Ooooof!

Sometimes the hits just keep on coming.

Have you ever had that feeling? You’re flying high, you finally feel you’ve attained a degree of mastery in your chosen sphere and then a series of small incidents conspire to bring you down to earth with a bump?

It’s me. (I’m talking about me.) I just used the second person to try and hide it.

Friends, I’m having a hard week, improv-wise. My confidence has been knocked and I’ve been spiralling all over the map. And the funny thing is - none of the problems on their own would have fazed me - a workshop being cancelled here, some less than stellar feedback from a class there, a lacklustre show performance over yonder. But when it all comes at once - I’m staggered.

So, I thought I’d write a brief explanation of some of the things that help me when I’m feeling a bit lost, on those rare occasions where improv has giveth and is currently taketh away-ing.

Walk Mike Birbiglia recommends going for a walk in nature when you feel down or uninspired. Preferably on your own. Preferably without headphones to insulate yourself from your surroundings. Try to reconnect with the world and receive inputs from all your senses. Interface with something greater than yourself. This is good advice in many situations, but it’s particularly good for artistic malaise. An artist’s job is to reconfigure their experiences into something entertaining, thought-provoking or useful - so sometimes all it takes to kickstart that process is to put yourself in danger of being inspired.

Appreciate When things are a bit rubbish, it’s tempting to just turn them over in your mind again and again and again. Newsflash, folks, intense scrutiny rarely yields new revelations. That scratch on the roof of your mouth won’t heal if you keep poking it with your tongue. Instead, try to focus on the ways things are going well. Count your blessings. Practise appreciation of the little things. It’s tempting to believe that darkness subsumes light, but we all know it’s the other way round in reality.

Give I really like this one. If you’ve had some bad feedback or a negative interaction, take the time to break the cycle and give someone else a compliment. It feels great to let a friend or colleague know how much you admire them. Be as specific as you can, it’s far more valuable than a general platitude of ambient awesomeness. Without getting too deep, shout out to my mum for teaching me this. She had a difficult relationship with her mother and it would have been so easy to let that paranoia and neurosis trickle down to her relationship with her children. But she made a conscious, intentional effort to take all that negativity and make the opposite choices with us. She allowed her experience to be instructive rather than destructive.

Change Which leads me to my last point. Listen to the feedback. Your best weapon against criticism is to take action and make some changes. Take the note (this is also great improv advice). Commit to working on areas of weakness that have been highlighted, make the time to really plan classes in advance (instead of using the same lesson template over and over again), do what you need to do to get into a space of joy and playfulness for the next show. If you can get one percent better each day for a whole year - you’ll be thirty seven times better than you were when you started.

I used to look at veteran improvisers and wonder how they got so good. The truth is, I think, that they were the ones that kept going when it got hard. When other people turned their attention elsewhere - due to sadness or criticism or getting in their own way - the artists I admire most were able to separate the signal from the noise and discern a way forwards that allowed them to thrive not despite but because of the perceived negativity. Ultimately, I want to be that kind of artist.

Ok, now that I’ve finished this, perhaps I really wrote it for me. But I hope it helps you too?

<aside> 💡 Hey, my name’s Chris Mead. I write an article about improv almost every week. You can get the latest in your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter. Or check out the archive.

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