Scott H Young

A few months ago I got a chance to try improv comedy. I had invited a group to our Toastmasters club that specialized in comedy, so for one meeting, the public speaking was replaced with improv. For those of you who are unfamiliar, improv comedy is a form of theater where several actors try to be funny without a script.

This was my second time working with the comedy group, and I had a blast. I’m used to giving rehearsed speeches, where I can practice every detail. But with improv, you need to be completely spontaneous, which can be both amazing–and terrifying!

Spontaneity Takes Work!

Whoever said being spontaneous was easy, obviously hasn’t tried improv comedy. It’s easy to get so caught up in plans and schedules, that when the structure is removed, you fall on your feet. There are so many elements of life that can’t be captured in a to-do list, so it pays to know how to improvise.

Here are a few reasons why mastering your off-stage spontaneity is important:

1. Relationships Can’t Be Scripted. Meeting people and having great conversations follow the rules of improv, not plans.
2. Fun is Adventure, Not Binges. Real fun, is found in spontaneous adventures, not just staring at the TV or getting hammered. Unfortunately it is a lot easier to get drunk than to have a genuinely fun time.
3. Life Doesn’t Follow Your 10-Year Plan. I’m not doing what I anticipated I’d be doing three years ago. Three years from now I expect most of my life to have changed so much I’ll barely recognize it, let alone plan for it. Learning the skill of spontaneity is essential for growth.

How to Be More Spontaneous

Spontaneity is not the opposite of planning. This was my key breakthrough in order to make sure my life was both fun and productive. Improvising has many of the same prerequisites that you use in your scheduled life, just with a twist.

The opposite of spontaneity is cowardice. Fear, not planning, is the real barrier to improvisation. It isn’t your day planner that keeps you from saying hi to a stranger, it’s your fears. Where productivity requires discipline and organization, spontaneity requires courage and openness.

Here are some of the lessons I’ve picked up from my brief attempt at improv comedy and trying to live a more spontaneous life:

1. Don’t Reject an Offer. One of the rules of improv comedy (if such a craft can really have “rules”) is to never reject an offer made by a fellow actor. An offer is any action that helps set the direction of the performance. If, during a sketch, I said to a friend, “I heard you went golfing last weekend,” this would be an offer. If another actor said, “No I didn’t,” he would be rejecting my offer. Instead he could play along (”Why yes, I did!”) and see where the performance could go.
2. Be Disciplined. Recognize the difference between an opportunity to try something new and an opportunity to be lazy. “Spontaneously” deciding to watch reruns instead of finishing your to-do list shows a lack of discipline. Have the discipline to ignore familiar temptations and the courage to pursue the unknown.
3. Are You Lateral or Vertical Today? I see life as a cycle of vertical and lateral growth. Vertical growth requires more focus and planning. Lateral growth requires spontaneity. Knowing which phase of the cycle you’re in can make it easier to choose between focusing on work or pursuing new opportunities.
4. Seed Your Future. Most opportunities for spontaneity don’t start out big. It could be as simple as saying “Hello” or signing up for a class you know nothing about. Improvising requires planting many seeds, even if only a few decide to sprout.
5. Eliminate the Unfun. Get rid of boring activities that don’t add value to your life. TV isn’t just eating away at your productivity, its draining away the motivation to do something fun. Clearing out the boring activities from your life creates the urge to explore. I joined Toastmasters after going for a several month period without watching any television. Would I have had the courage to get up and speak if I could have just channel surfed instead?
6. Don’t Crowd the Stage. Another lesson I learned when doing improv was not to step on the laughs of another member. Everyone wants to deliver the punch line, but part of improvising means helping out the other actor if they are onto something funny. Spontaneity requires cooperation.
7. Motivation Conquers Fear. If you can get yourself incredibly curious about an idea, that can be enough to break out of your comfort zone. Ignore the voices of doubt when you first get an idea. New ideas take time to mature, so if you kill them immediately with the first objection, they can never be realized. When I tried a Latin dancing class last year, I could have pointed to the millions of objections for why it wouldn’t be good (I’m a geek, I’m uncoordinated, I’m too busy) but instead I learned something new and had a fun time.

Here’s a fun game you can play with a friend: it’s called, “Don’t Think About Polar Bears.” The first person to think about a polar bear loses. Generally, the game doesn’t last more than a few seconds. Trying to not think about polar bears, causes you to think about polar bears. Actually the game isn’t much fun at all, but it does bring up a good point: how do you control your thoughts?

