Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up

Beyond all other freedoms our greatest liberty is our ability to choose our attitude. Viktor Frankl documented this great truth in his moving book Man’s Search for Meaning.

I sometimes hear complaints from adult students that their jobs aren’t creative or rewarding. I wonder. Joy seems not so much dependent on the conditions of our external reality as it is on our way of looking at life. We apportion value. It is not intrinsic.

For the improviser it is: ready, fire, aim. We begin before there is a plan. What we do moves us forward and gives us more information about how to proceed. The doing itself becomes the teacher and guide.

be?” A constructive response to a mistake is to notice it, acknowledge it, and, if possible, use it. Artists do this all the time—capitalize on an unplanned paint dribble.

Are you sitting right now as you read? If so, then a chair, sofa, or bed is supporting you. You probably have not paid much attention to this fact until I mentioned it. Nor have you been thinking that someone designed the chair (sofa, bed, etc.); someone manufactured it; someone brought it to where you are sitting; someone paid for it—perhaps it wa

American Zen writer Alan Watts, clearly an improviser in spirit, named one of his books The Wisdom of Insecurity. He knew that life is all about balancing, not about being balanced.

How much do you notice and remember? This skill is at the heart of all improvising. What we notice becomes our world. So observe what is going on around you. Open your eyes, and notice the detail. See what is actually happening. Pay attention to everything.

“The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes,” said Marcel Proust.

Giving up on perfection is the first step; the next is to stop trying to come up with something different. Striving for an original idea takes us away from our everyday intelligence, and it can actually block access to the creative process.