In the article “Yes, Listening To Music Is Therapy” neuroscientist, writer and author Daniel Levitin writes that, even with all the emphasis on skill, precision and knowledge, “art, science, and medicine trade in doubt—and in its remedy, improvisation.” The tensions between what is and what is emerging are a true psychological challenge, and improv has much to offer that can help us stay the course through a process of transformation.

Improv not only increases our tolerance for the messy unknown, it is a way to play around in the space, generating new ideas, playing new roles, and exploring untried behaviors without being attached to any of them. We can build on what emerges, develop interesting new themes. The periods of in-between are exploratory when we can say “yes” to a discovery without knowing where it may lead.

Studies show that the balance of risk and reward in a positive, collaborative group cultivate skills that become available in the face of real-life stresses. Risk is inherent to the improv experience, and the reward is part of every level, from foundational skill development to advanced forms.
An example of how this works is demonstrated in this exercise recently used in an applied improv group of social workers with no prior improv training:

A made-up situation is assigned to the entire group, e.g. “you have all just been to a motivational seminar and in different pairs you will dialogue about it.” Each pair is to improvise a discussion of the imagined seminar from a different perspective that is also assigned by the trainer (high degree of structure) with this instruction given out right before they go up (uncertainty). The exercise provides enough structure and familiarity for participants to know the guidelines, but also enough freedom to play with the scenario, to craft a relationship by listening and responding to each other. The only other requirement is that they begin each new line in the dialogue by saying “yes” to their partner, and adding something They are encouraged to intensify the emotional energy as the conversation goes on, even to the point of the ridiculous.
First pair is assigned: The seminar was brilliant and mind-blowing
Player 1: Wow. This speaker changed my whole perspective on what it means to be human!
Player 2: Yes! I feel the shift happening inside me right now!
Player 1: Yes, now I see all my life experiences in a completely new light.
Player 2: Yes, I see humanity’s struggles in a whole new light.

And so on…the players build and heighten this idea to whatever outsized enthusiasm they care to create.

Second pair is assigned: The seminar was incomprehensible
Player 1: Wow. I do not know what that was supposed to be about…
Player 2: Yes, I feel so confused my brain hurts.
Player 1: Yes, I feel so off-balance. I’m still trying to makes sense out of the BLT sandwich as a metaphor for social change.
Player 2: Yes, and his rant about whole grain bread being a Communist plot was out of left field.
And so on..
After a few different takes (the seminar was tedious/boring, or had secret messages baked into it, or very motivating) we change the exercise. We drop the word “yes” at the start of each response, and to make the dialogues more realistic, the way people actually speak, but keeping the spirit of “yes” in the exchange:

The pair is assigned: The seminar was horrifying
Player 1: The images that guy used to make his points were so upsetting.
Player 2: I’m going to up all night now.
Player 1: Its like he thought he had to scare us to get us to do the right thing.
Player 2: That story about his accident was gut-wrenching so it just might work.

In a therapy or training group, the different “takes” on an imagined situation can be a template for the reality that people can have different perceptions of the same lived experience. But it is the playing out of these imagined scenarios, expressing ideas about a made-up situation with emotion and energy is what many people have never done. The active, direct experience of “acting as if” strengthens psychological “muscles” for managing uncertainty.

The rewards of discomfort in an improv exercise are sometimes subtle — an unexpected idea rising up, a wave of good feeling from a surprising sense of flow with a partner — and sometimes wild and hilarious. A novel development in the interaction or a layer of fun no on

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e saw coming can electrify a group. Something is discovered. Repeated exposure to this kind of creative group process is a way to practice new behaviors and thinking that can redirect the fear and anxiety that can get in the way of meaningful change.

Applying improv skills and principles to the challenges of changing our mind, behavior and relationships gradually cultivates neural traits that become available in real-life scenarios. Making things up together, playing around with different perspectives is a way to exist joyfully and creatively in the “messy middle” of a change process. We are changed by the experience.

Improv is not the answer to all the things that trouble us, but it does provide a lens through which we might see them in a new light. One of my most influential improv teachers Louis Kornfeld called this lens the “funhouse mirror” - a way to notice, play with and exaggerate true things to the point of the ridiculous. The application of this to real life is in the activation of new neural pathways and social-emotional connections through creative experiences like improv. When we learn and practice new ways of thinking and behaving, we form new neural pathways. The more new pathways there are, the more choices we have about how to respond to life.

To stay current with what is happening in the now, it helps to be okay with complicated feelings and the discomfort of ambiguity. Even the best of times - when we realize our dreams, are healed of an illness, are lucky in love - have emotional pulls to the comfortable familiar in response to stress, to what we used to do in order to belong even if it is destructive, to shifts in relationships we could not have foreseen. And when there is unexpected stress, or prolonged periods of unrelenting demands on our resources, there can be surprising moments of connection and meaning, if we are open to seeing them.

A psychological tool for staying present through situations we do not control is perspective-shifting, which studies show strengthens stress resilience and flexibility with decision-making. Improv exercises are brilliant for playing with perspective.

After learning an improv exercise called Emotional Squares - something performers use when training to tap into and demonstrate a range of feelings under the pressure of being onstage - I adapted it for therapeutic and professional development workshops. I accomplished this by doing it exactly the same way, which was super-fun, and then ruining the fun with discussion of the various painful real-life experiences that we used it to explore. (It turns out that the fun of most improv games and exercises can be ruined in this way, making them wonderful therapeutic tools. Remember that the fun can be restored immediately, because if there is one all-encompassing quality of improv, it is the possibility of the pivot.)

This particular exercise is also helpful for personal journaling, a practice I use to process all the things - the things I am working on, the things beyond my control that impact the things I am working on, the things going on in my head that I can only control by writing them down. At the moment, for example, my journaling is a rant about systems that suddenly cut funding for certain - very popular - creative mental health-related workplace initiatives. No particular reason, Just an example of a thing that happens to some people who thoroughly and exhaustively examine it through journaling. (Me).

The exercise in an improv group goes like this:

Choose 4 contrasting emotions, e.g. Love. Fear. Hope. Anger. Give each emotion their own piece of paper. Write it big and loud. These emotions demand their space. Place the papers in a large square on the floor. Choose a life-changing situation a character is facing, e.g. a parent whose kid just left for college a thousand miles away, a writer who just sold their book to a major publisher after years of rejection. If it is a personal growth group, choose real dilemmas from the cornucopia of troubles people want to address.

Choose a starting emotion for the character. The player stands on that paper. Another player will be in charge of giving a signal as to when she can move - clockwise - to the next emotion. It can be a clap, or a bell or saying the word “change.” The agreement is that the “main character” will stay in that emotion until another group member cues them to move. The person in charge of giving the cues will attune to what is being said, and try to time the cues in a way that flows with what the character is saying.

Let’s say, based on the character’s dilemma, we start with anger. From the ANGER position, the player begins to riff about the situation from that emotion only. Something like this:
ANGER: This is outrageous. For 7 years, I get great evaluations. I listen for what the people need and innovate. Participants love my programs. And no warning! Not one employee wants the stupid renovation they are doing to the office, but they do want the training and mental health benefits I bring to the office. I am furious.

Change.

LOVE: I do love being free of the time-suck of all the unpaid obligatory meeting time, and the and the time involved with making the schedule. I love never having to do that again. I love that I made such strong connections to all those people, and we have relationships now whether I go there to do work or not. I love the impact we made.

Change.

FEAR: Those useless, obligatory meetings were the reason I got those checks for the work I did! What am I going to do to make up that money I was making? What if I can’t find new work? What if I can’t cut my spending enough to make my bills? It’s scary that I was so good at something but still lost the gig. And if being good at a job does not mean having any control over the outcome, what else is going to happen that I cannot control?

Change.

HOPE: I’ve been through this so so so many times. And there are so many inspiring people who have been through much worse than this. I’ve re-invented myself so so so many times. I have received so many emails and texts with emotional support, and opportunities to talk about other other projects. I am a creative person. Now I have time to create something new. **

Discuss. What was it like to focus on one emotion for an undetermined amount of time? What was it like to take cues from someone else? What was it like to be the person giving the cues? In a therapy or growth group, we can dig more deeply into the underlying truths that come up, and be present for the pain and the possibility that open up.

New character (or Person Exploring A Problem in a real-life growth group). Pick four different emotions. Try worry and see how it is different from fear. Replace love with excitement. Try on resentment in place of anger. Marinade in that one for a while. No reason. Just humor me. Examine resentment, because it is exactly the size of our unused potential. Add Humor. Or Amusement. Something related to finding the weird. Now there’s a new improv “square”: Worry. Excitement. Resentment. Amusement.

This exercise does a few things at once, but most importantly it explores and makes obvious the emotional ambiguity that comes with change. We can and do feel a range of emotions about the same experience. Playing with them out loud (or in writing) makes them more accessible, increasing our capacity to choose our focus, decide where we need more support, and forgive ourselves for what we struggle to accept.

Sidebar: A related fun improv exercise called “5 things” which is exactly what it sounds like - name 5 things in a category that is assigned by a fellow player - is a warm-up to Emotional Squares. It accomplishes this by having no connection to emotions. But of course, feelings are the connective tissue of human interaction, and the exercise can potentially land us in a low-key emotional space that reveal our automatic search for the thing that is “right” or “interesting” or “funny.” It can trigger
mild-to-moderate discomfort, because it is difficult to do this and keep our masks securely fastened.

We cannot predict what the category will be, so we cannot plan our response.
It could be anything - 5 fast foods, office supplies, parts of a combustion engine, instructions to give your pet-sitter, historical figures you would like to have for dinner, reasons a wonderful program very popular with the hard-working employees of a not-for-profit is defunded, all the red flags you missed that a budget cut was coming for you.

