“Yes, and...” - Life Lessons from Improv

I was struck the other day while watching The View when Canadian Mike Myers, was talking to Whoopi about his movie, “The Love Guru”. He mentioned that being a good collaborator was about always saying “Yes, and...” to whatever was being offered by a colleague.

Intrigued by how this related to recent insights I have been having about the importance of allowance and acceptance, I found this description on Wikipedia...

[please bear with me through this lengthy quote, note the emphasis, and be attuned to parallels to Conscious Creation...]

- - - - -

“In order for an improvised scene to be successful, the actors involved must work together responsively to define the parameters and action of the scene, in a process of co-creation. With each spoken word or action in the scene, an actor makes an offer, meaning that he or she defines some element of the reality of the scene. This might include giving another character a name, identifying a relationship, location, or using mime to define the physical environment. These activities are also known as endowment. It is the responsibility of the other actors to accept the offers that their fellow performers make; to not do so is known as blocking, or negation, which usually prevents the scene from developing. Some performers may deliberately block (or otherwise break out of character) for comedic effect -- this is known as gagging -- but this generally prevents the scene from advancing and is frowned upon by many improvisers. Accepting an offer is usually accompanied by adding a new offer, often building on the earlier one; this is a process improvisers refer to as "Yes, And..." and is considered the cornerstone of improvisational technique. Every new piece of information added helps the actors to refine their characters and progress the action of the scene.” [all emphasis mine]

- - - - -

These improv techniques are startlingly similar to what I have been learning about improvising my own everyday life - surely this is what ‘creating your own reality’ is all about. So many of us respond, to so many of life’s moments, with “No, but...” instead of “Yes, and...”, and thereby block the development of whatever our issues might be. [It’s not that any position or situation is right or wrong, but that was the situation a year ago wasn’t it?, and the rest of us have moved on!]

The ‘yes’ part is accepting whatever Life offers us. This is allowance and accepting whatever reality we find ourselves in, as the first step to orienting ourselves, and understanding how we are expressing our energies.

The ‘and’ part is expressing ourSelves and taking the next step in this particular ‘morality play' - in the best possible sense of that phrase - as we act nobly in the world, make choices, and otherwise express our feelings and ideas to advance our plans by exploring and engaging the astonishing new prospects we see just around the corner... [like a friend once said, the Internet [and life] is not about where you are, it’s about where you’re going!]

We recall that, while the motive for these wonderfully insightful improv players, is entertainment, and there may be a lesson here too!, perhaps our own lofty goals of ‘wisdom, love and freedom’ could be best served by faithfully responding to everything life offers with, “Yes, and...”

- - - - -

I think these improv guys better watch out though, because what they are doing is creating actual probabilities. And one night... perhaps we are up late and have a couple too many, various conditions may contribute, but suddenly it becomes possible to slip between probabilities... Spooky!

This may be where the old saying ‘watch what you ask for’ comes from.