Improv is Ego Rehab

what improv taught me about myself

“Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear” by Vincent van Gogh (1889)

I have a bucket list.

On it, are things like busking on a street corner, beating a chess hustler in Central Park, and doing improv. Generally, I add what I deem to be so far out of my comfort zone or capabilities so as to be downright Herculean, like I’m manifesting some mythical vision of myself who will accomplish these heroic deeds.

Interestingly, because I’ve been maintaining it for over 6 years now, the list also roughly tracks the evolution of my self-concept and self-efficacy over time, like height markings scratched into a bedroom wall. When I look at the earlier items, I can both remember how ambitious they seemed to the younger me who wrote them down, and also notice how much more within reach they feel to the present day me. I was surprised when I first realized this; cheekily, I take it as evidence that I’ve grown.

So anyway, every year, I try to cross off at least one item. On a whim, I decided this year it would be improv and signed up for an intro class¹ where I and 7 other adults spent six weeks doing silly things like pretending to be inanimate objects and giving impassioned speeches in gibberish.

Here’s a list of things that I learned.

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1.

Improv is an act of surrender. In the face of total uncertainty, you surrender to yourself. In this way, improv is not all that different from the simple act of living. Life dissolves the best of plans, so plan instead to freely dance.

I was surprised how unbearable this uncertainty was for me. I was thrust into all sorts of spontaneous yet simple situations in which all that was asked of me was to make a choice—say something, ANYTHING.

I put it this way and it sounds trivial, but it’s not. It’s terrifying and paralyzing; some vestigial sentience which fears failure and rejection makes a desperate effort to strategize, plan, and manage the outcome by preparing or anticipating the "question".

What it doesn’t know is that the only way to fail is to not commit.

One time the teacher lined us up and simply asked each of us to strike a pose and make a sound. As people went, I started to panic. He did what I was planning on doing! Can I do the same thing? Wait, I shouldn’t be “planning” at all, should I? That’s not “improv”. Okay, then we’ll just do something random.

…

…

Oh god what if I can’t come up with anything when it’s my turn? Or what if I look silly? Or, what if I’m not silly enough? What’s the right amount of silliness?! …

And then my moment comes. I do something with my leg, emit a bird-like noise, and the next person goes. And I’m awash with a strange mix of relief and low-grade embarrassment. Internally, I’m glaring daggers at my inner voice, or ego, or whatever it is that’s clearly making this a lot harder than it should be. Not for the first time, I think: I wish I could shut that voice up.

A lot has been written about our social conditioning, whether from the tribal, evolutionary perspective, or the sociological, psychological side of things. From what I understand, it’s about fear, validation, acceptance, approval. The primitive ego, chittering incessantly, keeps a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, getting in the way of our authentic self.

In improv, this process of giving the mic to my authentic voice felt remarkably like doing trust falls with a friend. An exercise is given, a circle is formed, you come into the center, and now you must commit—time to say something, ANYTHING. Fall and let yourself be caught, by yourself.

Something they say in improv resonated deeply with me: leap first, and figure out how to land on the way down. True in improv and true, it seems to me, in life.

Leap first, land somehow—life is everything in between.

2.

Mistakes and failure are simply labels we choose to carry around with us.

Consider, what does it mean to fail or to make a mistake when you're just playing imaginary games with no rules? Can you fail by saying something unfunny or unoriginal? There’s no rule that says that!

Clearly, I’ve brought my set of judgements and criteria with me into the improv room. This is very silly to do, like a lawyer bringing the Code of Hammurabi, on the original stone steles, with them to a modern courtroom. I’m playing by ancient rules, many of them now obsolete–-like eye for an eye, or “everybody has to like me.”

By codifying permissions and boundaries I’ve created a zone of safety free from self-doubt, where I can simply choose from a constrained set of actions, words, outcomes. This is the world of "should"; it closes off possibilities and trades exploration for safety.

In contrast, mistakes and failures evaporate upon contact with a "could" mindset. Or rather, the label peels right off of our actions, and we can write whatever we want on them instead.

I’m reminded of the dichotomy of an open-palm vs. closed-fist stance towards life. The open-palm stance is characterized by its orientation towards receiving openly. In contrast, a closed-fist stance is about imposing constraints.

In improv, you’re asked both to be receptive to your inner chaos, as well as what the people around you do. We were encouraged to always view what our partner says or does as “gifts”, in the sense that they’re the paint strokes which fill out the scene, imperfect and beautiful if we only choose to view them so.

If I viewed life as my partner, how would I practice “yes, and”?

3.

In improv, the process is the product.

Like undergraduate college, falling in love, and freeform jazz.

I love this mindset, yet the opposite seems so much more commonplace: the process precedes the product.

Like standardized tests, dating apps, and music competitions.

These have that smell of bullshit, as if life were to be lived as a slideshow of milestones and culminations.

This is a fundamental problem I have with some of society’s prevailing notions of how to spend our time. We all know time is precious. All the same, we sacrifice our days chasing future culminations, as if a fulfilling life is something to be redeemed later if you could just stack enough chips. Slog through unfulfilling 9-5s so we can live a little after dinner and on the weekends. Trade in our 20s so we can prosper in our 30s, etc. What do I really know? I’m idealistic, naive, and only 23.

Still, what I am certain of is that no moment is ever coming back. Improv reminded me of the importance of being present—to embrace and experience each moment fully so that you don’t miss what your partner does. True in improv, true in life too. The process is the product, anything else is just deferred living.

4.

Improv reveals the gaps in your self-acceptance.

These gaps are the holes through which your spontaneous, authentic self leaks silently out of you. I did a lot of wacky and embarrassing things over the 6 weeks, but not all of it troubled me the same way. I found some things mortifying and others comparatively tame. One especially weird exercise we did was to pretend that we had a canvas in front of us, and paint on it using our voice. Standing there and trying to hurl phonemes and pitches at the imaginary canvas, I suddenly came to realize that I wasn’t fully comfortable with the sound of my voice.

And I also found that each of us varied in what we found difficult. The shades of your self rejection bleeds into your character, into the things you say (or don’t say), the way your inner critic responds to the contextual demands of the scene and so on.

Improv, then, is the process of learning to celebrate yourself. To see flaws as simply part of our design, even that our flaws make us interesting, relatable, and, if we can lean in and laugh at them, funny.

It's now been about a year since I graduated college and moved to San Francisco. Reflecting on this past year, it's been strange seeing how many of my initial ambitions—like founding a startup, going on lots of dates, and escaping past anxieties—fell away as I sought something far simpler: authenticity, and to genuinely accept myself.

This is, perhaps, the most impactful lesson I’ve received from improv: the reminder that I am enough. More than enough, even, that I can choose to view myself as a gift that I am offering to the world, in the spirit of play, in the spirit of “yes, and”, and that, truly, the only way to fail is to not commit to my authentic self.

1. The class I took was the intro Improv 1 class at Leela SF: link (https://leela-sf.com/improv1/). I highly recommend it!