Skill building and continuous learning are essential steps to fertilize the field in which seedbops grow. But to find your best ideas, your best work – also practice improvising.
Tim Harford in “Messy” writes: “Improvising musicians shut down their inner critics. Improvisers stop filtering their ideas quite so assiduously and allow the mess of new ideas to flow out. The improvising brain is a little like the tipsy brain, although alcohol is much cruder, making us clumsy as well as disinhibited. It is no wonder that, at its best, improvisation can produce flashes of pure brilliance. It is no wonder that with the internal censor asleep, it sometimes feels like a messy, reckless thing to risk.”1
Skills that lead to improvisation and seedbops include:
Say yes to uncomfortable things. My current life motto is “Yes to All.” My background includes trauma, failure, rejection, and a highly sensitive “tuning fork” personality. I feel safe when I isolated and used to avoid events or participation in experiences where I thought I would be the slightest bit uncomfortable. My “Yes to All” motto also means I practice (and it’s a practice, resistance is always my initial reaction!) welcoming difficult emotions and reactions to people and situations. Allowing myself to be uncomfortable helps me to move toward the challenging and interesting parts of the experience and see things differently. It deepens my understanding and waters those seedbops waiting to hit my brain with sparks of inspiration.
Enter into uncomfortable experiences with as much humor as you can muster. Here’s an example: I used to like flying. Flying is now fraught with difficulty. I go to the airport expecting it will be a chaotic mess. Then, when nice things happen, I enjoy them so much more. When the expected things go wrong, drumming up humor for my plight keeps me from getting tense and closed down.
This can be a practice for having discussions with people you disagree with. I’m not going to lie, this is a tough practice for me, and I have to rehearse the reactions I want to have. I have posted in front of my bed examples of different ways to respond so I can sink them into my brain, and they eventually become a skill: Tell me more, What was that like for you? It’s the idea of being an explorer in a new world. Find the places where you can connect, encourage and support authentically.
Practice embarking on creative work or solving a problem like an explorer heading to unknown lands without a map. Be willing to take risks and let go. Let the fear go of “doing it wrong” or coming up with a wrong answer. Let new thoughts in, trust the process, and you will know when you’ve arrived on the right path.
Improvisation takes practice. The motto: “Yes to All” helps. A sense of Humor Helps. Be an explorer without a map.
1 Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives, Tim Harford, pg 100
Photo by Daniel J. Schwarz on Unsplash
#15 Improvise – Practice creating something with no plan or skills
July 17, 2022
By Leslie
