Adam

You don’t need confidence

December 19, 2017 by Adam

One of the first changes I wanted to make when I started this journey of self improvement, was to have more confidence. Everything I heard and read was something like “people are attracted to confidence” or “everything stems from confidence”, or when you have confidence “doors of opportunity will open.”

Google defines confidence as “a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.”

“So how do I get confidence?” I wondered.

How do I gain this “self-assurance” when I have none? It felt like every other chicken and egg scenario: getting a job without experience, spending money to make money, etc.

My first thought was practice. I’ll just practice being confident. I’ll fake it until I make it. While I believe that this can improve your mindset, there is one thing that can help even more.

Courage

According to Google, courage is defined as “the ability to do something that frightens one”. You’re acknowledging that fear but moving past it. I feel this is the core of building confidence and have found that the better you are at facing your fears about one thing, the easier is it to transfer that courage to other areas.

For me, improv helped tremendously with building courage. Facing the fear of messing up a scene is something I had to work hard to overcome when I first started improv. I was fearful of the unknown in the middle of that stage. I would get stuck in my head worrying and stressing over doing the right thing.

The more I forced myself to step out on stage, the less fearful I became. I was building proof to myself that my fear was unfounded and made up in my head.

So how do I build courage

Acknowledge that fear. It’s there, but it’s in your brain. Your brain is telling you “hey I don’t know about this.” “Something bad could happen”. It’s a defense mechanism to keep you safe. The fear of doing something is often harder than actually doing it.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” – Nelson Mandela

Accept that you might fail, but refute failure. It’s going to be hard to pick yourself up after you fail. It might even sting a little. For me this was one of the toughest challenges. Be OK with failing.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

Try a lot. This reinforces that failure is something you can overcome. Soon, you won’t be afraid of failure. The activity that once scared you will be common, like tying your shoes.

“The secret to happiness is freedom… And the secret to freedom is courage.” – Thucydides

Shift your focus. Choose to dwell on something other than the thing that scares you. In improv, this could be deep listening or being ready to step out and support your team. In public speaking, this could be focusing on the content of your presentation and how your audience will benefit from it vs the fear of speaking.

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” – Aristotle

Building confidence will happen if you work hard enough. The real hurdle is getting started and taking that first step. It’s facing fear over and over with courage that builds confidence. Forget “how do I build confidence?” The real question is “how do I build courage?”

You have the power of choice

December 8, 2017 by Adam

Making a choice (or not) is something I took for granted. I never stopped to consider the power of my choices. This is probably why I’ve made some decisions that were not the best, and some that I put off making, came back to bite me.

I felt frustrated over other people’s decisions and powerless, or lost, when I needed to make my own.

Just make a choice

I’m indecisive…at least I think I am. I’ll waver back and forth between options for what seems like an eternity (just ask my wife). I have the habit of being paralyzed with analysis and I’m afraid to make the wrong decision.

Making a selection though, even if it turns out not to be ideal, allows for the opportunity of practice. I’m not advocating making a decision that has negative consequences but the sooner you make a choice, the faster you can learn from it and get to where you want to go.

Improv is the perfect place to build this skill. While performing, we make choices constantly and the amount of options can be paralyzing. I see inexperienced improvisers sometimes struggle with making a choice, but the sooner the context of the scene is established, the faster we can get to the funny part. I also struggled with this when I started improvising and my improv drastically improved when I just made decisions (the “and” in “yes and”). Decision making is part of contributing to the scene.

Making choices in the present

Putting off or failing to make a choice is still making a choice (thank you Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, & Neil Peart). Past decisions and future what-if’s do not matter as much as the choices you make right now. It’s impossible to change the past, and impossible (for most) to predict the future.

I’ve heard the phrase “living in the past creates depression and living in the future creates anxiety.” I can see how this is true. When I was depressed, I was not living in the present and I dwelled on the negative choices I made. I sometimes wished for things to be different in the future and my worrying over those things was overwhelming. A lot can happen in the future and it’s easy to fill your head with an infinite amount of what-if’s.