This simple task of naming 5 things involves a creative risk. Add a teaspoon of performance anxiety and we have the conditions for skill-building that translates to real-life psychological strength. Tolerating uncertainty in a game like this strengthens psychological strength for the unknown and unfamiliar. The “5 things” framework provides a lane, a guideline, a goal, a structure. Within that structure, say what you will. If a brain freeze happens, and absolutely nothing comes to mind that makes sense in the real world, we can make something up.

In the real world, making up a word because we do not want to admit we have a brain freeze is called lying. Also in the real world, all words are made up.

Here are 4 additional ways improv can promote mental health:
1. Develop self-compassion. When we feel “out on a limb” in an improv exercise or scene, it means we have bravely extended ourselves beyond our usual roles and defenses. Sometimes this triggers the inner critic who jumps in to tell us what we did - and usually what we could have done better. It is an opportunity to use the “funhouse mirror” idea to shift into self-compassion and make a big deal out of that. To go - and go big - in a different direction to derail the critic, and credit our creative courage. The language of self-compassion is the “yes” of improvisation: yes you put yourself out there, yes it was a bit scary, yes you are brave for doing that, yes you need to affirm the struggle in order to affirm the gains.

2. Expand capacity for complexity. If we can manage the “messy middle” of the change process - when the old ways are no longer working but the new is still wobbly - we are more likely to stay the course to transformation. Much like a juggler learns to keep one ball in the air, then 2, then more and more complex objects, we get better at navigating emotional complexity through practice that leans into discomfort rather than avoiding it. The stress of the activity combined with the social-emotional support and skill-building strengthens the capacity to self-regulate.

3. Strengthen self-worth through creative reframing. Improv offers a pathway to both fully acknowledge stressful truths, mistakes and obstacles while at the same time shift attention to all the reasons we care enough to try and to keep going. Things can go wrong in life despite our best efforts and there are any number of internal and external barriers — social factors, going through loss, financial stress to name just a few —to performing as well as we would like or have the potential to do. The cycle of negative self-judgment and/or anger toward the factors we cannot control can be balanced by honoring the effort and elevating the values that drive it.

4. Practice thinking in new ways to think and act. Improvisation is about behavior. We jump into a way of moving, of holding ourselves, of using our voice and gestures, to become a character. Rather than describing a moment, we create it. What we discover, when expressing a specific state of mind or emotion, is that behaving as if something is true inspires ideas we did not know would come if we approach a situation from a more intellectual or rational place. The focus on physical and emotional expression gets us out of our self-protective mental frames so new ideas and inspiration can emerge.

Over time, the skills practiced in order to improvise become a more expanded way of being. And that can help with all the things we cannot see coming, in ways we do not expect.

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d our obvious love of making bank in any way imaginable - is transforming the way decisions are made. This is a different universe from even just a few years ago. According to Forbes, “every bet is a prediction tied to consequences. Every move is transparent. Every outcome is judged immediately.”

At the same time we see this surge of interest in prediction markets, we see a heightened interest in improv, which is not about predictability at all. But it tracks, because improv generates the unique skill set needed to manage in a world of uncertainty, when old rules, structures, and institutions are breaking down. The Wall Street Journal recently published a piece about how improv is the creative method used by the Alan Alda Center For Communicating Science to train scientists to communicate clearly and powerfully about their work and build greater trust with the public. In March, Health Care Business Today described improv as “the next frontier in health care team performance” because of its emphasis on “greater presence, empathy, and adaptability,” and the way it deepens engagement between people. In her Forbes article “Collaboration Without Character? Improv Shows The Cracks” researcher Mary Crossan explains that today’s organizations “operate far more like improvisational ensembles than scripted productions,” and describes the link between improvisation experiences and the development of character, with emphasis on dimensions such as “courage, humility, temperance, transcendence, humanity, and collaboration.”

Our emerging reality is unscripted and evolving. The exercises and games used to train improvisers apply directly to navigating the unforeseeable in real life. They focus our attention on what is happening in the now, the way betting markets do. If we are aware of, and responding to, the real-time interactions in our lives, our choices and actions are like “bets” that drive outcomes.

As the pace of change accelerates, there is less time between action and consequences. This can generate pressure and stress that feel like a crisis to our inner selves, but improv provides a different framing for that sense of urgency. Yes, we are caught up in waves of change taking us to an unforeseeable future. And…research shows that human connection, creativity and character can form a resilient and flexible psychological safety net uniquely suited to these times.

In improv - and in prediction markets - every action has a response. Every move is transparent. The impact is immediate. With practice we can get out of our planning, predicting habits of mind. The future has unknowable opportunities, undefinable conditions, unforeseeable challenges. With an improviser’s mind and skill set, we can ride the waves of change together. You can bet on it.

When a sudden and unexpected tension emerged in a creative partnership with someone I have worked with for 20 years, I was unprepared for the stalemate. Through multiple collaborations - workshops, shows, music - we had resolved conflicts and settled different perspectives about how to solve problems many times, which always led to a better version of what we made together. This time we could not find consensus. That’s what I found so jarring. The relationship was in unfamiliar territory, with both of us locked into a clear - and clearly opposite - idea about the direction we should go.

There are layers of psychological complexity to this situation

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. The internal ones:
1.) As a (recovering) conflict-avoidant people-pleaser, for me the conflict fueled desperation to control the outcome. But as a true improv/creativity nerd, I relish the tension of not-knowing. Interesting. And anxiety-inducing.

2.) Conflict-avoidance consumes more mental and emotional energy than creativity, so the improv/creativity nerd inner self wins on that count. Honesty and authenticity, however, can be painful in real life.

The interpersonal ones:
1.) The creative partner is also a friend. A dear friend. We have history.
2.) Our perspectives are so far apart that it seems like either one of us has to cave or the project ends.
3.) If the project ends over this, will the friendship survive?

In conventional thinking, we try to understand something in order to say “yes” to it. In improv, we say “yes” to something in order to understand it. We may or may not understand ideas and scenarios offered by others., but we can play with them. We can connect through the effort to understand. This is what improv trains us to do.

To improvise, we may have to let go of our own idea. We will definitely have to let go of the need to manage others’ impression of us. Or the need to be right. Or to be in control. (Especially that one). We will not be in control, and it is best to just let that go from the jump. Some improv techniques that can help with conflict:

Think of yourself as a character in a scene. We are layered, defensive creatures who need all the help we can get through the uncomfortable - and sometimes nearly unbearable - moments when expressing what we think or want upsets another person. If doing this is literally “out of character” for us, we may need to create a character to get through it. Create a character who, in a movie, is the one who delivers the tough news in a way that is clear and unwavering, but also kind and would be played by Tina Fey. Or a bold, I-make-no-apologies character who would be played by Jane Lynch. Because playing a character can be aspirational, a way to experience a mindset or behavior we have observed in others but not tried for ourselves.

The improviser - the person who is experimenting with different ways to express thoughts, different emotional tones - can funnel what is being said through a made-up character. To deal with my own conflict-avoidance - and live a grown-up life - I use role-creation and role-taking to exaggerate the new, unfamiliar behavior. I examine it. I pretend it fits, even when it does not fit. Finding the voice, the physicality, even a catchphrase for a character who can speak a truth to which I find it difficult to express is a way to zoom out from the emotional heat. Creativity breathes some oxygen into a constricted psychological space. In other words, to be authentic, sometimes we have to fake it.

Listen like it matters. A fundamental improv exercise that teaches this principle: Two players are given a suggestion of something light and a little bit weird to discuss, e.g. “blue is the best color” or “binge-watch is the best watch.” Taking turns saying 1-2 sentences at a time, each player begins by saying the last phrase spoken the other person, e.g.
Player 1: Red is the color of fire. Red is raw energy.
Player 2. Red is raw energy. It is the color of the fuel for the soul.
Player 1: It is fuel for the soul. And the color of the root chakra!
Player 2: The color of the root chakra. Which is the most important chakra.

Repeating what someone else says signals that they have our attention. And attention is a gift. If what we hear is painful, giving it our attention takes effort, and simple rules - like this improv exercise - help to stay with the discomfort and, hopefully, not be derailed by it. Because outside an improv situation, focused attention in a tense conversation can be very difficult, When my colleague described her vision for the next steps of our project, my internal agitation dialed up rapidly. A feeling of dread settled in, and I wanted to halt the flow of ideas to get away from it. Simply repeating what she was saying kept the connection between us and bought me some time to process.

This can be especially challenging when the other person’s points are painful to hear. Even if we think their facts are not real facts, we still have to acknowledge that we heard them. If their points are about our behavior, about a way we have upset them, listening takes real psychological strength. Improv is a way to build that psychological “muscle.”

Listen like it matters can also mean being emotionally impacted by what is said. In improv scenes - and in real life - it is the response to an idea that sets the tone for a tough conversation. An improv example using a 2-character scene in which the first player expresses something a bit outrageous:

Player 1: Now that we’ve had three really great dates, and we are making plans for another one I have to tell you that I am under suspicion for murder. Just something you should know so you can decide if you want to move forward.

There are many possible reactions - horrified, empathetic, intrigued, suspicious to name a few - and all will work as long as the character who receives this information is impacted by it, e.g.
Player 2: Oh my goodness, that’s fascinating…tell me everything.
Player 1: I’m not guilty. But I know all the people involved.
Player 2: This is so exciting. You’re like my own personal episode of Dateline.
Player 1: On the one hand, I could go down for something I didn’t do. On the other hand, I’ve never had so much attention. I always have someone watching me.

