Lesson from Improv Comedy: Be Secure in Who You Are
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A key attitude in being able to perform improv comedy is confidence. Sometimes the audience will give you a topic you know nothing about and you have to do your best. Sometimes you will have to ramble on and let ideas come out from deep within you. A performer needs to be secure in himself to be able to do these things.
Improv comedy is a tough art form, not just because the pressure is quite high, what with having to make comedy on the spot, but also because it exposes the performer completely on stage. If an actor in a play says a joke that does not get a laugh from the crowd, the actor can blame the writer. The writer can say the actor did not deliver the joke correctly. Both of them can blame the director. An improviser has no one to blame. If an improv comedy performer says an unfunny joke, he can only blame himself – he thought of it, set it up, and delivered it all by himself.
In addition to the risk of being unfunny, the improviser worries about revealing things about himself. If I am in an improv scene playing a character and I say something offensive, people in the audience might think that that's the way I really feel. This is why the best performers are very secure – they love the response from the crowd, they love to make people laugh, but they like themselves enough not to worry about what they might reveal about themselves on stage.
This same approach works off stage as well. The more you like yourself, and the more secure you are in who you are, the happier and more successful you will be. People spend an inordinate amount of energy is in this world trying to not rock the boat for fear that others will judge them. The people who are happy and successful are the ones who don't care about that and go about their business, doing what they know is good for them.
At its core, the concept of self-security allows you to do things because you want to and to stop trying to please others. Ironically, by doing that, you will end up pleasing far more people than you would have otherwise.
Avish Parashar is a dynamic professional speaker who shows organizations and individuals how to get what they want using the Art and Science of improv comedy. He weaves together humorous stories, witty observations, and interactive exercises from improvisational comedy to get people laughing, learning, and motivated! Avish is most commonly called upon to deliver programs on Motivation, Sales, and Communication
For more free articles, downloads, and resources, visit http://www.AvishParashar.com
To learn how to apply the powerful principles of improv comedy to your own business or life visit http://www.ImprovforEveryone.com
