Feeling the fear
Confidence is a super power. And when we don’t have it (as much), it makes everything harder.
It makes it hard to perform on stage.
Or to tell someone the painful truth.
Or to even imagine that people will listen to us.
And so we don’t: we let other people go first. Or we keep our mouths shut.
Oh man, have I been there!
But here I am: sending newsletters, showing up on live video, offering a course.
How? Because I feel the fear and do it anyway*.
In the core improv is exactly that: feeling the fear and getting out there anyway. We as improvisers know that we have no plan.
Knowing that is scary, and there we go: jumping into that scene, with our fear under our arm. The fear is part of it. The fear is what makes it so engaging to look at. The fear is the thrill.
Here is the thing… Confidence doesn’t come by itself. You can not just wait for it. We think it comes with time, but actually it comes with experience.
The more you do, the more you discover that the scary thing didn’t kill you.
If you will, think about where in your (improv) life would you like to have some more confidence? What do you fear?
And here is how I am going to help you with it: I will not take the fear away from you.
You can have sweaty palms when you sing on stage.
You can panic a little after you applied for an ‘advanced' workshop.
You can feel a pit in your stomach when you put the title ‘Improv performer’ on your LinkedIn.
I am going to tell you that this fear is okay. It is the same thrill -hiding as fear- that makes us do improv in the first place. Believe me, my first Facebook live video gave me a mouth as dry as the Sahara. But I told myself: I am an improviser, I can work with this.
Improvising is feeling the fear and getting out there anyway. That means that you can do that in other moments as well.
You. Got. This.
Get out there.
* ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ is a self help book from the 80s by Susan Jeffers. If you like over-positive, motivational-style way of writing, then you are going to devour it exactly as I did.
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