybe not specifically the nerd culture stuff, but that we’re all individuals and have our own separate interests that may or may not overlap.  And that’s okay.  

No one can know everything…or at least, I’m pretty sure that no one knows everything.  But we do the next best thing.  We cobble together what we can out of context clues and vague memories and run with it.  By “Yes and-ing” each other and staying in the scene, we can continue, no matter what curveballs are thrown our way.  And for audience members who do know, they’re just happy the reference is there.  Are we gonna mangle it?  Probably.  But is it gonna be entertaining?  Well that’s a solid maybe!!  

And if you’ve ever been to an improv show where I was in the audience, you’ve heard me in the audience yell out “Mad Max Thunderdome” or “Jedi and apprentice” because I want to mix it up.  How many times have we heard “siblings” for a relationship?  Or a “kitchen” for a location?  If we shout out the crazy things we would normally keep to ourselves because they’re too “weird” we could explore a whole new side to our improv.  

I guess what I’m saying is, go for it.  And I need to internalize this more myself, to be honest.  Depending on the suggestion (especially with time periods when I think about it) I sometimes use my ignorance as an excuse and become afraid to add information.  But when I shout out “Klingon Blood Brothers” as a relationship at a show, I don’t need the players to know about bat’leths and birds-of-prey.  In fact it’s probably more entertaining if they have no idea about Klingon culture and focus on what is going on with these Blood Brothers as opposed to if I got the suggestion and exposited about the Sword of Kahless and its significance in DS9.

Now that I think about it, how often have I been given a time period, and the first thing I did was try to make as many timely references as I could rather than establishing the things that matter to the scene.  Maybe I need to stop worrying about what I don’t know, and live in the scene that’s in front of me.

Well dear reader, thank you for listening to the ramblings of this humble nerd.  Just by being there as a sounding board, I’ve gained some insights on myself, and for that, I thank you.