Turn Cringe into Connection with Improv

Ever wondered how a daunting experience like improv could turn out to be your secret weapon for communication? Join me as I take you on a roller-coaster ride of my 10-week improv journey, filled with cringe-worthy moments, breakthrough 'aha' moments, and exhilarating live performances. I promise, by the end of this episode, you too will be eager to embrace the discomfort and say "yes and" to improv, including improving your communication skills along the way.

Through my personal anecdotes from the class, I'll share how the strategies we adopted helped us to connect better with others and stay open to their offerings. You'll hear about the instructor who not only taught us improv but also showed us how to trust ourselves and our ideas. You'll learn that being okay with failure and your own 'cringe' can lead to more authentic conversations and connections. So, why not give improv a chance? It could be the key to unlock your communication potential. Listen in, and let's start this journey together.

*Improvisation, or improv, is a form of live theatre in which the plot, characters and dialogue of a game, scene or story are made up in the moment (hideouttheatre.com) - Improv is performed on the TV show  Whose Line is it Anyway.

Shoutout to Surfside Playhouse and their incredible instructors, Marco & Adam, in Cocoa Beach, FL for putting on incredible Improv classes!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Receptive Impact Podcast. I'm your host, nina Elise. Hello friends, I am back for a brand new episode and we are going to get into communication. So this seems to be something that is a very highly sought out skill, something that I know that I definitely can be better at in a lot of different ways, and it was my intention this year to explore different ways to improve my communication, improve my relationships and how I share and how I speak with others, and this was actually something that I touched on in a previous episode about self-trust, and I wanted to do a separate episode solely about my journey with improv and the class that I did. It was a 12-week class that I did, with a showcase at the end where we all did I think it was an hour and a half two hours of just a bunch of different improv skits in front of a live audience, and it ended up being so much fun, and so I really want to share my journey of looking at communication from a very different standpoint.

Speaker 1: 1:10

So, just to give you a little bit of a background, I have actually taken improv classes in the past, and this was in my late 20s, when I lived in South Florida, and it was very, very intimidating. I just was very insecure, had really low self-worth back then, and the class that I took was with this really well-known actor teacher, and going to the classes was intimidating because there were so many serious actors and actresses that were taking the class every single week and they were doing it for their actual career, and so these people were hungry to be the best in the class, and for someone who didn't really know how to speak up, I didn't really know how to trust myself and trust that whatever would come up would come up, and I had this idea that improv was something that you would just had to be naturally funny at, and I didn't understand that there is actually a strategy and a system behind improv and that anyone can actually do it, and so that was my experience in the past. But it was a fear of mine to just show up and sound stupid, basically because I didn't know what was going to come out of me when I got put on the spot. And so when I decided to sign up for these improv classes, my intention was to improve my communication, to improve my self-trust within myself and to just honestly have fun, and so I signed up for this 12-week course and it ended up being, I think, around 15 to 20 people in the class, and what I really loved about the class was that the actual improv instructor is a communications consultant in real life, and so the way that he explained improv, it just it made so much sense to me. And how he taught the classes. It just kept building on each other and I learned very quickly that this is actually something that I could learn over time and actually be good at and actually have a lot of fun with, and so at the end of this course we did a showcase at the end and at first I was very like, oh, I don't know that I'm going to do that. And then at the end of the course I was like, oh, this is actually really fun because we went through the skits and you get really comfortable with the people in the class, and so it actually became very enjoyable over time.

Speaker 1: 3:46

There is an initial hump of like starting the class and learning the different skits and the different improv skits that you do and having like so many cringe moments where you're like where did that come from? Why did I say this? And then you just are sitting there like for the next 30 minutes to an hour, like reflecting on that and feeling really stupid about it. So then, once you have those experiences over and over again, it becomes less scary, especially when you're in a room full of other people who are doing the same thing and you get to know these people and you get more comfortable with them, and so it becomes like a very enjoyable experience. So, to kind of go over like the actual course and what we learned, it was very interesting because the very first class was about how to maintain connection with people.

