What a fun way to explore my inadequacies
Building off of lessons learned from recent workshops on Vulnerability, Authenticity, Engagement, and Stories discussed here, today we are looking at Vulnerability and what improv has to offer a person in this domain. For this workshop, I of course referenced Brene Brown who speaks/writes extensively on the topics of Vulnerability and shame among a variety of other important topics. She has a lot of good things to say about being vulnerable and how it helps people avoid shame and to live a wholehearted life (that is a specific term that has a specific definition to describe people who are living a great life). She even says
Vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage.
That is a great quote and applies so aptly to improv. I’ve seen courage described as doing what needs to be done in spite of fear, rather than as an absence of fear. Starting out improv or any new venture, there is bound to be fear. For me now, having practiced improv for over 9 years, if there is not some element of fear, then I am languishing and it isn’t nearly as fun. It is that overcoming of fear, feeling what is on the other side of that effort, and then being able to apply that to other areas of life that I have seen in myself, but only after watching it develop in other people as they began their improv journey. All of that starts with embracing vulnerability to go into the unknown. The majority of opportunities to jump into the unknown in life are often either high risk (leads to shutting down any vulnerability, perhaps appropriately) or too little reward (not appreciating a need to be vulnerable).
That sense of jumping off a cliff and figuring it out on the way down, as improv has been described, is a way into that vulnerability that feels high risk (but is ultimately not!) and the rewards are beyond words when you do indeed figure it out on the way down!
Improv is a process that involves making yourself be vulnerable and then working to find the joy that is available when that happens. Your ability to express your ideas, to believe that you are worthy of expressing an idea, to put something out into the world has been shut down by years of socialization where people and society tell us “No” so frequently that we begin to tell ourselves “No”. So rather than put myself out there and run the risk of rejection, I stay “safe” in the world that I “know”. It is at the heart of times where I have limited myself. Having lived over 1/3 to ½ of my life already, depending on health technology and my ability to avoid an accident, I have had enough encounters with rejection that I remain fearful of it. I still don’t like it. What improv has provided me is a feeling of what else can be on the other side of vulnerability. A common post workshop response is that participants have restarted pursuing other creative outlets that they had given up on. They can jump into the unknown because they are reminded that the vulnerability that led to their sense of creativity is worth it!
As I put myself out there on the improv stage, I realized that there were ways that could lead to more joy. That forced me to look at the way that I was approaching rehearsals and shows. It forced me to look at how I communicated as a whole. I spoke at TEDxOmaha last November.
It was a great experience. I am overall happy with how the video of the talk turned out but I botched one line that received a laugh at every run through I had. For whatever reason, my mind spaced when it came to that part but I was able to get back on track. That line was
“What a fun way to explore my inadequacies”.
I will provide a coffee to anyone who can pinpoint where this line was meant to go. I do think the line and the idea highlight how vulnerability is such a key component to allowing improv to help me improve my condition. I was not immediately a master of it at the start of my improv practice, nor am I a master of it now, but I can say that I am better than I used to be and I look forward to continued improvement!