Or:
Player 2: That’s so much drama. It sounds stressful.
Player 1: Oh it is. It is a lot to handle this much attention on me constantly.
Player 2: I’m a person who needs the focus to be on me so….
Player 1: I’m also a person who needs the focus to be on me so….
Player 2: Oh my god we are so much alike….I’ve always wanted to be investigated…

Playing with different responses to the same outrageous initiation reminds us there are different ways to respond to what we consider outrageous - or offensive, or just plain wrong - in real life scenarios.

When at this crossroads with my colleague, improv helped me remember that being impacted is more effective than countering with my own facts, vision or ideas. And that I can choose how to express it. I did not agree with her vision and felt strongly that going the direction she was interested in was a mistake. But the relationship matters. The person matters. How we make the other person feel matters, especially when we deeply disagree.

Have a philosophy and fully own it. In improv, a philosophy is the reason a character behaves the way they do. It is made up on the spot, which can seem impossible until we try it. It can build from a simple choice, e.g. “I am a bank teller, and I handle other peoples’ money all day long. I don’t chit chat. I don’t want the distraction of interpersonal interaction. The numbers. The accounts. Getting it right. This is essential. This is why I never look people in the eye. So I don’t have to engage. Keep my mind on the money. On their money.” (I seriously just free-wrote that monologue).

As a made-up character, we can free ourselves to expand on an idea this way. And working this “muscle” cultivates a wonderful communication skill to deploy when in a conflict and want to tread carefully. Facts do not persuade when emotions are high. A philosophy does not require anything of the other person, but it does establish our boundary and where we are coming from. Rather than saying “You’re wrong about…… and here’s what I think is right….” we start with “I’m focused on______ and here’s where that comes from,” or “I want _______ because__________.” Not defensive. Not attacking. A philosophy.

It is best to let go of attachment to the outcome. Put it out there and let the relationship take shape around it.

My philosophy exercise. This exercise is done in pairs. Player A is to think about something they care about and are comfortable talking about in the group, e.g. plant-based diet, universal child are, participatory budgeting. While Player A does a monologue about the thing they care about, Player B is to actively listen, but can only respond by saying one of 3 things at moments that feel appropriate:

Ok (find different emotional tones for this common response)

That’s interesting

Woah!

“My philosophy” saved me from a hopeless stalemate with my colleague. This improv practice clarified the reasons our partnership had gone as far as it could. We could break up without making the other person into a villain or feeling victimized. The project did not survive, but the friendship did. When an improv scene ends, we sweep the stage. A new scene begins.

Conflict brings out the truth about a relationship. And if we let go of the need to control the outcome, creativity will open a door to what happens next.

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Listen to an Improv In Real Life episode on this theme featuring Joel Veenstra

For a recent online class, I designed an exercise called “That’s Not How You Cook The Kielbasa” based on actual, heated conversations at a family reunion in Wisconsin, where kielbasa is a cultural touchstone, and to some, it’s own food group. Among the strong beliefs about the proper way to prepare it: Grill it. Boil it, then grill it. Never grill it. Roast it. Roast it whole. Do not cut the skin until it is cooked. Make small slits in the skin before roasting, but not the whole length of the kielbasa, like some kind of monster.

What was fascinating to witness was the u beliefs different people had about the rightness of their approach. Some people backed up their method with science. We are talking deep commitment. To a recipe. And clearly, to a tradition, which is to say it is linked to a person’s sense of belonging. The therapist in me has to come out and say it: this is not really about the kielbasa.

The improv exercise drawn from this is simple. One player is to think about a simple household task and describe the correct way to do it, breaking down each step. Their scene partner is to radically agree with whatever player #1 says, adding energy and a philosophy, (made-up) science, or family lore that deepens the reasons to do things this way. Player #2 does not know exactly what steps player #1 will name, and player #1 does not know what information player #2 will add to support their position, so there is a degree of uncertainty for both sides.

Then another pair joins the scene. They have an entirely different approach to this same household task. The steps the first pair detailed inspire this new pair to describe a different process, with their own philosophy, made-up science, or family lore to back it up.

The idea is for the pairs to increasingly - and absurdly - outrage each other with their deeply wrong method for doing this task. Beyond the comedy that organically emerges when you assign extraordinary importance to ordinary things and add a side of emotional intensity, there are useful skills we develop by playing this game: acute listening, collaborative partnering, cognitive and emotional agility, and creative thinking. In this playful realm at the edge of absurdity, we can examine the power of belief and our need for certainty through a fun-house mirror.

This is not so far from real life. We have strong points of view that do not feel absurd in the least to us, but make no sense to other people. When doing the exercise, it occurs to me how comforting “correctness” is, especially when life has thrown us into some chaos. Which, for many people right now, is a daily occurrence. Our sense of what is correct and true is a defense against the discomfort and dread of the unknown and unfamiliar. Improv can be a way to explore how it feels in the gaps between what we believe and what we can learn. This kind of creative experience prepares us for those times that life disrupts what we think we know.

Improv can be a way to practice functioning at the edge of the unknown without freaking out. It is an exercise in conscious discomfort that studies show help us gain tolerance for uncertainty, which translates into greater capacity to manage emotional stress that comes with the new, even when it is upsetting. The experiential dimension of improv exercises and games are even more essential in our digital-dominated lives. The person-to-person contact, the agreement to support each other through the discomfort, and the creative spark we can generate by adjusting the lens through which we look at absolutely anything make improv skills naturally therapeutic.

Well-crafted stories can frame and explain important concepts that give can maximize their impact, adding heart and emotional power to a presentation or talk. There are techniques that add color, imagination, and significance to information, making the content memorable and meaningful.

Some guidelines:

Choose descriptive details and embed them with active imagery. The details are the scenery we want the audience to attend to, and the route we take connects them. We might start by directing attention to a specific moment in time:

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At about 8 pm on Memorial Day whenI realize I haven’t spoken to anyone in 3 days. I haven’t left my house, answered my phone or even looked out a window since Friday morning. That’s what happens when I get into the flow of painting.”
Or to a set of facts: 
“There are 15000 more gun shops in the United States than there are grocery stores. My hometown in the Midwest, with a population of 5, 450 has 5 gun shops, 4 bars, and 1 grocery store. It is easier to create an arsenal than to buy groceries.”

Enter into emotional moments rather than describe them. Suppose the story is about a life-changing phone call. If the set up portion of the story successfully establishes the stakes, this is the time to bring the audience into what its like during and after the call: “Its a regular day at the office when my supervisor says there is a call for me from an editor at Penguin Books. My heart is pounding out of my chest. I can hardly breathe, I want so much for this to be good news — I need this — but I know there is a better chance it will not be good. ‘We want to publish your book,” the woman says. And I say robotically ‘you want to publish my book?” like I’m Siri. “Yes, yes that’s right,’ the woman says. Then I feel a surge of what I can only call joy juice, just a burst of dopamine in my brain. Five years of working in the dark just got a green light and I’m busting!!” If the storyteller embodies the emotion and heightens it, the listener experiences the emotional ride. Emotion and vivid imagery compels the brain to pay attention and makes the story memorable.

Keep the listener’s attention focused by building the tension. When the main character’s struggle is vivid and the stakes get higher over the course of the story, the listener will remain engaged. The real story is in the struggle. It might be an emotional struggle, The art of story is the capacity to sustain tension so the listener cares about what is going to happen and is present for the unfolding narrative.

Listen to the listener. Tell the story to a trusted colleague or friend, and note their emotional response, what they understand to be the emotional struggle, and their takeaway. If we are open, an audience will reveal to us what distracts or derails the narrative. This is the work of making art out of our experiences, and there is enormous emotional satisfaction when what we create “lands” and sustains an emotional connection with listeners.

The process of crafting a true experience into a story to be shared can shift the teller’s perspective and enlarge its meaning. When it is received by another, its meaning can expand even more and if the story continues to develop all the way to the stage it then becomes part of the audience members’ lived experience and inner resources.


Slams, shows and podcasts that feature true stories about the experiences that transform us engage attention in a way that is essential in the digital age. The popularity of live, local storytelling shows that feature people in our own community onstage, or large-scale international ones like The Moth and RISK! reflects the fascination for story that human beings have had since we sat around fires, figuring out how to survive together in the face of the elements. And we still help each other survive through well-crafted personal accounts of what we have made it through and how we have been changed by life.

Technology places constant demands on our attention, but listening to a human being share a creative take on a real experience is a powerful brain-to-brain connection that technology can never replicate.

Here are four elements to stories that compel listeners’ attention:

Emotional authenticity. There are experiences common to us all, but we have to find the stories that only we can tell. Specific, relevant details about our world - social background, relationships, and interior life - set the stage for the listener, but listeners’ emotional investment comes through sharing our flaws, struggles, and mistakes, and in the overcoming of internal and external obstacles. The combination of creative confidence - expressed through the craft of story - and emotional vulnerability makes listeners feel psychologically safe and more likely to engage with and relate to the twists and turns of an emotional journey. Anthropologist Michelle Scalise Sugiyama describes storytelling as “the sharing of stories with conspecifics,” — “con” meaning universally understood and shared. Storytelling is a form of cooperation involving information exchange. Stories communicate generalizable knowledge that can be applied beyond the immediate context.”

Sensory details. When telling a story out loud, the challenge is not only to engage but also to sustain another person’s attention, which is especially true in a time when listeners have a device with an entire universe of distractions in their pockets. Sensory details (and scenes, stay tuned for the next section of this piece for more about that) are key to what neuroscientists call “neural transport,” which is what happens when our brains are fully engaged in an imaginary experience. Movies and plays, done well, trick our brains into thinking the story being told is happening to us. Storytellers have no set, no props, and no costumes to assist with this neural “trick,” yet achieve just as much successful engagement when using these techniques.

