Embracing Your Inner Yes

Creativity's underlying goodness.

Political Street Theater Puppets in the Bread and Puppet Museum in Glover, VT.

Improv is, hands down, the purest form of creativity I’ve ever experienced.

As most people know, improv basically has one rule—to respond to whatever unfolds on stage with “Yes, and.” This heightens both the drama and the potential absurdity of whatever is happening—which is when improv is its funniest.

Last week, I wrote about a critical benefit of connecting to your creativity that I feel never gets talked about—that it literally increases your personal agency.

What’s most interesting about improv and the “Yes, and” approach is also something that never gets talked about—that it expresses creativity’s inherent goodness.

Saying yes to whatever unfolds is an expression of goodness because you cannot negate; you can only engage. You can’t push away; you can only embrace.

It’s relationship not separation. It’s response not reaction.

And when you really practice this yes-ing to everything, it changes you as a person.

If you take a class or two in improv, you get exposed to this experience, and may intellectually understand it, but when you really study and practice it as an art form, you find out just how ingrained our cultural training is to say no—in all its varied and subtle forms.

Meow

Improv is a creative practice that builds a culture of giving, allowing, and acceptance. A desire to laugh and receive.

The audiences at improv events are usually filled with other improv-ers, the way open mic poetry readings audiences are usually filled with other poets.

Except at an improv event, everyone in the audience is over-the-top receptive—very eager to laugh hard and like what is happening, eager to say yes to the performers on the stage—who are busy saying yes to each other.

Basically, it’s a giant yes-fest because the performers and the audience share the same “yes” culture.

A creative practice like improv is a goodness that magnifies your personal agency because you are both in your sovereignty and completely honoring the sovereignty of all around you. You negate no one and no thing.

And when you do this all the time, it really spills over into other parts of your life. You rediscover the instinct to play—as you respond to whatever’s in front of you—in all kinds of settings.

For instance, I used to regularly give talks to arts and business organizations, so I joined Toastmasters to improve my public speaking skills. I learned a lot of handy tools about how to frame an effective talk, how to stay within time limits, or how to avoid saying “um” and “uh” all the time.

But it was improv that taught me how to stand in front of a room of 90 NYC business networkers, greet them as “cats and kittens” and have everyone meow together in response every single week.

My fellow networkers actually looked forward to meowing when it was my turn to give my spiel because, in a world of endless adulting, I was giving them a few seconds to play.

And every time they meowed, it was their way of saying, “Yes, and” back to me.

Improv really provides a model for how all our creativity can be.

You can say “Yes, and” to your artwork. To your music making. To your writing. To your cooking and gardening. To your workout. To your child-rearing.

Why This Matters Right Now

Creativity is life-affirming because creativity is life-originating.

Creativity is inherently playful, inherently good, and gives you agency.

All of this is deeply empowering.

This is why the arts are considered dangerous in dictatorships and oppressive regimes.

I feel like I need to repeat that sentence.

This is why the arts are considered dangerous in dictatorships and oppressive regimes.

It’s also why I hope you decide to come to the Creative Change-Makers Workshop on Thursday April 3 at 4pm Pacific, 5pm Mountain, 6pm Central, and 7pm Eastern.

We won’t be doing improv, but we will be saying yes to ourselves as we brainstorm and develop different creative ways—however big or small—to challenge a looming autocracy and make our resistance feel more fun and empowering as we support each other with a “Yes, and” attitude.

You don’t need to have any experience.

You aren’t promising you’ll do or make something.

We’ll just be focusing on the creative possibilities for our change-making—creative ways to stand up for what’s right that also feed our souls.

The workshop will be about 75-90 minutes, but come as long as you want or as long as you can.

To participate, you just need to be a paid subscriber.

If you already ARE a paid subscriber, you’ll see a registration link in the top header and bottom footer of this email.

If not, you can click on the “subscribe” or “upgrade” button below, and once you upgrade, you’ll get a link to register for the workshop in the welcome email.

I hope you join us.

Have you already signed up? If so, do you have ideas brewing for the workshop or are just coming to listen and see what’s what? Have you ever tried improv? Have you learned to say yes to yourself? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear.