When Everything Is Changing, Try Saying Yes: Creative Expansion Through Improv
What the country, and the world, is going through right now is shaking up our social life and sense of safety along with our assumptions and expectations. As the pandemic stretches on over time, there is a growing sense of uncertainty, and for many a sense of dread and exhaustion. In this fluid and dynamic situation, we are unable to predict too far into the future. At the same time, we are naturally concerned about what direction our lives will take. We like to know ahead of time if our efforts are going to pay off. Prolonged periods of extreme uncertainty takes a toll on our well-being.
A natural channel for the tension of uncertainty is creativity, which is an energy we can channel into shaping our responses to change we cannot control. This period is already uncomfortable, so no need to add to emotional overload. But times like this, when everything is unsettled, can be ideal for adopting a novel approach. We can view the changes we are compelled to makes as a psychological expansion.
Our social environment is going through great flux, so why not approach new roles, activities and ideas with a spirit of exploration? And if we can let go of harsh self-judgment while we try doing these new things, the creative mind set can become a more available, adaptable approach to dynamic situations that reduces stress and expands the field of possible choices for how to respond. Thinking and expectations that were a match for a more predictable time now produce an abiding sense of disappointment and for some, despair. This is a time to embrace creative expansion,explore new roles and play an active part in shaping our experience of life.
Improv games and exercises, along with its emphasis on positive social connection and mutual support produce exactly this kind of creative expansion. Research showing that improv was effective at helping people break set with old mental patterns was published in the article “Breaking away from set patterns of thinking: Improvisation and divergent thinking” in Thinking Skills and Creativity. In “Working With(out) A Net: Improvisational Theater and Enhanced Well-Being” published in Frontiers In Psychology, Gordon Bermant discusses “a positive relationship between improv practice and well-being in other life domains.” Expansion into creative thinking and expression — linked to enhanced spontaneity and a greater sense of possibility — have a positive impact that we need right now.
Creative risks are emotional, of course, and can bring up all sorts of feelings, from pockets of paralyzing self-doubt to indescribable joy. The trick is to be generous and compassionate to ourselves, as we would be toward a friend at an important turning point in life, when movement in many different directions is possible. This can give rise to an excitement about the risk itself. The outcome might turn out to be far different from what we started out to do, but this approach can produce moments and even hours that feel deeply rewarding, when a steady stream of small but unmistakable risks propels us along the path to the new.
This is a time of great change. We can expand into it and discover something together. With improv anything can happen. Lets be open to it.