“Scientists liken attention to a spotlight,” writes neuroscience researcher Paul Zak in Greater Good magazine. “We are only able to shine it on a narrow area. If that area seems less interesting than some other area, our attention wanders.” So suppose the story starts with a person who gets an unexpected phone call during their morning coffee. That’s what happened. Here’s the (imaginary) story:
”I look through a frosted window to see a foot of fresh, untouched snow outside as I sip my homemade latte, which is creamy with a slightly bitter hit of espresso at the back of my throat. The caffeine has just begun to quicken my heart when I look down at my phone and see ‘missed call’ from my daughter, who lives 1000 miles away. She never calls in the morning.” When we share what we see, smell, taste, or feel in a given moment, it activates listeners’ sensory cortices, making the experience seem real and immediate. Empathy is right next door, brain-wise. Win-win.

Conversations and scenes: show more than tell. Researcher Paul Zak’s work also shows that “the way to keep an audience’s attention is to continually increase the tension in the story.” This is most effectively achieved through scenes, rather than descriptions of events. We should think of scenes and narrative sections of a story as light bulbs on a string. The narrative is the thread that connects events and carries the story to the next important moment. Scenes are the individual bulbs, and we should aim to have twice as many as narrative sections.

To show rather than tell, we bring the listener into a moment as if it is happening right now. The event: “I was late for a meeting and had to eat a Subway sandwich at the wheel of my rental car.” Here’s the scene that makes it a story:
“I’m in the front seat of a Toyota Camry, with a Lexus on one side, a Mercedes on the other, just super expensive luxury cars everywhere. I got the mid-size rental from LAX, having no idea that Sherman Oaks, CA was so high-end. Now I feel outclassed, vehicle-wise, and it just hits me that this means I am also underdressed and underprepared for the meeting I flew 1000 miles to attend. And I’m starving. My heart is pounding, and I have a buzz in my head, which is either low-key jet lag, dehydration, anxiety, or low blood sugar. Now I’m afraid I will get dizzy in front of these fancy people who have the power to fund my project. I need food. I have a turkey Subway sandwich in the front seat. Part of me is saying “It’s ok, everyone drives in LA, people eat in their cars all the time.” But another voice in my head says, “Not only do fancy LA people not eat in their cars, people in LA do not eat!!! Do not put that sandwich in your mouth.” I have to decide between hunger and the potential humiliation of being seen scarfing this Subway sandwich. I choose humiliation.”

Dialogue is exactly that: conversations — including interior monologues — re-created as economically as possible, e.g. “My son says ‘I hope I get along with my roommate, I’ve never had to share space with anyone except you and dad.” I feel a sinking in my stomach. A tightness in my chest. I don’t even want to think about this house without him when he leaves for college. But I don’t want him to know I have this well of grief already rising up. So I put on this super-cheerful face. Just an outsized, not-at-all-normal grin. I say “You get along with your friends so well. You’ve had sleepovers. It will be like a long sleepover” in a kind of sing-song voice. Immediately, I’m thinking “ugh…a long sleepover??? You’re talking to him like he’s 7!” Inside, I’m fighting tears, so that’s the best I can do.”

Tension and stakes. We want the listener to be absorbed in the action so that they care, but cannot predict how it all turns out. The combination of empathy and stress — driven by uncertainty — powerfully captures attention. If we successfully set the stage so the listener cares about the events unfolding, it means they know what is at stake in the story.

After we set the scene and establish who we are at the start of the story, something happens that upsets the way our world has been described. This creates the tension, and everything that follows is what we do about it, how we feel about it, what happens as a result of these choices, and the unexpected events that follow, culminating in an emotional climax that signals the turning point.

We can practice viewing our experiences through the storytelling lens as a way to give them meaning, to galvanize our creative selves, and to be the main character in our own hero’s journey. These storytelling skills can make a story truly experienced and remembered by the people who hear it. And maybe give them hope, or inspiration, or a jolt of energy for change.

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There’s an improv exercise called “I Love What You’ve Done With The Place” (description below) that is a great example of how creating an imaginary reality can prepare us to deal with unusual and unpredictable real-world problems. Like most improv exercises, it involves taking a creative risk. The mere idea of risk implies the potential for failure, rejection, or danger, and thinking about it can trigger self-protective defenses. But in improv, the focus on group support and shared vulnerability galvanizes courage and amplifies the sense of reward just from taking the risk, before we even know how it will turn out. The spirit of play helps us stay with the uncertainty and get into a creative flow. New ideas emerge. We explore the unusual thing. Weird ideas get into the scene. That’s where improv has it’s most useful purpose.

Thinking skills for decision-making grow from our willingness to get weird, because even with the most painstaking information-gathering about any situation, outcomes are always unpredictable to some degree. The core elements of a good improv experience trigger the cocktail of natural “happiness chemicals” that help us tolerate the discomfort of not just exploring unfamiliar worlds, but actually creating them. They are:
A positive social environment with radical support
Enough structure for everyone to know the rules of engagement
Enough freedom with that structure to play around with new choices
Encouragement to go beyond habitual or conventional thinking
Radical support for every effort, as flail and flounder as necessary when trying new things

Here’s how the “I Love What You’ve Done With The Place” exercise works: A pair of players enters the imaginary home of another pair as if seeing some renovations for the first time. The “guests” identify specific changes they make up on the spot, which the “hosts” justify and explain. The pair of guests has to build on each other’s ideas, and the hosts have to build on each other’s explanations. For example:

Guest Player 1: I love what you’ve done with the place! That chandelier is spectacular!
Guest Player 2: Yes, that chandelier is blowing my mind. It looks like pure crystal!
Host Player 1: Yes, it is crystal. Pure quartz crystal.
Host Player 2: Yes, we read that crystals generate psychic energy, and we want that. We want a lot of it.

When each player says “yes” to what their partner offers, players and the audience begin to imagine a world together. Then, through the improv principle of “if this is true, what else is true,” this imagined world can quickly take shape. The scene goes on:

Guest Player 1: Those floor-to-ceiling chimes are giving meditation vibes.
Guest Player 2: Yes, those chimes are hitting me right in the chakras.
Host Player 1: Yes, we read that chimes raise the vibration in a space, and we want the absolute highest vibration.
Host Player 2: That’s right. We never argue anymore.

When the details offered are internally consistent, the players can quickly go from an empty space and a complete unknown to a made-up reality we can all track, even without visual props, a set, or costumes. Continuing with the “if this is true, what else is true” principle, we might discover that all the mirrors in this imaginary home have a motion sensor that activates a voice saying, “you’re beautiful, just the way you are,” and the ceiling in the bedroom has affirmations on it. And not only does this couple no longer argue, but they also

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cannot stop with the compliments!

In just a few lines, we have a world inhabited by characters who belong there. Something from nothing - except imagination, agreement, the willingness to get weird, through calibrated creative risk-taking.

The journal Thinking Skills and Creativity found that creative risk-taking is a positive predictor of creative problem-solving skills. Improv is a kind of gym for developing psychological “muscles” - thinking in new ways, close listening, idea generation, collaborating in real time - that are then more available when real-world decisions have to be made.

A study on the evolutionary functions and neuroanatomy of play, published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Review, identifies that the benefits of creative social play lie in its “balance between danger and safety, between automatized and new responses to environmental experiences.” The capacity for emotional risk grows through a balance between the stress of not-knowing and the fun of exploring it.

When we improvise, the creative risk can also be an emotional one. Defenses come down a bit when we are adequately warmed up, which opens up the flow of ideas and also our emotional vulnerability. We might suddenly feel self-conscious. We might trip over an internal boundary, start over-analyzing, and revert to the old mental habits. This can happen at the point of transition from old, obsolete creativity-squashing defenses to a new, expanded approach to the unfamiliar: a willingness to experiment as we cross into the weird, where we can learn to be okay with figuring it out as we go.

Improv prepares us for the world’s disruptions and life’s uncertainties. We cannot predict how things will turn out. We may not be in control of events that affect our loved ones and ourselves. But embracing the weird can strengthen those risk-taking muscles, through which we might discover ways we can shape the world for the better.

But suppose the players asked for a resolution, e.g., “tell us what we are going to do, tell us what we are to achieve.” A focus on outcomes can still yield surprise, discovery, and comedy, but with a greater tendency to control the process - even unconsciously - and to be more self-conscious about choices, thereby reducing creativity. And, in an effort to drive our efforts toward a goal, we may miss the unexpected gifts that show up along the way. It will definitely involve a greater cognitive demand from the players, who have to work harder to read and connect over the barrier of conflicting ideas about how to achieve the goal.

The new year may be an ideal time for reflection, self-examination and a commitment to make change. Perhaps it is a change to better care for our physical or mental health. Finally, clear out the clutter in the closets. Get out of a rut in our social life. Whatever it might be, there is a reason we need some incentive or “push” to move in that direction. There are complex reasons that resolutions do not “take,” but often it is simply that part of us does not want this change. Part of us does not feel ready for it. There may be losses we have not seriously considered. Perhaps there is a new reality that accompanies the change we want, one we have not prepared for. These inner truths may be pushed to the edges of awareness, or shamed into sitting in silence. But they exist. They are valid dimensions of our inner self that need to be understood and tended to.

If we have not grappled with why we have to pressure ourselves into change, the resistance will emerge despite our best efforts. And when it does, we can talk ourselves out of the new routines, behaviors and choices more easily than we can overcome the momentum of internalized habits.

All this inner conflict notwithstanding, the change we seek to effect could be so beneficial. The reasons we want the change are important. It can all turn out so much better than our fearful, wavering, vulnerable inner self can imagine, if we do stay the course through all the necessary tension and uncertainty.