Thought control isn’t needed just for Sufi mystics and hypnotists, it’s practical for everyday life. The ability to focus on a task, guide your emotions or find creative solutions all require some degree of mental discipline. A critical ability is being able to stop thinking about something.

I’m can’t bend spoons with my mind, but I have found some useful techniques to clean my mental palette. Here are a few of the benefits I’ve found in practicing these methods:

1. Remove stress from bad experiences. I’m sure we have all had bad experiences replayed in the back of our mind over and over again. A few of the methods I’ve researched have helped me hit the stop button when these start to repeat.
2. Focus on a new task. Sometimes I’ll write several articles on completely different subjects back-to-back. Doing this means I need some way of clearing out my thoughts on the past topic to start focusing on the new idea.
3. Relaxation. The methods I’ve found are also useful for slowing down your thinking, making it easier to sleep at night or relax after a hard day.

In researching ways to clean my mental palette and avoid the polar bear paradox, I’ve lumped most of the methods into two categories:

1. Short-term solutions - Quick techniques to switch your stream of thought.
2. Long-term solutions - Ways to keep nagging thoughts from recurring.

Cleaning Your Palette - Quick Fixes

Short-term solutions work well when the stream of thought you want to dump isn’t emotionally charged. If you have an unresolved problem that has been gnawing at you, a snap of the fingers won’t permanently switch your focus. But these quick fixes can work well to change your focus onto something else:

1. Use a Trigger. Triggers can act like a light switch to stop one pattern of thoughts and move to another. A trigger could be a physical action like snapping your fingers, or a phrase you say to yourself. After you use the trigger, you practice immediately doing another action to change your focus. W. Clement Stone used to have his employees recite, “Do it Now!” when feeling the urge to procrastinate. Sherwin Nuland explains in this speech how he used what was basically a trigger to help win his battle against extreme depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.
2. Allow Thoughts to Flow. The problem with the polar bear game is that trying to force a thought out only strengthens it. Buddhism teaches a different method where you allow the thoughts to flow in, and then imagine them flowing away. By detaching from your thoughts and not forcing them to appear or disappear, you can clear your mind.
3. Change the Environment. Move to a different room in your house, go for a walk or just sit in a different position. When you change your environment, you get new sensory input, so it is harder to maintain an old thought pattern.
4. Change Your Posture. In the book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell describes a study where researchers discovered that moving different facial muscles caused different moods. Up until this point, it had mostly been assumed that facial expressions and emotions were one way. You felt happy and your face smiled. This study showed that your emotions, and as a result your thoughts, could also be impacted by your body.
5. Creative Activities. More passive activities, like reading, can sometimes lack the force to switch your mind from one stream of thoughts to another. A creative activity, like writing or drawing, has more power to cause a shift. For example, try doing a few mind-mapping exercises before switching to a different textbook.

Cleaning Your Palette - Long-Term Fixes

Quick fixes won’t work for the big problems. You can’t just “empty” your mind of feelings of guilt, anger or fear if they are intense enough. Even if you did have perfect mental control, would you want it? Stubborn thought patterns might be a sign that your relationship is broken, your job sucks or your health needs some work.

These methods take more time than the first five, but can be useful in cleaning out the more stubborn trains of thought.

1. Fix the Problem. Feeling guilty about losing your temper? Apologize to the person. Constantly worrying about your diet? Stop eating junk food. There reaches a limit when you can’t do anything more and you need to just accept what has happened. But if there is a real problem, spend time coming up with a real solution.
2. Dissect Your Thoughts. Open up a word document and just write. Write twenty pages if you have to, but don’t stop writing until all of your thoughts are exhausted on the screen. Even if you can’t come up with a meaningful solution, I’ve found that often exhausting the idea can make it easier to avoid thinking about it.
3. Use the Thoughts. If a negative thought stream keeps recurring, find a way to use it. Use guilt as a way to commit not to do something similar in the future. Use fear as a motivator to keep yourself prepared. Use jealousy as a driver for making yourself a better person. This strategy falls in line with the saying, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join them.”
4. Focus on a Passion. Direct your energies into something more constructive. Focusing on activities you love and things you do well at. This strategy works best if you can’t do anything more to solve the current problem. Focusing on your hobbies as an escape from a crappy job or family isn’t a good idea long-term.