Look for the Fun and Try That

“I was thinking about auditioning for the play.”

“You were? I was too. It looks fun. Let’s try that.”

Those two lines were from a conversation I had with a friend of mine during September of my freshman year in high school. We were hanging out at his house – playing some appropriately inane game only 14-year olds can come up with that involved tackling each other on a wooden deck – when we had the above conversation. It was so long ago that I don’t remember who said which line. I do know that that conversation changed my life forever.

We both auditioned, got small parts, both continued to participate in all eight theater productions over our four years in high school.

After my last show, my director told me I would do very well for a very long time because I was an excellent “character actor.” I didn’t really care because I was off to engineering school and wasn’t planning on performing any more.

But then I got to college, and I came across the university’s improv comedy troupe. Improv looked like so much fun that I went ahead and auditioned (the fact that I had four years of theater experience helped me immensely), got in, and the rest is history (if you don’t know what I mean by that, then you need to check out these videos…).

The fascinating part of this is that in neither of those cases did I have any long-term plan of making theater, performing, or improv comedy a huge part of my life.

They just looked like fun, so I gave it a tray.

As we get older, I find that two things often happen:

• We get so serious about career, money, goals, etc. that we only seek to engage in activities with long-term payoffs.
• We settle into a routine of “fun activities,” where only do the same things over and over to rejuvenate.

There is nothing wrong with either of these. However, when we only do these two things, we may miss out.

Two of the key points in my keynote speech are:

• To grow, expand, and engage, we need to continuously innovate – do new things or do old things in a new way.
• Sometimes our greatest successes come not when we lay out a full detailed pan, but rather when we simply start, see what happens, and then make adjustments.

With the new year, you may have created goals, resolutions, targets, etc. That is great, and I hope you achieve and surpass them all.

However, in addition to those, why not just look for things that seem like fun to you and give them a try? There are probably things you have been thinking about for a long time. Those activities that, every time they come up, you think, “that looks like fun.”

Instead of responding to those thoughts with, “but what’s the point?” or, “but I don’t have time,” why not try, “yes, and let’s see where this goes,” or “yes, and I will make time by switching up my current routine.”

You may end up hating it. No problem, just stop doing it.

You may end up finding a new activity that you enjoy and that recharges you. Great, keep with it!

There’s also the possibility that the activity will affect you in a way that gets you to innovate and adapt in other areas of your life. This can have a ripple effect that ranges from helping you improve other activities to completely changing everything you do.

If this final thing happens, super! But don’t go in expecting it.

Simply look for what’s fun and give it a try. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at what happens as a result…

Kicking off our morning session with such an innovative program was just the shot of energy we needed.”

– Beth Wybolt, Association of Legal Administrators, Maryland

Are you interested in having your team “dive deeper” into how the ideas from improv comedy can help them think fast and flow in any situation? Then check out my recently updated Training Programs:

http://dinghappens.com/training-programs/