As improvisers, we can’t dwell on the decisions we’ve made in a scene because we’d miss what is happening in the now. Additionally, we can’t plan for the future because it might not happen (hint: it probably won’t, and if you force it, it can feel contrived). We need to be aware of the choices we’ve made, while at the sametime be open to new possibilities that have yet to happen.

“We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.” – Stephen Covey

Power over your choices

A reaction is a choice you make at any moment in time. Your choices have more importance than you may realize and being aware of this helps with making decisions. It proves to yourself that, in this moment, you have control over the choices you make. Having power over your reactions is the ultimate power over yourself.

I used to feel that I didn’t have any control over my reactions to events. I would get upset easily over minor things.

In improv we get to practice making decisions that we wouldn’t normally make. We can choose to get teary-eyed over a scoop of ice cream or elated that we missed throwing paper in the trash. By controlling my reaction during a scene, I have proved to myself that I have the power over my choices, both onstage and off.

For example, if your kid spills some milk while eating their cereal and you’re late for work, and you get choose to get upset, which puts your wife in a bad mood, which then you feel bad about, and in turn puts everyone in a bad mood when they go to school and work…instead choose to see it as not a big deal, because in the big picture, it’s not. (Trust me)

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.” – Philip Pullman

Commit to your choice

Nothing has taught me to commit to a choice more than improvising. I remember a defining moment, a few minutes into one particular scene, I found myself playing a completely average person. At that point I realized that I had already made a decision to be incredibly average. I then fully committed to a character who was average at everything. I felt like I had direction and the scene became grounded and interesting… even with me playing an average guy!

Fully committing to a choice is freeing. You no longer have to waver between all of the options. It frees up your mind to focus completely on that selection and leave the indecision behind.

Growing through new choices

When we make the same choices over and over, we’re destined to stay where we are. Even a small change today toward the thing you want to accomplish in the future can have a huge impact. Choosing to do something new is the first step towards a different path in life.

Maybe you’ve seen the short-form improv game called “new choice” or “ding”. The game is often played by having a normal scene take place and an offstage person will either say “new choice” or ring a bell. Each time this happens, the improviser speaking has to come up with a new word selection. Often the improviser gets to a word that is so far removed from the initial word, that it alters the direction of the scene.

I lived inside my shell for a long time, scared to try anything new. When I finally realized that I’ll never improve myself if I don’t start making new choices, I instantly “leveled up” and started down an entirely new path. Living a different life in the future depends on making new choices in the present.

“The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.” – George Eliot

The choices of others

Another struggle of mine in the past was accepting the choices other people made. We don’t have power over others, we only have power over our decisions. Accept the fact that other people might not make the same choices that you would. One of the greatest things I’ve come to realize is that I don’t have any control over the choices of others. It’s a freeing concept once fully accepted.

On stage we need to be accepting of the choices others make. Denying their choices would create a confusing world where the audience doesn’t know what is real and what is not.

When I learned better ways of making choices and living with the consequences, I felt more free to focus on the things I needed to take care of and less stressed about things that were out of my control. While I finally feel more decisive and less afraid to make a choice, I can still work on controlling my reactions.

Be Kind to Yourself

November 29, 2017 by Adam

I think we all struggle with being kind to ourselves. I know I could be kinder to myself. I struggle with self-acceptance and my inner monologue seems to constantly repeat the need to be better because I am just OK at whatever I do. I can honestly say that I don’t feel I’m an expert on any particular subject or skill (unless that skill is always being able to find the one negative thing in the sea of my positive accomplishments).

This negative self-talk is, no doubt, a result of me having unreal expectations and constantly comparing myself to others. I know better than to do this but sometimes it seems unconscious or compulsive. Having expectations of myself that are based on the comparison of others doesn’t allow for growth or the opportunity to practice kindness to myself. Getting caught up in this mindset is toxic. I slip in and out of this all the time. I take myself down a notch every time by saying, “That was OK, but you’re still not as good as that person.”

As if living with this mindset isn’t challenging enough, trying to change requires concerted effort and practice. It’s tempting to want to say in a bad mood and stew in your state of self-loathing. It’s almost comforting to be there. It’s known. It’s easy.