To the inner self, a resolution can feel like being forced into an unwanted set of challenges. So, what if we think about our inner self as a friend. A fellow player on the stage of our life, who has a valid set of thoughts and arguments about what might go wrong on this new path. This friend is more in touch with the possibility of pain - usually based on past experiences - even if that fear is never realized. They may have a philosophy about things staying the same. Here’s the thing. This “friend” is inside of us. Any new road we walk down, they have to go too. What if we listen and process all these concerns, while going gradually in the new direction together?

Creative flow helps sustain change, in the same way it is an invisible current that drives a fascinating, funny improv scene. One thing that improv training can teach us is to let go of the illusion of control. A suggestion is a gentle prompt. It is an inspiration for a series of choices. And in listening to our inner conflicts, we have a better chance of bringing our whole self into the change we seek.

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1. Alphabet Conversations - This collaborative exercise works for everyone, even the little ones, with some encouragement. It proves that, by playing within a simple guideline, we can create something together - even if it is weird, and it could turn out to be very weird but also surprisingly coherent - no matter how much we disagree about other things. It can be done in pairs or teams, with each player taking turns, saying one sentence at a time. The conversation can be about anything at all, or suggested by the “audience” - the people not in this conversation. A random letter of the alphabet is assigned, and the first person to speak must start their sentence with that letter. Each new sentence begins with the following letter of the alphabet, until they have circled back to the starting letter. For example, the letter “l” is assigned and the conversation suggestion is “at the office.” (Note: be flexible with the letter “X” - let people go with a word that has an “x” sound or is close to the starting letter so not every story has to include x-rays or xylophones.)
   Player 1: Let me tell you, things are weird at the office right now.
   Player 2: My intuition says good things are coming.
   Player 2: No. For real?
   Player 1: Oh yes. Absolutely
   Player 2: Please let your intuition be right this time.
   Player 1: Quit blaming me for you not getting promoted!
   Player 2: Really? I believed you when you said it was a sure thing.
   Player 1: So gullible, my dear sweet gullible cousin…

2. Mind Meld - This game will sound entirely unbelievable to anyone who has not tried it, an ideal experience that reminds us there is some kind of magic we can tap into when we put our heads together.
   Two players. Face to face. They count down out loud together and then say a word that comes to mind at the exact same moment. They repeat this until they say the same word at the same time. Be sure to clarify what the partner said before going another round. Both players’ minds will be making associations, until the second they make the same association at the same time.
   Both players: Three. Two. One.
   Player 1: Tree Player 2: Lamp
   Both players; Three. Two. One.
   Player 1: Room Player 2: Furniture
   Both players: Three. Two. One.
   Player 1: Couch Player 2: Couch

   Of course, this can take longer than 3 rounds. Take as many rounds as it takes to get this mind meld to happen. If it never happens, walk away, shake it off, and start again.

   The feeling you get when the words match exactly is a dopamine rush you want to experience.

3. As Many Things As You Can Name In 15 Seconds. Set a timer. Give a player a category. They must name as many things in that category as they can in 15 seconds. Wrong answers are encouraged. They are just as much fun as right ones, but the effort to try to stick to the category creates the tension. Simple categories first, e.g. Breakfast foods: Oatmeal. Bacon. Omelet. Muffun. Pizza. Hot pocket.
   If you want to increase the tension, do another round with more challenging categories, e.g. “ways to sign off in an email” or “NYC landmarks” or whatever you like.

4. Double-Time Debates. Two players are assigned a topic to “debate.” To keep the energy up, try to keep the debates to non-political, fun topics, like “vacation or staycation” or “potatoes: skinned or peeled.” They can casually discuss the pros and cons of a topic, or pick a point of view and stick to it. A timer is set for 1 minute and the “debate” begins. The rule is that players cannot talk over one another. They must take turns speaking, and do their best to actually respond to what the other person says. After 1 minute, the conversation is over.
   Then the same pair does the same debate in 30 seconds. Make the same points and draw the same connections as in the 1-minute version.
   Then the same pair does the same debate in 10 seconds.

   The celebrity pianist/comic Victor Borge said “the shortest distance between two people is a laugh.” Improv closes the distance between people through a mindset that encourages people to encourage one another.
   
   

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   Improv is a way to listen with intention and focus to play a game, not to make a point, or win an argument, or set something straight.
   
   If you play these games at a party or holiday event, expect the unexpected. But do expect to have fun. And maybe, possibly, make a positive memory together.

   
   
   

Today the Numbers Guy has a report on the project results:
Employees were glowing in their comments about the class content and value (yay)
Employees resented mandatory participation on their own time (not a surprise).
Employee turnover was unchanged (oh boy).
The program’s operating expenses incurred a net financial loss (the ugly truth).

The Person In Charge stands up. He rears his head back, then stretches his arm straight out, his index finger nearly touching Numbers Guy’s nose, and begins to barrage him with questions. “Have you ever run a department? Do you know anything about managing people? What are your qualifications? All I ever hear is how much people love this program. What do you know about a model program? Have you ever had to manage an organization?”

Numbers Guy is almost robotic in response. He sticks to his facts. When he has the chance to speak - between the stream-of-consciousness and insults - he continues his report. The numbers tell the truth.

The unbearable tension in the room evokes a sense of urgency in me to come to the aid of Numbers Guy. I want a strategy.
I have no strategy.

Another trainer across the table makes direct eye contact with me, blinking like a hostage communicating through eye Morse code. And she is raising her hand. My stomach churns. I raise my hand in solidarity. I am an improviser. Support for the person who takes a risk is deeply ingrained at this point. But it feels like crossing into the line of fire.

“Would it be ok if we say something at this point?? she says, politely.
”We’re the ones who have been meeting with the staff in the rooms for the past two years, maybe our experience could give some insight?” my colleague asks.

I add “yes, we would like to say something if it’s ok” Reader, I did not like to say something. Saying something feels terrible. But saying nothing feels worse. And I had no idea what to say. Improv rule: go into the space and make a choice. We are both doing what we can to pull focus from the Numbers Guy.

The Person In Charge turns his rage face to us, two vendors fairly popular with the staff, to whom he’s only ever shown his benevolent side. His look of genuine cognitive dissonance would have been delightful under better circumstances - a red-faced, fast-blinking look of puzzlement that means either “how dare someone from this table interrupt my unhinged freakout?” or “I’ve never let these women see this side of me before, what do I do now???”

I speak, and what I say is utterly unplanned. It comes from an impulse below the level of consciousness. “You are so right about the program,” I say. “The staff love the programs we offer.” My colleague adds the kicker. “But they also would rather get a raise than go to mandatory classes, no matter how good the classes are. They tell us that all the time.” She just went right to the hard reality. No holding back. That was courage.

“Yes, they do say that,” I add, nodding like a bobble-headed doll, rife with anxiety.

But my fear is unfounded. What we said bounces off the Person In Charge like a rubber ball. It does not penetrate. He barely pauses, then returns to his diatribe against Numbers Guy, who continues sharing true things. They are locked in.

That meeting ended in a stalemate. Denial by the Person In Charge notwithstanding, we all knew the project would not survive. But I was left with a renewed attention to the essential importance of courage. The courage to face difficult facts so we can do better. The courage to speak up for the truth. The courage to help someone being scapegoated, no matter how intrepid that scapegoat happens to be.

Applied improvisation is an experience in growing creative and interpersonal courage. Improv games and exercises can be designed to build up specific social-emotional skills that empower us to speak up under pressure, support each other in tense situations, and navigate high-stakes scenarios without being derailed by the stress reponse. Research shows that the learning through these experiences tends to “stick” because it mixed with fun. And we need all the fun we can find in this minefield of a world, where unexpected power plays, institutional rifts, and massive uncertainty across all sectors of life can bring out hidden dysfunctions we cannot unsee.

Improv is one of the few spaces where we are offered the freedom to fail, flail, flounder and flop, as long as we are willing to let go of defensiveness around those fundamental human vulnerabilities. It was improv training that gave me the impulse to support my colleague, without knowing what would happen. The comedic element of improv makes it an ideal way to build the courage to tolerate high-stakes tension for the conflict-avoidant (that would be me, a work in progress).

A creative risk in improv is also an emotional one. We can become braver through improv training for the simple reason that it requires us to say “yes” to what we otherwise try to avoid — uncertainty, and the potential for embarrassment. We are rewarded not by a conventional “win” but by an inner knowing we stepped into the unknown, supported other humans, and - hopefully, almost always - had fun doing it.

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We need to be brave now. We need to speak up for true things and have the courage to defend the scapegoats. And like my colleague in the meeting showed me, courage is contagious.

For an interesting and hilarious take on improv exercises that can build empathy by playing characters who are self-absorbed listen to Episode 11 of Improv In Real Life “Not Exactly What I’m Saying” featuring the great Louis Kornfeld.

The success of our interactions with others might be measured in outcomes — conflicts resolved, information received and understood, decisions made. But life is always in flux; new situations arise, and outcomes can be fleeting or unfold in a future we cannot yet see. So a more useful, but far less concrete, measure of success can be found in the process of an interaction. For example ,  did we listen to the other people involved? If not, what got in the way? Are we aware of what we are connecting to in the other person? Are we actually connecting? And how can we know?

The answer has something to do with empathy, our capacity to “get” other people - and situations that are not necessarily about us. It might seem like empathy primarily benefits the recipient, but research shows it is very good for the giver. “People who experience empathy also tend to be less stressed and depressed, more satisfied with their lives, happier in their relationships, and more successful at work,” according to Jamil Zaki PhD, director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory at Stanford University. The best news is that empathy is a quality that, like other social-emotional skills, can be learned.

Improv has an immediacy that works the “muscles” for reading and responding to others’ cues. Here’s an example:

Play characters who share a strong emotional reaction to an ordinary thing, and feed each other’s energy about it:
Player 1: The Smiths’ holiday lights are so inspiring.
Player 2: Yes, seeing those lights makes me think about being a better person.
Player 1: Yes, it’s not just the beauty of them, its all the work they put in. It makes me want to shine.
Player 2: Yes, we should not be afraid to shine.
Player 1: That’s right, I mean who are we not to shine???

