Say Yes to You

Well well well, back at the end of the month! Yeah, it was a chaotic month on service with one more week to go. I had every intention of writing every day but obviously did not. I hit a road block or two and stopped writing for the blog as much. I did do some writing related to improv and health but not as much as I should have. To remedy that, I am writing more now!

I have been doing a great deal of thinking in regards to how I organize the ways in which improv has helped me. Next month the faculty development workshops start up again. I submitted a workshop for a national conference. I have a conference I am doing a workshop at later this week. So lots of thinking on the benefits of improv. The faculty development workshops are the full array of how improv has helped me, but then the challenge is summarizing aspects of it for these conference workshops. The faculty development workshops are 2 hours in length, and I have scheduled 8 throughout the course of this year. I refer to these faculty development workshops as the backbone of what I do because the other activities emerge from the content from them for specific groups. They were also the first things I developed myself and thus, how I started creating the improv, healthcare, and communication curriculum way back when. It has developed over time, which I believe I discussed in a previous post at length. The current organization is 4 units, 2 workshops in each unit. The first workshop deals with an area of individual communication, like how you communicate one-on-one, then the second is how you scale those skills up to communicate in a group setting, in other words leadership skills. As I reflect on my experiences running these workshops, all the branch points from it that have to get summarized succinctly into these workshop submissions, and the improv classes I have taught, I have come to realize the important area that I have not fully explored. I have taken it for granted, but improv has dramatically improved the conversation I have with myself and my inner critic has become more of a coach, less of the critics from The Muppets up in the grand stand telling me I stink.

Say Yes to yourself

I am in the process of teaching another cohort of Level 1 Improv for Healthcare Professionals class at The Backline (Teaching improv is such a great experience!) and have come to the realization that even before dealing with one-on-one communication, improv has helped with how I address myself. So much of my teaching improv is encouraging participants to trust themselves. I watch and the biggest struggle is people saying No to themselves even before they are able to say “Yes, and…”. It is not that they have silly ideas or that they are not able to do the exercises, it is that they are saying no. I think of how I have used the fact that I could do improv to push me to new areas in other areas of my life. Take a deep breath, “Mike, you rapped in front of 40 people just last week, this will be a walk in the park”. I had previously thought of trust being a principle practiced in improv but it referred to trust in other people around me. I have learned that at the basic level, improv helps participants develop a sense of trust with themselves.

Your inner critic also criticizes other people

My entry earlier this week brought that to my attention as well. The idea that before being empathetic to others, it is imperative that I realize that I had different ideas of how the world worked at points in the past. I was trying my best then, as I am now, and I could be wrong again. That understanding of who I am makes being empathetic to others around me much easier. That has been fostered by the practice of improv. It also makes it easier for me to put things out into the world because I know I have thought about it and considered if I was wrong. I can say I am making an honest attempt to connect with people as well. If I miss the mark, I won’t be afraid to change course to something more productive.

Improv makes other simulation better

Also, this past week, I reflected on feedback from a workshop I did with the Occupational Therapy students at the very end of August. The director of the OT students said many students noted that they felt more comfortable in other role-playing scenarios that were purely medical, not improv related at all. The improv exercises force a sense of vulnerability that when practiced show that it is not as dangerous to my self-image as might be considered when doing role playing otherwise. This would have huge implications for teams of all sorts. Helping people be vulnerable for improving is somewhat of a Holy Grail of team-based education. It allows growth beyond what is possible by just doing the activities. It makes the benefits of being team-based education significantly more tangible. Improv training makes other simulation-based training more effective because it allows people to address the inner critic and turn this critic figure into a coach

My project for the month of October will be to explore these insights to create four new workshops that delve into these inner monologue concepts and how improv could be used to formally train them. Improv has helped me in all of these areas. Here is the tentative units…

The inner monologue with the previously paired workshops (so Vulnerability, Empathy, and Adaptability would be one 3-workshop unit)

These four new workshops will help this be even more clear!

The main idea will be to think about these themes and write about them in the coming month in hopes of a breakthrough in understanding. Please share any thoughts you have. Most of my breakthroughs have occurred when discussing the ideas and how they are applicable to various peoples’ lives!

Also, I just realized this is the second post featuring a muppet picture. I am not a huge Muppets fan, but maybe I am without realizing it!