So how do I break this mindset?

Understand your comparison

The first thing I do is understand what I’m comparing myself to. What makes me think I didn’t do well? Am I comparing myself to another person? Accept that we’re all on different paths and have varying progression levels and experiences.

“Comparison is the death of joy.” – Mark Twain

Gratefulness

I’ve found that I can break almost all of my negative mindsets with gratefulness. This is tough sometimes, but try anyway! Find one thing that you can be grateful for even if you don’t feel you succeed. Expand on that one thing. Give it focus and thought. Be proud of it! Try saying it out loud. It helps!

Be happy for others

You know that person that you have been comparing yourself against? Give them a compliment and tell them what you liked. Do it in a sincere manner and avoid jealousy. We’re all in this together and just because someone does something “better”, doesn’t mean that you can’t also do it well.

Keep going

When I feel like I am failing or have failed, the last thing I want to do is try again. This is one of the most important steps, though. I remind myself that today’s product is merely part of the whole. You are what you do repeatedly, so keep pushing to get back up when you are feeling like you have failed. Be constantly and consistently in process. Focus on the process. Setbacks will happen, but refuse to see them as failures.

How do I avoid feeling like this next time?

Adopt a growth mindset

I reassure myself that if I continue to work and learn, I will get better. Take a look at how far you’ve come and the changes you’ve made. This is especially true in my improv. It took months of classes and practice until I felt I had an OK scene.

Set better goals

If setting goals works for you (and they should), make sure they’re goals based on what you can achieve and not what others are doing. Make it a specific goal and don’t be afraid to make it small goals to achieve a larger one. Give yourself a metric that you can strive to hit so you’re comparing yourself to what you set out to do and not an arbitrary measurement, even if it’s as simple as “I’m going to find one thing I can be proud of.”

Remove expectations

I’m guilty of setting high expectations for myself, and I feel terrible when I don’t meet them. As improvisers, we cannot walk into a scene with expectations. The scene will fall apart as soon as we do. Expectations are an arbitrary thing. It’s much better to set goals that push you to get better and have zero expectations.

“My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.” – Michael J. Fox

Change your self-talk

Don’t “should” all over yourself. “I should have done/said that.” That thing you said/did is a result of your past experiences and choices. Accept that you are where you should be in your journey. Continuing to tell yourself that you are terrible at something creates a self-fulling prophecy. You are who you think you are.

I feel that being kind to myself is something I’ll always need to work on, and I will no doubt feel down on myself at some point. I understand that I’m not alone and with work, I can break out of that mindset. Just like any other skill it will take practice to master.

Started a Podcast

November 20, 2017 by Adam

I started a podcast! I’ll be talking with fellow improvisers about how they’ve used improv in their lives. Improv has changed my life so dramatically, and I’m interested in hearing and sharing stories from other people who might have also used improv in their personal or professional lives.

The first 2 episodes are up! Please check it out and let me know what you think. Stay tuned for more episodes!

Episode 001 – Jennie Adams

November 16, 2017 by Adam

Jennie is the Director of Education at the Harrisburg Improv Theatre (HIT), where she is also a performer and instructor. She got her start as a performer with TMI Improv under UCB student Clark Nicholson where she performed regularly at The Midtown Scholar Bookstore, Gamut Theatre, and other venues. She has also been a featured performer with local troupes such as The Oxymorons and Don’t Break the Streak. Jennie is co-founder of No Artificial Sweeteners, an all-female improv troupe that performs shows to raise money for local charities. She has taught beginner and advanced improv workshops to various groups and organizations, from girl scouts to scientists. She developed the curricula for most of the classes and workshops she teaches, including dramatic improv, kidprov, improv for beginners, improv for businesses, and the level 3 class she teaches regularly at the HIT. Jennie served as a house team coach for the team Spacework, who she now performs with. You can also see her perform in duos Ferret Prom and Mary Todd Lincoln: The Real Babe-raham Lincoln, both at the Harrisburg Improv Theatre. Jennie has studied at the HIT, the Steel City Improv Theatre in Pittsburgh, and the People’s Improv Theatre in New York City.