Even if you don’t like the music, watch how much joy and pleasure the musicians are getting out of it. 🙂
Improvisation: What Wants to Happen?
Improvisation is the art and skill of creating something without preparation or a plan. It is being able to be in the flow, in the moment, and respond consciously, while holding an intention and being okay with not knowing what the outcome will look like. I think of this as being able to lean in and create from the space of what wants to happen rather than what we think should happen.
In order to create from this space of potentiality, we need to embrace a new way of engaging. Comedy improv has been growing as a tool for businesses and leaders to learn the skills of improv. There are a few common rules of improv that are a great foundation in learning how to invite “what wants to happen.” Here are my variations on those, as well as a few helpful additions that I have discovered.
Be Curious!
Curiosity seems like such a simple idea. Yet, how often do we jump to conclusions, have the thought of, “Here we go again!” or avoid a situation because we think we know how it’s going to turn out? Curiosity requires us to suspend what we already know and see with new eyes. It is being willing to take in the world around us, without automatically assigning meaning, labels, or conclusions. Even when someone has behavior that is clearly not appropriate, can we be curious and ask, “Why?” Can we see the behavior from a new perspective? Being curious means that we are willing to fully take in what is around us.
Say Yes, And
How can we respond and engage when we are not willing to see and experience what is happening around us? In improv, there is a rule of thumb that you should always accept what your partner offers you. Say yes, and then add to it. Working with deep Growth also asks us to work with what shows up. Using the skills of deep Connection, we are able to better navigate and have more information to work with. When we are judging, denying, or rejecting what is, we immediately put ourselves in opposition and project onto the situation what we think should be happening rather seeing what wants to happen. Perhaps what we see as undesirable is exactly the thing we need to get what we want.
Disruption and Disagreement Are Gold
Many of us are taught to avoid conflict, upsetting people, or rocking the boat. We are encouraged to go along, be agreeable, and make peace. The assumption is that agreeableness and lack of conflict are a good thing. But are we serving our best interest by avoiding what is unpleasant or potentially charged?
One of the most influential bodies of work for my own growth has been Arnold Mindell’s Process Based Psychotherapy. While I am not a therapist of any kind, I’ve found what Mindell calls personal process work is something that anyone can do, and is a big part of my own toolbox. I also use the foundational ideas in my coaching and consulting. My understanding of process work embraces the idea that everything is giving us information and feedback in service to our highest potential.
I remember a moment in a training. I was sharing this idea with my group, when I noticed that the person to my right was rhythmically tapping his pen. I felt my attention go there in curiosity and used that as an example, stating to the group: “For example, I’m noticing the pen tapping. In this moment, I could decide that means he is bored or upset. Or I could be in curiosity.” As I looked around the room, I could feel the tension mounting. “Now, I can feel the tension in the room,” I added. In that moment, another participant blurted out, “I’m finding it really distracting and disrespectful, please stop.” Immediately, another person jumped in defending the person tapping the pen. Before I knew it, the whole room erupted.
It would have made sense for me to try and minimize it and dismiss it to bring everyone back to the topic. Instead I saw it as the perfect example of what I was talking about. I brought consciousness to all of the feelings and forces in play in the room. All the dynamics and judgments and strategies that were suddenly emerging. It turned into a rich discussion and deep sharing of underlying currents that were there in the group. The pen tapping only brought them to a head. When we completed the discussion, everyone was noticeably more at ease and there was a new group coherence, including more willingness to contribute. The training took on a new level of conscious engagement by everyone.
The ability to embrace conflict and see what it has to offer is about leaning into the future. It is recognizing that what is emerging is in service to the intention of the group, situation, or relationship. When you are working with emergence and what wants to happen, disturbances are pointing to something that is needed for the whole. In the process, individual realizations also happen.
Our body’s symptoms, our dreams, our environment, our feelings, thoughts, and all the forces in play around us, are always giving us information. As we expand our perception skills of deep Connection, we have access to more information and awareness. Deep Growth gives us the ability to take those perceptions as feedback—to refine our experiment, learn and create.
Inviting the Future
Thought-leader Otto Scharmer is a cofounder of the MIT Leadership Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has developed a process which he describes as: “Presencing, the blending of sensing and presence, means to connect from the source of the highest future possibility and to bring it into the now. When moving into the state of presencing, perception begins to happen from a future possibility that depends on us to come into reality. In that state we step into our real being, who we really are, our authentic self. Presencing is a movement that lets us approach our self from the emerging future.” Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges (Cambridge, MA: Society for Organizational Learning, 2007).
When we invite emergence, we are inviting a future greater than we can currently imagine. And when we are willing to fully engage with life, we are willing to step into that future even when we are in unknown territory.