Then switch gears and play characters in another house, in the same neighborhood:
Player 3: The Smiths’ holiday lights are…a lot.
Player 4: Yes, they overpower our subtle, more sophisticated lights.
Player 3: Yes, we could be overlooked, just because we have soft, Charles Dickens-inspired lighting.
Player 4: Yes, their blinding, garish display is totally sidelining our subtle, 17th-century lighting. It’s not a movie set, Smiths!
Player 3: Yes, it’s not Las Vegas, Smith family!

Just as importantly, we can experience what it is like when someone else does not get what we think we are expressing, e.g.

Player 1: The Smiths’ holiday lights are up early this year, and they are fantastic.
Player 2: So you’re saying we are late with our decorating.
Player 1: No no not at all. I am just so impressed they have a full, impressive Macy’s level display up and it isn’t even Thanksgiving.
Player 2: Well once they are up, our lights will be good. There’s nothing wrong with our display.
Player 1: I agree 100%. They just got theirs up so early. I shouldn’t have said anything.
Player 2: I’ve already disappointed you…

We are making up a dynamic between characters, and that involves some degree of risk - because it is creative and unscripted - but not so much risk that we shut down. This risk-reward dynamic, with a side of emotional intensity, is an ideal way to engage brain plasticity, which is mobilized by:

• Social-emotional engagement: thinking, feeling and relating to others;

• An emotional “charge” that engages attention and tells the brain “this matters”

• Enough safety for discovery and exploration to happen, enough uncertainty that interest is heightened

  • An experience that results in some kind of reward - a laugh, a revelation, a back story about these characters’ dynamic is discovered, a puzzle piece fits.

The best part about working the empathy “muscles” through improv training is that it sometimes involves comedy. Usually. But not always. That’s the best part. The comedy is not planned. It shows up in the mechanics of the improv games and exercises, and in the scenes that bring out the funny in being human. It will be revealed through emotional expression and the characters’ connection. The potential for comedy is in playing with specific emotions in novel ways.

All of these scenes take possible emotional reactions and heighten them through interaction. Playing - or watching others play - characters who flounder and flail at something they seem to want is a fun way to look at our human flaws through an empathetic lens. And doing this can increase emotional flexibility and the agility to switch gears in response to real-life situations when we are under threat or stressed. This can involve a therapeutic dose of taking and shifting perspectives.

An exercise: Create a scenario in which four distinct characters are placed in a high-tension situation. A specific point of view is assigned to each character.

Some examples:
1) Highly scientific and analytic
2) Philosophical and calm
3) “We’re doomed!!”
4) Cheerful, conflict avoidant

The idea is to explore the dynamics when these perspectives are applied to the same situation. Some examples:
*The group has just arrived late at night at a rental house in the mountains. Other guests occupy the house. The owner is not responding.”
*The group is on a hike deep in the woods, lost, and there is no cell service;
*The group is responsible for a work event together and none of the food has arrived or been ordered;
Each player should deeply invest in their point of view.
Best improv practices apply:
Listen to one another.
Let others speak.
Be impacted by what others say and do.

After a minute, the facilitator calls “change.” Continuing the action from where it was, the scientific person becomes the cheerful, conflict-avoidant person. The cheerful person becomes the “doom and gloom” person. The “doom and gloom” person becomes the scientific/analytic person. This continues until each player has shifted to play all four perspectives and returns to their starting point.

When we play a character who has a strong perspective, ideas will come to mind that justify it. Interestingly, in an exercise like this, when the structure calls for shifting to a different point of view, ideas that justify the new one almost always follow. It is the spirit of play, of creative freedom, that makes this possible.

We may not wind up in agreement with a perspective very different from our own, but we may have more empathy for people who share it. Just getting what animates other people can lower defenses and lay the groundwork for a bridge of understanding.

Not everyone who learns to improvise will become more empathetic. The objective of the creative act in improv is the experience itself. And if it turns out that we get better at relationships, it’s not like we planned it.

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Broadway star Joshua Henry, who plays Coalhouse Walker, Jr. in Broadway’s Ragtime has to deliver ‘Make Them Hear You,’ a powerhouse of a song, eight shows a week. To sustain the physical resilience required for this, he does a morning routine based on the principle of “plyometrics” - short bursts of high-intensity exercise that build agility. “While he works out on the StairMaster,’ writes Jason Frank, who interviewed him for Vulture, he “forms vowels that he’ll sing in the show so his body is used to making those motions in high-intensity situations.” Even in the tightly-managed performance of a Broadway musical, things can go in unexpected directions. Mistakes can be made. Cues missed. “Unpredictable things happen onstage,” says Henry. “A light might go out; audience members might move; my scene partner might do something different,” he explains. “The more I have those sensations memorized under physical stress, the easier it is to pull them out.”

Real life is much more dynamic and unpredictable than the scripted, controlled world of a Broadway show. Anyone who remembers life before Venmo - or online therapy or romances with AI partners - knows that the future comes faster now. While we process one significant change, another one we cannot see coming is right around the corner. This is difficult because while our brains are built for learning, they also seek patterns and consistency. So we keep trying to predict what will happen next, but we are not very good at it.

In some ways, we are always playing last night’s game. We bring our history to the present moment. We respond with the skills we have. Mental habits have an emotional component that makes changing them uncomfortable. This is why improvisation is such an interesting and creative process that prepares our future self for the unforeseeable. It is a unique combination of past and present. In an improvisation exercise, playing last night’s game brings the entire enterprise to a screeching   halt. It can be uncomfortable - because it is unusual and may activate our defenses - but through the active, heightened experience, we shift out of self-protective mode and into a creative, expansive mindset.

What we can do to prepare for the uncertain future is strengthen the psychological “muscles” that help us not just manage uncertainty, but engage with it. Skills that we practice on the regular right now - like Joshua Henry’s daily vowel workout - are a gift to our future self.

Improv is an immediate experience. It is creativity in real time, right now, and then it is over. What endures, however, is its impact, the way it changes us. Practice in creative thinking fine-tunes our ability to embrace the unfamiliar and expand into its possibilities. Through practice in situations of artificial intensity, those skills are then more available when we are in action in real life.

The future is an idea, but in reality, more like a guess. We bet on tomorrow with the choices we make today. Improv is like batting practice for tomorrow’s game, a game that most likely has not been invented yet.

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Support your long drive or workout with a listen to Improv In Real Life, a podcast about practical applications of improv to our stresses and challenges. It is available on Apple, Spotify, and all podcast platforms.

A Ukrainian writer named Yaroslava Antipina writes a “diary from Kyiv,” a series of daily posts on Blue Sky about creativity in the face of constant crisis and threat, of life under literal attack. Many posts include a painting by a Ukrainian artist. On New Year’s Eve she posted “They attack us with missiles in the morning. We go to bookstores in the afternoon. Yes, I visited one of my favorite bookstores in Kyiv (they serve coffee, right).” She drinks “war coffees” most days, and I read her posts while drinking mine.

When I feel weary of the world we face right now, her posts and essays remind me that the creative process is precisely for getting through war-torn times, desperate hours, life under fire, and attacks from the world around us and within ourselves. We may or may not succeed in transcending the pain and challenges we face, but the process of trying will take us further than we ever thought we could. The creative effort can stretch the limits of reason in ways that surprise and delight our imagination. That can be rewarding enough. But what if it is also mixed with fun?

What if we can produce a steady dose of transcendence that bolsters the creative courage we need?

Life can be weird or terrifying beyond our capacity to reason. We can be dropped into an unknown world without warning. Creativity is the energy to face and wrangle with the messy unknown. The creative act strengthens the psychological “muscle” we need to take small steps in the dark and face challenges that are worse than we imagined. It is the most potent force we have to gain mastery over the moment, and through finding agency in that moment, continue the fight.

The creative process through improvisation is one of the most direct pathways to this creative capacity. To improvise, we embrace uncertainty and discovery, allowing us to go beyond what is known, both within ourselves and in the story or scene that emerges. This is inherently risky, but it is a risk without actual danger. It is an opportunity to practice transcending our inner conflicts and self-negativity by taking the best care of everyone else in our field of play.

To tap creativity, we need to be open and willing to take these risks. We can start anywhere. We can start exactly where we are and how we are. We start with our authentic, flawed self. A study published in Thinking Skills and Creativity found a direct connection between personal authenticity — being open to one’s true self and aware of one’s authentic voice — and creative potential at home and in the workplace. An authentic mindset can be learned and cultivated, regardless of how much internal programming we must overcome to achieve it. It advances creative thinking by going through, rather than around, the self-protective defenses that block, edit, and censor our ideas, shaping our sense of self based on our past and present attackers.

This improv exercise demonstrates the concept of making something from nothing. Or from anything.

Players stand in a circle.
Player 1 “shapes” empty space until it becomes something recognizable, which they then use — e.g. the shape becomes a flute that they hold to the side and “play” by moving their fingers like a flute player, or it becomes a bowl that they proceed to “eat” from — and give to the player to their right, who accepts and validates understanding by using the imaginary item as demonstrated by the person who made it. Then player #2 plays with that imaginary item’s shape until it takes a new form. A new item is demonstrated and passed to player #3. As each player accepts the imaginary item offered to them, and then reshapes it to become something else for the next person, they practice taking and giving focus, which can be as anxiety-producing as the demand to create something, even if there are no expectations for what should be. Some players can do this without pre—planning what they will shape the energy to be; others will find that harder than they had thought. Whatever happens is ok, as long as everyone is kind and respectful to their partners.

