Earlier today I had a problem with inertia. I just told myself to focus on starting something simple: open the folder, click on one. Then the rest took care of itself. Really, the hardest thing is to start. Neurologically, there’s pain, a pain with no physical basis. So once the mind saw it, the illusory pain kind of disappeared.

People. My anxiety with people sometimes causes that kind of pain. However, actually dealing with people does not always make the pain go away as easily as opening a file. I can’t expect to “let the script unfold”. How to expect the unexpected? That’s why I joined an improv class.

We called ourselves One Cheap Uncle. We were under the umbrella of Third World Improv (https://thirdworldimprov.com/about-us/)

Let’s begin with the mindset. The proper mindset consists of four words:
A) “Yes, and…”,
B) “Commit”
C) “No mistakes, only unexpected results”, and
D) “My truth”.

At One Cheap Uncle we always said “Yes, and…”. “I’m an overweight janitor.” [I see you’re committed to that.] “Yes, and I’m a drunk salesclerk.” [I commit to that on my part.] “I throw this broom into the air, and it becomes a sword.” “Yes, and now I grab the sword and use it to slice a carrot.” Yes moved the scene forward. It made us commit to what we thought up. It also caused us to trust that anything we said would be built upon, not shot down.

We kept telling ourselves, at One Cheap Uncle we make no mistakes, only unexpected results.” “My truth” is, strictly, mine; my partner can only do his or her best to try to understand it and respond to it, as I do the same. The result of our dialogue is thus no longer just “my truth” or “his truth” but “our truth”.

The joy of improv is that neither the players nor the audience really knows how “our truth” is going unfold.

Improv takes place within a game that has simple rules. For example, the game of taking imaginary things out of a bag, giving it to another person, who then manipulates it, with none of you speaking. Additional rules include having a fixed time to interact, and ensuring language is not offensive.

The biggest skill here is not to overthink. Part of not overthinking is to be conscious of the time yet not watch the time. One cannot focus on time and message.

How did we think about wit? We did not think of wit, i.e., the quality of what we said or did, the quality of our “performance”. We got around a self conscious attention to quality by getting comfortable with messy or clean. Wit is entertaining when it happens, but an exchange even without much wit is very entertaining.

How did we think about propriety? We tried not to offend, even in the wacky art of improv where the name of the game is anything goes. In fact, we called ourselves One Fat Uncle, but we did not want to make fun of fat people. We never thought about intentionally offending, and the audience knew everyone was just having fun. In any case, we never got feedback that we offended anyone. If you can’t take it, don’t watch.

How did we think about self esteem? We never thought about it.

Life itself can be much more fun if we did not feel we were being watched and that from morning to evening we had to perform. It’s not my profession, but I conduct my ethics class as a simulation, improv.

I keep getting unexpected results.

(Q.C. 200801)