There Are No Mistakes or Right Way
When engaging something new, we commonly want to master it and get it right. Or perhaps we are an expert and have a clear idea that there is a right way to do something. When we focus on a certain outcome that we want, anything that deviates from that can be viewed as less than or a mistake. When you are deeply in the flow of improv with life, there are no mistakes. Instead we are embracing what is, and building on that. Stefon Harris in his TED talk video: There are No Mistakes on the Bandstand explains someone introducing a dissonant note: “The only way that I would say it was a mistake is in that we didn’t react to it. It was an opportunity that was missed…. Every mistake is an opportunity in jazz. The only mistake is if I am not aware, if each individual musician is not aware and accepting enough of his fellow band member to incorporate the idea and if we don’t allow for creativity.”
When we say yes to what is around us and are willing to work with it, something magical happens. What seemed undesirable suddenly reveals itself to be the catalyst to something new.
Everything Is Feedback
When you are in the flow of life and noticing what wants to happen, you are open and aware of everything around you. Your Connection skills of perception are in full use, as well as your deep Purpose ability to see patterns, relationships, and meaning. Feedback is often thought of as people giving their opinions about your performance or product, but when you are in deep emergence, feedback is much more about the exchange with life that is constantly happening.
When we receive negative feedback through results that we don’t want or opinions that are hard to hear, it is important to embrace it as information, with one caveat…that you stay in curiosity about what it means. As we have explored throughout this book, defaulting to beliefs and lenses that perpetuate old patterns rather than invite us into something new is easy. We take things way personally, rather than seeing the feedback as multidimensional. For example, the feedback may say as much or more about the giver as about us.
Playfulness—Don’t Take Yourself So Seriously!
When we are in the flow, trying to be creative, or make something happen, we often get caught up in the seriousness of it all. Playfulness and a willingness to be awkward, silly, or outrageous can feel risky but often breaks things open, endears people to us, or creates a willingness for others to join in.
I remember a segment when I was hosting a television show on holistic living. A guest came on to show how to use physioballs, the large inflatable balls that you can use for exercise. At the time, they were uncommon and people didn’t know how to use them. During the segment, my guest invited me to sit on one and slowly lie back so that I was belly up on top of the ball. I had a skirt and heels on, and it quickly became apparent that I was now stuck! There I was, feeling like a very large turtle on its back, flailing around trying to get up. I was laughing and so was everyone else in the studio. At the time, I was recording live to tape which meant I could do the segment over again, but everyone encouraged me to keep it in. Over the next couple of years, people would come into my store exclaiming as they pointed at me: “You’re the woman that got stuck on the ball!” Laughing together, we bonded and created an instant rapport. I sold a bunch of physioballs with people sharing that I made it okay for them to look silly using it. And even a few said that I gave them permission to try something new in their own lives.
Improv with Life
I was leaving for the airport, looking around asking myself the question, “Did I forget anything?” Then I had the thought that I should bring two specific books. As I was looking for them, I kept thinking that it was a bit odd that I felt so strongly about bringing them, because I had already read them and they were both heavy books to be traveling with (this was before Kindle and smart phones). Fast forward to the first leg of my trip. I took out my first book and put it in the seat pocket in front of me.
It was a small plane, and I began chatting with the man seated next to me. He shared that he was in seminary and about to become a priest. He had been in the medical profession as a radiologist and was making a life change. The conversation quickly turned into a deep discussion of spirituality, our personal journeys around Catholicism, and exploring various religions. He shared that even though he was committed to becoming a Catholic priest, he wanted to find a way to be in service to the truth that is underlying all religions. He expressed his particular interest in Eastern religions and that he was just beginning his journey. As we were landing, I knew that the book I had brought was perfect for him. The Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing by Caroline Myss weaves together three spiritual traditions: the Hindu chakras, the Christian sacraments (including the sacrament of Holy Orders to become a priest), and the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life and how they reflect the stages we go through on our spiritual path.
On the second leg of my trip, I was seated next to a man who was polite but shy. I picked up my second book and began to read. I found myself tired and not able to focus, so I put the book down in the empty seat between us. The man next to me politely asked if he could look at the book, and immediately began to skim the index in the back. When I asked him about it, he shared that he was flying to his new job working for a nutraceutical company researching uncommon agricultural practices that could amplify and improve the quality of the plants they were using for their health preparations. The book was Secrets of the Soil: New Solutions for Restoring Our Planet. I knew the book was for him.
While not earthmoving in their impact, each of these moments added to someone’s journey. When we listen deeply to what wants to happen, there is no limit to our ability to get what we need and give what is needed.