This improv exercise illustrates an unconventional approach to navigating uncertainty. Our cognitive mind tries to give shape to reality when we are faced with the messy unknown. It achieves this by making predictions about outcomes and scripting responses. These preparations make us feel safer, but they are not, in reality, more effective. In a new moment, in a new reality, we need a new approach. With improv and a creative mindset, we may experience transcendence on that new path. And we may find that it inspires more of these creative explorations, in hopes that we can experience it again.

Improv is an act of creative courage. The immediacy of improv makes it unique in its transformative potential. In every other art form, the creative process culminates in a completed piece: a symphony, a lyric, a poem, a sculpture, or a book. Something tangible emerges with every other art form, and we know when it is complete. In science, the process leads to discoveries that change the way we understand nature and the universe. In business creativity drives innovation.

With improv, the only tangible outcome, or product, is the impact of the experience on the people involved.

Every game or scene is new. The improvised creative process happens only once in real-time and is gone forever. What endures is the impact: the ways the experience changes the people involved in the interaction. As we progress further with self-development through improv, the changes become more enduring.

Seeking transcendence through the creative process is an act of self-preservation. It is an act of faith that change is possible. Sometimes the immediacy of that act will heal an ancient wound. Sometimes, it will help us navigate the present moment with enough spontaneity to respond more effectively and find meaning in it.

People under fire in Kyiv go from being bombed in the morning to a bookstore for coffee in the afternoon. They manage to engage with life and hope through art while under attack. Transcendence is what gets us through adversity, not the prize we get at the end of it. Start anywhere. Start now

This inspires my own travel travesty. Different circumstances, similar challenge.

It is 1 a.m., and my husband and I are in Terminal D at JFK airport. Terminal D is one of the more deserted, terrifying terminals, at least at 1 a.m. We’d been on flights or sitting in airports for the past 100 days, having traveled straight through from Australia to LA to NY. (It wasn’t really 100 days, I’m just rounding up because with all the time changes, it is impossible to know how many days or hours we have been traveling at that point, or our names, or what a hemisphere is). Our flight from LA was delayed. We’re disoriented and exhausted, so I am grateful I splurged on a prepaid car service to drive us home, knowing we would have no functioning brain cells at this point in the tail end of a long trip. Reunited with our mountain of luggage, we make the call to the limousine service.

The car service does not answer. Anxiety spikes. There are no taxis. No activity at all in the parking lot. Inside, the terminal is eerily quiet and mostly empty, except for some people in the shadows. I think. There is a murmur. Sometimes, it is clear that people are talking. I can’t see them, but they are somewhere around, obviously planning to kill us when we fall asleep on our pile of bags. Fear and righteous rage - impotent rage - rise as I face the fact that this car service is not circling the airport, ready to pick us up, as we had paid for.

Then I hear my husband speaking. Someone has picked up the call. “Yes, it is late, but we were supposed to call when we got our bags, and now we have our bags,” he says. “I thought we prepaid for this. I’m confused.”

I say “yes, I set this all up, we prepaid. We did it exactly as we were instructed. Let me talk.” I take the phone.

The woman from the car service is lit up. “Don’t use that nasty tone with me. I heard what you said. Don’t you yell at me. Listen, you are late. Our guys can’t drive around waiting for people. I can’t get anyone there until 7 am. You’ll have to wait.” Okay, sure, we are late, but technically, American Airlines was the one that was late. And this is an airport limousine company. It is literally the driver’s job to drive around, to and from airports. This woman is highly defensive and lashing out. Somebody screwed up. About that, I have some degree of mental clarity amid the fog of jet lag, panic, and anger.

But in the same instant, I also know that if this woman hangs up the phone, she will not pick it up again. She will not admit that her company is at fault. And in a split second, I know that in this moment, it does not matter that they are entirely in the wrong. Improv training has kicked in, the “muscle” for absorbing and responding to the scene we are in. This is not the moment to set the other person straight. Instead, I can be a character in this scene that moves it forward.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize my tone was harsh. “(Reader, my tone was not harsh). “I’m really sorry I came across like that. It’s just so scary here.”

There is a pause, a quiet sigh. “I can imagine it is scary there,” she says. Much less defensive, more connected to my dilemma.

“Yes, there are people in the shadows,” I say, “but otherwise it is deserted. I’m just so scared. And tired.”

Her attitude softens even more. “Yeah, I can understand that…hey, hold on a minute. A driver is cashing out right now. Let me see if he can come pick you up.”

And an hour later, we are on our way home. The driver got an enormous tip. The anger was expressed in a strongly worded letter to the company a few days later. There was an apology. And a coupon. (Reader, we never used that coupon).

We avoided a scary, threatening night in Terminal D because improv skills gave me the capacity to say “yes” to the reality as presented, to take a position that leaned into another person’s humanity rather than fight. Through improv practice, we can learn to engage creatively with tense situations in real life. There are times when it doesn't matter who is right; what matters is who is willing to find a connection. Saying “yes’ to the scene we are in unlocks creative resources that make it possible to move the scene forward.

In that scene, the only powers I had - and they are crazily effective in a turbulent world - were creativity, receptivity, and agility.

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Receptivity: recognize that being seen as “right” or justifiably angry will sometimes have to wait, in service of an immediate need or goal. Many real-life scenes include barriers to communication due to defensiveness on the part of others that we cannot dismantle. Some people are not interested in, or incapable of facing, the facts as we see them.
Creativity: Playing with the reality we are given opens up options and choices that will move the energy forward.
Agility: a character in an improv scene comes into existence as a response to a dynamic interaction with other characters. We can learn to adjust and adapt as the scene unfolds. And through this willingness to meet the moment, we may connect with some empathy or commonality in the other person and achieve a more creative outcome.

The scene we are in is whatever it is. We have some power to shape it. That may be enough to get through it. To get to safety. To get to the next step.

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Check out the latest episode of my podcast Improv In Real Life, in which my guest Beth Boynton, RN and I discuss the power of “yes” to build connection, reduce stress, and bring more humanity to people with cognitive decline. And play games!

Suppose someone is offering you a drink. It’s one of your regular favorites. You say “yes, thank you” and proceed to enjoy it while watching a sunset. Wonderful.

Now, again, suppose someone is offering you a drink. It’s one of your regular favorites, but you act like this is an incredible surprise, a great gift. “Yes!! THANK YOU! Wow!” you say with great energy and enthusiasm. Studies show that even when the excitement is imaginary, this heightened emotional reaction activates a state of curiosity and interest in our brain. It is the ideal state of mind for learning and expansion.

“Yes” is one of the foundations of improv, and it accomplishes a few things at once. It conveys receptivity to, and acceptance of, what is happening right now. It brings us into a creative partnership with other people who agree to explore the ideas that emerge. It activates the state of mind that energizes improvisers to create characters and scenes without a plan, using only their imagination, a skill set for how to deploy it, and the willingness to risk.

Now let’s say that the “drink” is a change. An expected disruption to our lives, something that throws us into the messy unknown. We are not inclined to say “yes” until we understand it. But the improv approach is to say yes so that we can understand it. Something is on the other side of the “yes” that we can neither predict nor grasp based on what we already know. The improv mindset, skills, and willingness to risk create the necessary space to come to grips with it

Prolonged periods of extreme uncertainty take a toll on our well-being. In fluid, dynamic situations, we are unable to predict too far into the future. To stick with ways of thinking that were a match for a more predictable time will produce an abiding sense of disappointment and even despair. It is possible to practice saying “yes” to the present moment, even if the reality we face is complicated or painful.

Research showing that improv was effective at helping people “break set” with old mental patterns was published in Thinking Skills and Creativity. In “Working With(out) A Net: Improvisational Theater and Enhanced Well-Being” researcher Gordon Bermant discusses “a positive relationship between improv practice and well-being in other life domains.”

Creative risks are emotional, of course, and can bring up all sorts of feelings, from pockets of paralyzing self-doubt to indescribable joy. The trick is to be generous and compassionate to ourselves, as we would be toward a friend at an important turning point in life. This can give rise to an excitement about the risk itself. The outcome might turn out to be far different from what we started out to do, but this approach can produce moments and even hours that feel deeply rewarding, when a steady stream of small but unmistakable risks propels us along the path to the new.

The scene: A week-long improv camp for elementary school-age kids. We have begun each session with a reminder that radical support of one another is at the heart of improv, reinforced through a game of “three things.” Each player, in turn, names three things in a category, and after each thing, the group says “yes!” in unison. Sometimes a kid names something that is not in the category. We still say “yes!” to the idea and the effort. A mistake, in this context, is just another idea, and we will play with it.

It is the last of five days together, and the group is doing a final practice of a game called Slide Show, which they will perform for family and friends in just a few minutes. In this game, two players become partners in sharing an adventure they recently had, which includes “photographs” or slides of what they describe. The other players silently form a picture based on the improvised dialogue, which is performed out to the audience. When the narrators announce they are ready to share the slide, everyone else freezes in place. The narrators turn to the scene that has formed behind them, then describe the characters, taking cues from each other and the poses of the players in the picture to improvise a story told by the picture.

The narrators have no time to discuss what their Slideshow is about. One of them initiates with an idea, and the other supports it 100%. The (not-real, made-up for this article) names of these two narrators, pulled randomly, are “Lacie” and “Bill,” both nine years old. Lacie is enthusiastic and warm, and shy. She seems anxious—and sometimes freezes up completely—when the spotlight is on her, but she did volunteer to be in the mix of possible narrators, so we hope for the best. Bill is a combination of New York Times Opinion writer David Brooks, Neal deGrasse Tyson, and Jerry Seinfeld. An observer of everything and everyone, he considers himself an expert on almost any topic and insists he is right on the facts.

