Improvisation can change your life | John Cooper | TEDxWarrington
[Music] it's march 2020 and the worst possible thing has happened my improv comedy gang can't do our show live anymore so one sunday we all jumped on zoom to see if our improv show would work online and we started playing around we played around with the virtual backgrounds oh look i'm in the arctic we played around with the filters oh i'm a bunny rabbit with a bunny rabbit's nose on and we played around with the breakout rooms and i got stuck in one help but great our improv show would work online could two a couple of weeks later and i'm in a networking meeting that's moved online as well and i was looking at some of the faces and i could see there were quite a few people on that zoom call that weren't having a very good time so i started to help them out i helped them with their breakout rooms because i knew a bit by then so in fact i knew you could rename a breakout room so i renamed one of the breakout rooms the circus so when we opened them a few minutes later somebody said i've been invited to join the circus so i'm an improviser i use improv for comedy but improv isn't just comedy if you're a musician it could be a jam session and actually if you've ever had a conversation you are improvising making it up as you go along accept improv isn't just making it up as you go along and i'm going to share with you three fundaments that you would pick up if you went to an improv class the first one is yes and the improvisers mantra also known as accept and build you might hear in your everyday life quite a common word no would you like some cake no end of scene we don't use no in improv because it stops our conversation from going anywhere you might also hear in everyday life yes but would you like some cake yes but make sure there's enough for everyone with yes but it's conditional we can only move the conversation forward on somebody else's terms so in improv we use the term yes and would you like some cake yes and oh i'm really sorry i forgot your birthday when we use the yes and of improv we not only accept what someone is saying to us we also build we're adding something new to the conversation to take us in new directions to new ideas two active listening listening to everything the other person has said to us i think we're all a little bit guilty of tuning out or becoming distracted halfway through a conversation would you like some cake and a million pounds oh yeah i'll have some cake what did you say in improv we listen for offers of as much information as we can get three give yourself permission to fail now in improv comedy failure is very often where the humor lies but let's just look back to that networking meeting because there was a few people on that call who were saying oh i've never done this before i'll just give it a go and see what goes and that's good but there were some other people trying very hard to be incredibly professional in an environment that they weren't familiar with they weren't giving themselves permission to fail i once had an improv student who said to me oh i understand improv it's like a really healthy way of not giving a hoot and he didn't use the word hoot and me and my improv gang we learnt zoom by playing around we were messing about we were acting like little kids and here's the thing when you're a little kid and your brain is still developing it's firing off all these little neurons all over your brain fire engine spaceship cardboard i want to go to sleep no i'm not tired can i have some ice cream oh i'm tired now oh can i have some more chocolate no actually please can i watch some telly is it xbox time and as you get older your brain tries to help you it becomes more efficient and it only takes you to those places that you need to go mortgage marriage work sleep repeat and these little handrails pop up on your brain taking you along these well-trodden paths and that's why i think we need improv because improv is like a great big elbow and it comes along and it knocks you off this well-trodden path and into the long grass of your brain where your creativity lies because the brain is a muscle and like any muscle that needs working i'm going to share with you a little improv game it's called first letter last letter next time you have a conversation what i want you to do is listen out for the last letter of the last word of the thing that the person says to you and make that the first letter of the first word that you reply to them with last letter of their word becomes the first letter of your word for example how are you understand that i'm fine that's how it works keep playing it until you fail and you will fail and that's okay there'll be a point where you're having the conversation you can play it yourself don't tell the other person you're doing it just do it right just just do it and don't tell me playing it's good uh and then as you talk and your brain will go oh oh god oh i've got nothing and that's okay and you'll feel the little the little cogs in your brain spinning around and you'll feel that elbow come and nudge you off that well-trodden path and into the long grass and that is good because it's only by failing small and often that we can get to that really healthy way of not giving a hoot now i'm not really talking about improv's comedy now i'm not even kind of talking about improvised conversation i'd like to think i'm talking about improvisation as a way to navigate life because when i hit rock bottom i used the yes and of improv to get me out of that hole one thousand times a day i would get these horrible little what ifs dropping into my brain what if you can't afford to sustain yourself what if you never meet that special someone and you're lonely forever what if you can't afford to get back on the property ladder and i fought back with yes and can i afford to sustain myself yes and actually i'm self-employed so when i work really hard i can see the fruits of my labors yes will i ever meet that certain someone yes and if i wasn't such a crazy workaholic and actually spent a bit more time on my social life i actually might spend time fixing that yes and will i ever get back on the property ladder yes and maybe not today maybe not tomorrow but it would happen one day it has yes and it did happen i think improv hasn't just got me out of a hole i think improvisation has made me a better and more well-rounded person when i was in that hall i met some people uh not comedians real people with real jobs who used improv in the actual work it's going to do with these people applied improvisers there was a a team building trainer and a software developer and a lady who used improv in cbt cognitive behavioral therapy counselling basically and she was telling me how she used the yes and of improvisation to help her patients accept and build and i just looked at her and i just smiled yeah yes and so what will improvisation do for you will it make you funnier will you make you raw res will it make you more resilient or will you just use it to have better conversations because when we have better more positive conversations i think i know it can have a better and more impactful effect on our life thank you [Applause]