Speaker 1: 4:38

So there's this phrase called yes and, and basically it's about staying open to inviting in what other people are offering you and saying yes to it and then offering up something else to extend the story. And so this is something that can be actually applied to anything in life. So, for example, instead of someone coming to me in an improv skit and saying, hey, you know, there's this alien that's outside, I can look at them and say no, there's no alien outside and that just kills like the potentiality of like a really funny skit or a really funny way of like, like a path that we could take with that skit. And so when you say yes, and that skit could be hey, there's an alien in the sky and I could say yes, and it looks like it's taking your mother up to the mothership right now and just kind of expanding on that. So you're actually just opening yourself up to a lot of potential opportunities. And that really stuck with me to say, to think about where in my life was I saying a lot of no's to or like cutting people off? Because I noticed myself saying no to things when I was practicing these skits, and so that was really eye-opening for me to see that.

Speaker 1: 5:51

And the class after that we went into environment and basically establishing place and contact. So why, where, who? And this was actually really impactful for me as, if you're familiar with human design, I'm a manifestor in human design and our strategy is to inform. And this is actually really big because if you have, if you're a manifestor and you have this repelling aura, you can walk into a room and people can feel repelled by you or they can wonder like, oh, what is this big energy walking into the room? And so this was helpful in the sense of like I'm learning how to communicate about who I am, why I'm there and also just you know the whole context of, like my intention of why I am there, so that people don't feel threatened by me and they can actually become a part of my reality or my story in real life and they don't have to be in question about why I'm there. So it was actually really helpful to improve my communication and be more intentional about where I'm going and communicating that with people and the context of improv it was.

Speaker 1: 6:57

You know you're establishing the place and the context so that people watching your audience watching will understand who you are, who your character is, the scene of where you're playing out and then why you're there. And so you know. If you're doing a skit and you're just talking with people back and forth and they don't know who you are because you haven't said like hey, I'm Johnny and these two other people on the skit are my parents, people are going to be guessing who you are. You might be trying to create a scene about walking down the street, but people don't know that you're walking down the street unless you actually say it. So it was really interesting to learn that and then take that in the previous class and start to build on each one after that. It ultimately became this lesson in learning how to story tell, and that was another thing that we learned was, you know, setting up the beginning, the middle and the end and creating this arc and the stories that we were telling.

Speaker 1: 7:54

After we established place and context and then like establishing our character as well and the importance of doing that, and it's like it was such a reflection for how to communicate and show up in life and it opened me up to be more creative and to learn how to trust what was coming up and to be more spontaneous to build on other people's stories when they would come at me with this new idea and a skit. And again, this is something that I was able to basically learn how to get more comfortable with and improv and, in a way, really helped my nervous system. Instead of feeling like a deer in headlights, I learned how to be comfortable after feeling uncomfortable over and over and over time, but in a safe space, with people that you know were very kind and were very encouraging, so that when I did feel like I messed up, it wasn't as scary and I felt like I could feel more calm and not as like on edge or judgmental of myself. So if that happened to me now where I felt like I was put on the spot or like when I'm in my work meetings with my clients. Now it just feels more comfortable for me to be able to work or like speak on the fly, and that was not something that I felt really comfortable doing before this class, and so that was a really unexpected surprise. That really helped improve my communication.

Speaker 1: 9:19

And another really big thing was establishing real relationship to other people, so kind of like your status, and again that ties back into creating the story and setting the actual setting and the environment and the character up. And one thing that I really really liked about this class was you learn how to provide endowments to people, so basically you're providing these offers and information to others and helping them set up to be funny or creative or to build off and create this scene. And it was all about helping other people. It wasn't about leaving things open-ended or putting the pressure on someone else that was doing the skit with you to figure something out. And this required a lot of listening, a lot of listening to what that person was saying to me and then trusting that whatever wild and wacky thing showed up in my mind to say that and to build off of that and to be more mindful of how I'm speaking and what is coming up and out of me that is actually beneficial and helpful for the person. So they're not sitting there thinking, oh well, she just responded with yeah, well, what do you mean? And then putting it back onto them to make something up that's more imaginative or creative for that skit, to keep the scene moving.