The scene begins with Bill telling the audience he and his friend have just returned from a sightseeing trip to New York City. Lacie lights up. She knows at least 3 things about New York City!

Lacie: We saw so many tall buildings, and some of them are world-famous.
Bill: Yes and the best day was at the Statue of Liberty, which was designed to honor 100 years of American independence and came to the United States in several pieces from France. We saw so many different people from all over the world.
Lacie: Here’s a picture of what we saw on our second day.

They turn to describe the poses their scene partners have adopted. Two are standing on chairs, one with an arm stretched up, like Lady Liberty, torch in hand. The other has arms straight up, forming a peak over her head.

Lacie: Here is the Eiffel Tower. (when she hears herself, covers her face in her hands, eyes saying “oh no, now what???? The Eiffel Tower is not in New York!!!”)
Bill (pauses, eyes wide, takes a beat, then speaks). Yes, this is the gift shop, where you can buy miniature replicas of buildings from both New York and France. You can get a Statue of Liberty, an Eiffel Tower, and an Empire State Building.
Lacie visibly relaxes. She grins.
Lacie: Yes! Yes, this gift shop has replicas of things from France AND New York.

They go on to have a lot of fun with the other poses. Lacie names them whatever comes to mind, and of course, Bill knows—or invents—all the facts about each one.

At the start of the week, Bill would have insisted on accuracy in this slide show. His anxiety would have him double down on being correct, even if it meant the scene was stalled out. Lacie’s anxiety was also about making mistakes, which is why she sometimes froze up.

An improv intensive provided them both an alternative path to the psychological safety of being “right.” In an improv scene, getting it right means using creativity, connection, and kindness to tell a story that integrates whatever unfolds in the interaction. To be able to listen, adjust to new and unexpected ideas that emerge in a game or scene, and focus on making the scene work rather than stick with a predictable set of ideas, are ways to off-ramp from social anxiety to social creativity.

This capacity to grow beyond the comfort of our habitual ways of thinking and psychological defenses, as well as the self-imposed barriers and limitations they create, is a core element of Emotional Intelligence. Improv training is uniquely effective for cultivating Emotional Intelligence, which is increasingly recognized as essential for navigating personal and professional life. Improv works as well with adults as it does with kids, and they need it even more. Adults’ self-protective defenses are more baked in, and mistakes have real-world consequences. Even if those are simply a blow to our sense of self, they can threaten our confidence about decision-making.

As a facilitator, the week-long improv camp helped me reflect on my own growth beyond anxiety through improv: enhanced mental focus, the capacity to absorb and manage an avalanche of emotional energy from the kids, and letting go into the fun while remaining fully in charge and responsible. It also showed me where I need to work on myself:

I have no trouble accepting that a carefully-planned structure is not working and can switch gears when needed, but that comes with a ridiculous degree of self-doubt. That needs improvement.

I can strengthen my ability to say “no” clearly and kindly when boundaries need to be set for the sake of the group flow. I stumbled upon a people-pleasing element in my personality, something I thought I had overcome, but it resurfaced under pressure.

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The facilitator self needs to be practical and straightforward when there are conflicting needs within a group. Improv helps me see these flaws and work on them, but it feels like fun.

“Yes” is for group support and psychological safety for risk-taking. “No” maintains group integrity, which preserves psychological safety for group members who are less aggressive and demanding. And as our protagonist Bill said as we were doing our post-show reflection, “being right about everything isn’t as much fun as creating something that never happened before.”

Every moment of our life never happened before. If we are too fearful of mistakes or tripping over our flaws, we might miss out on the fun.

This belief in what our rational mind knows is an artificial reality is key to improvisation. When we commit to a made-up situation, our imagination can fill in the blanks so well that both players and audience accept it. Research shows that our imagination can “trick” the brain so easily that we can have a full stress response from a story we conjure out of worry and fear. In other words, sometimes the call is coming from inside the house, reason enough to harness the same power of our creative mind to benefit our mental health and stress resilience.

In our world of AI-generated information, fake facts, and skepticism of actual science, it may seem counterintuitive to encourage more fabricated realities. But there is a crucial difference between consuming content and creating it in a highly conscious and collaborative process. In fact, AI makes an experience like improv even more essential because of improv’s unique brand of human engagement that cannot be faked. The experience is happening in real time, is fully human, messy and unpredictable. We lower our defenses in order even to attempt it, freeing up psychological resources that might then allow us to find new perspectives to which we might otherwise be closed off. Whether we flail or sail, we are the authors of the experience.

To improvise, we use our own ideas and build on those of others, saying “yes” to the connections that emerge from a creative process that we cannot predict or control. We tap our reservoirs of knowledge while learning from what others know. This is very good for our emotional well-being. It strengthens our self-concept to stay present in that awkward space between what is and what is emerging, an essential capacity when life presents new, painful realities at every turn.

In the article “Improvisation Takes Practice” in Harvard Business Review researchers discuss the heightened uncertainty and massive disruption we are experiencing in the world, and the need for “people who can think and act fast - without an instruction manual. That is, you need skilled improvisers.” Learning through direct experience is more profound, efficient, and applicable to real-life situations.

It does take practice to achieve the “Harvey” level of belief that activates the ability not just to imagine possible futures, but to act effectively in the face of the unexpected. However, improv games and exercises deliver benefits from the very start, at any skill level. When we can shift out of self-protective defenses that naturally arise in situations of creative or emotional risk, the rewards are rich.

Increased tolerance of uncertainty, which has significant psychological benefits when dealing with change. Research published in the Journal Of The American Academy Of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry showed that improv taught social skills that improved mental health among adolescents in a high school setting. A 2017 study published in the Journal of Mental Health found improvisation training to be instrumental in reducing symptoms of anxiety, depression, and perfectionism, which is a significant source of stress. And while some people think science is a little too smarty-pants and needs to be taken down a peg, some of us value understanding the “why” of things.

Creativity through improv is its own special kind of magic. It can galvanize the thinking and relationship skills we need to navigate the unknown. We can start anytime. We can start where we are. The key is to stay in the process long enough to realize its possibilities.

Spoiler alert: in Harvey, the rabbit is real.

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Listen to the inaugural episode of my new podcast IMPROV IN REAL LIFE for an interview with Gary Ware of Breakthrough Play. And some games!

There is an improv game called “Wrong Answers Only” in which a player is assigned to be an expert in some area of knowledge - baseball or baking or James Taylor’s music, anything at all - and interviewed by the group on the topic. The one rule is that they must give wrong answers. Say the opposite of what they know to be true. What they do not know, they make up and say with absolute authority. In a weird paradox, for this game, there are no wrong answers, only wrong right ones. It allows us to play around with the idea of authority, claiming it with confidence even as we give decidedly inaccurate information. When we consciously choose to rename or reframe existing ideas, we engage curiosity and interest, states of mind that a recent study linked to greater agility and resilience when dealing with difficult change.

To flip reality in this way is to engage our creativity in a task that is not exactly “easy” - we will generally think of the correct answer first, reject it, then subvert it - but is manageable. And when we practice playfully subverting reality in an atmosphere of support, we create new neural pathways that enhance our ability to think creatively when facing real-life stresses. This is especially important now, when we are inundated with news and disruptions, much of it deeply unsettling.

“The act of playing is inherently messy and scary,” writes applied improv facilitator, improviser, and Strategic Play Consultant Gary Ware, author of Playful Rebellion. “There isn’t always a guaranteed outcome, and it won’t always work out the way we plan.” The uncertainty factor is what makes play fun and engaging. So when faced with high-tension situations, play is the key that unlocks the kind of mental focus and emotional investment we need to take on complicated and unpredictable stresses.

Every experience we have changes our brain. “Try to seek out invitations to play in everything you do,” says Ware. It is a rebellion against conventional thinking, and a liberation from old approaches at a time we very much need new ones.

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The speed of change has us dancing as fast as we can. Even fun and exciting change can shake things up enough to trigger a sense of threat. A new job, a dream project, or a pursuit of better health can yield something we could not have predicted. And genuinely scary change can send us into either full-blown denial of the ways we need to adjust, which means we will use old thinking that does not meet the moment, or into full-blown retreat, which does not work at all. Just as our devices need regular updates, so do our habits of mind.

Fluid, dynamic situations do not allow us the comfort of predicting very far into the future. New circumstances rapidly and powerfully transform the way things are. But uncertainty and possibility are two sides of the same coin. Uncertainty forces us to relinquish some degree of control. Possibility is the embrace of this release without knowing what will replace it. Our tendency to hold on to the old familiar, yet still reap the benefits of life-changing innovations, results in a tension between what is and what is emerging that can be very uncomfortable. But this inner conflict is part of both the creative and the change process.

Improv training is creative preparation for the unknowable. It is an imaginative way to practice making real choices in a made-up reality, to have an unplanned and unexpected experience in a structured and intentional way. By strengthening the thinking and psychological “muscles” that improvisers use to create on the spot, we can learn to shift into a state of receptivity and flow, in which we are more open to novel approaches to the situations we face. Working these “muscles” cultivates the capacity to think more clearly when tensions are high.

The journal Thinking Skills and Creativity published a study showing that improv training increased self-efficacy - defined as a person’s belief in their ability to reach specific goals. Another study showed that improv increases tolerance for uncertainty, which is key to navigating the twists and turns of a rapidly changing social world.

What is unique about improv as an art form - and what makes it a useful and powerful approach to exploring new ways to think, relate, and behave - is that there is no material product. Other creative work results in a book, a painting, a song, a complete and enduring result of the process. The outcome of the creative improv process is the impact it has on the people involved. What remains is the ways that the experience changes us.

While we cannot predict the road ahead, we can cultivate the skills to be aware, agile, and proactive.