Speaker 1: 10:36

And again, this is something that I felt like I could really reflect in my everyday life of where am I creating endowments? Where am I providing offers to others when I'm in conversation with them? Where am I not listening to them and what they're saying? And so it became this very big lesson for me to again just really slow down and listen to other people and take a pause and say how can I actually make this a more enlightening or juicy or playful or fun conversation? And doing this so that I'm not just putting everything on the other person and having this be a boring skit or having it being a boring conversation in real life.

Speaker 1: 11:17

And so at the end of this 10 or 12 weeks of all of these classes that we did, we were just practicing over and over again and we were just learning how to put it all together, and actually during this time period, I found videos on YouTube for improv skits that I could do by myself at home, and so this is actually something else that helped me when I was going through the classes, because I felt so uncomfortable and I didn't feel comfortable in expressing myself in like wild and weird ways, I found videos that I could do for skits that I could do on my own. So, for example, one skit I could do was called 10 characters in 100 seconds, I think that's what it was, and so basically, you would create this character and you would switch every 10 seconds. So I would basically become a cowboy for 10 seconds and, like, fully become that character, and then the timer would go off and then, off the top of my head, I would say, oh, I'm a teacher and I would embody that teacher and create a random scene out of nowhere, and after 10 seconds I would turn to a dog or, like you know, the next 10 seconds I would turn into a banker or a surfer or whatever. It is that character that I wanted to step in and to be, and so when I was able to do that in my own space where no one else was watching me, I learned how to get more comfortable and just laugh at myself, and so after doing it it became something that was less scary because I got to observe myself actually being weird and then feeling okay with it, and so that was something that actually really really helped me when I was doing all of the improv skits.

Speaker 1: 13:00

Like I said, it was definitely uncomfortable and there were people in the class that actually dropped off because they were very uncomfortable. After the first couple of classes I could tell they were really struggling For me. I felt like it was so beneficial and if you really just got out of your head, it could be something that was very fun and enjoyable. And, like I said earlier, there were so many cringe moments and the classes were two and a half hours long, and so when I would go there there would maybe be in the beginning the first few classes, I would have two or three cringe moments and I would just be sitting there like reflecting on that and kind of beating myself up about how like uncomfortable it was and like how stupid whatever I said or did was, and it was definitely a lesson in learning how to just be okay with my own cringe. Basically, and doing it over and over again, it became something that was less threatening and I became more and more okay with and again, this is something that I am noticing how this is showing up in my everyday life of where I'm showing up and actually implementing how to communicate and how to approach conversations differently.

Speaker 1: 14:22

So at the end of our 10 or 12 week course that we did and all the classes that we did, we did this showcase and people just invited their friends and family and there were probably 70 or 80 people that showed up and it was an hour and a half two hour long showcase and I think I was in maybe six, seven, eight skits. Some were ones that we, like I, was specifically assigned to them, and then we had the whole group show up and do skits, and so when we started off the first one that that we did, I had a cringe moment on stage and I just because I had experienced so many of those in the classes before I was able to let it go within five minutes I was just like, oh, you know what, whatever I'm in front of all these strangers, I don't care, I don't know anyone in the crowd anyways. And so after that I was able to just kind of relax and just had so much fun on stage. And if you've ever done anything on stage before, it's like the way it was set up for us, you know, the lights are just shining down on you so you can't even really see the audience, and so I was actually really surprised by how not nervous or affected I was by the fact that there were other people watching us, because it was almost like my mind just kind of turned off and just I allowed something else to just leave me, and all the skits that I was in turned out like so much fun. And so that was the learnings and the journey of me going through improv.

Speaker 1: 15:47

So I'm just gonna kind of do a recap of everything that I learned, like my final learnings from this class. So number one is just important to say stay open, so that yes and statement and really learning how to tell a story and communicate who I am and what my intention is, to create trust and understanding for other people that I'm interacting with and then just always looking out for others, so really setting them up for success and the way that I am speaking to them and what I'm sharing with them and a really large part of Improv, and what I've really been taking into my everyday life is just turning off my mind and truly listening to and for what other people are saying, because most people are always providing an offer and our firm mind is Is constantly turned on and we're thinking about what we're gonna say next. It's going to almost deter the conversation into away from Something that could be really beautiful, because someone is opening up and sharing to you and then you're interjecting Yourself into the conversation and not really fully listening to the other person. So basically you don't need to prepare anything in the mind, like ever, and and so going through all of this, it has really helped me to be more in the moment and be more present with the person that I am with.

Speaker 1: 17:13

And Another thing was obviously self-trust. Just over time, I really learned to not care so much about this voice in the back of my head and to trust the first thing that came up and Not really get too attached to what it was. So when I was able to do this and be in flow, that was actually when the funniest things came up, and Also just getting really comfortable with being uncomfortable so so many moments that I felt incredibly awkward and Dumb about things that were coming out of my mouth. So I learned to really get over it. Just Know that it passes and, honestly, no one remembers anyways. So it really helped me see how hard I was on myself and how much I was judging myself and actually how much power I was putting into other people's hands and because I cared so much about what they thought of me or what they were thinking of me, when in reality no one is even thinking about themselves, because you're just, you know, constantly in your head being like, oh what did I say? That right? Was that funny enough? And then the final thing was just getting really comfortable with failure and I say that in quotes because it was just constantly learning to suck and be okay with it.

Speaker 1: 18:31

And I really appreciated the teachers that we had in the class because they were very good at celebrating the sucky parts and rerouting each person to understand the lesson and the actual strategy behind why what they were doing was incorrect or not helping with the flow of improv and how can they? They could actually improve, and so they were like that from the very beginning. So whenever somebody messed up or they weren't following along or something happened. Basically everyone would laugh like he would make it a laughable moment. That made you feel very comfortable and seen and not as embarrassed, and I really appreciated that. About this teacher is very different than the experience that I had when I lived in South Florida. It was much more open and much more comfortable to be in that environment.

Speaker 1: 19:26

So that just sums up the last few months where I took improv classes to improve my communication and I hope that this provided some insight to you. So it's a little bit out of the box. It was definitely out of my comfort zone, but it was something that really taught me so much about myself and at the end of the day, it was very much an exercise of really releasing control and learning how to improve my communication, improve my trust in myself and just have fun in the process and honestly, it also became a way for me to integrate a little bit more into the community because everyone that that was there taking the class a lot of theater people were there and just really overall incredible human beings and I learned so so much from being around these people who were new and seasoned, you know, improv people or theater people and they were so kind and helpful and it was just a reminder to me that everyone's just doing their best and they're just all wanting to improve and grow and try something different. And honestly, like half the class, I would say, everyone was 50 year older, and so it was really inspiring to see that that people were doing this as they were older and as they were retired and how they were opening up and being more playful and young in these classes.

Speaker 1: 20:52

So I will definitely say that improv can be for anybody and, depending on what your intention is for taking the class, you know there are a lot of different reasons for doing it, but that is definitely something that I highly recommend if you're looking to explore communication and learn how to develop deeper trust in yourself, because one of the biggest things that I really learned with improv was that it's not about being funny Like. There is an actual strategy behind improv and you can get really, really good at it If you stick with it and you understand the concepts and then you practice them over and over again and you just have fun with it. So if anyone who's ever watched Whose Line is it Anyway? Or any type of improv show every time, I would watch that. I would just think those people were naturally funny, and to some extent I'm sure they are.

Speaker 1: 21:44

But taking this class really helped me really respect these people and see them in a whole another light, because it is a practice. It is something that you do over and over again in order to really hone your craft and to really deeply trust yourself and to understand the concepts and the strategy behind showing up and doing these skits. So that is all that I feel that I need to talk about with this episode how improv improved my communication, and I hope that it was helpful and provided a different perspective for you to look at something that may seem scary and now see it in a different light, as something that you might want to do, or just look at communication in a different light. So thank you guys so much for tuning in to this episode. It's always a joy to sit here and reflect and share these stories and to share my journey. So thanks again for tuning in and I will talk to you guys in the next episode. Bye.