🎭Stepping into the Uncertainty 🎭
🔥Welcome to volume #00036!🔥
I’m Christian Champ. This is ☯️The Middle Way Newsletter ☯️. It is a place where I write, explore, share, and invite you along for the journey.
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🎭Stepping into the Uncertainty🎭
Kanye’s All of the Lights blares from the speakers while darkness engulfs the stage.
I’m standing backstage behind the curtains wearing a pair of black Air Jordan 1s. My heart rate elevates, and anticipation runs through my body.
I high five my teammate to my right and my left. Then the music stops, the lights pop on, and we rush the stage.
Let’s go...
We get a one-word suggestion from the audience to inspire our show, and it’s off to the races. The show consists of 25 minutes of scenes made up on the spot and inspired by that suggestion. We planned nothing as it is all made up.
Welcome to long-form improvisation.
When it comes together, the group mind carries us to some beautiful magic. When it doesn’t, there are still great moments.
It all comes from stepping into the uncertainty with a healthy dose of trust. The tension comes at us from every angle. We don’t know what characters our scene partners choose, and we don’t even know the characters we will play.
It all happens in a flash.
When it works, it’s beautiful. When it fails, well, we made it all up to see what would happen. We act with generosity towards ourselves and our teammates. Everyone wanted it to work. It just didn’t.
Now that doesn’t mean you don’t replay the show in your head. That doesn’t mean you don’t learn from the moves missed and the balls that dropped. You learn from the wins and more from the losses. You build for the next opportunity.
Our everyday is an improv show. We wake up with a blank slate and walk into the uncertainty. Our day starts, and we get to choose what kind of person we show up as.
We decide how we face the uncertainty that permeates life.
When we win, we show up as our best selves. When we end up flustered or frustrated is when we don’t play our best. Both opportunities provide learning moments.
Like an improv show, we want to enter the uncertainty with generosity and trust, bringing out our best selves.
The crowd watching us day in and day out is our family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. We control what we can control and enjoy the ride.
We practice and perfect our A-game as we step into the unknown.
📓Articles to Read📓
Cam took the recent Write of Passage online class with me. When he isn’t investing in venture capital firms or teaching at the University of Texas, he keeps learning.
As someone who joined some of his video workshops, I highly recommend his upcoming course. Here are his points on creating videos that his article breaks down.
Here are the WOP and BASB concepts that translate to creating video:
Complement your other skills
Mindset over toolset
Intermediate packets
Be collaborative- and feedback-driven
Start now
Servant Networking - Serve Don’t Network
Principles
By giving, you’ve already gained – by contributing, you’ve already personally gained (1) a mindset of giving (2) clarity of thought (through the act of writing a cold email, creating content for someone, etc), and (3) creativity – by identifying the opportunity, you’re honing your creative skills.
Expect nothing in return – you’ve already gained by giving, and that is abundant enough. This is key, you should not be expecting anything in return.
Even if you genuinely don’t expect anything in return, 90% of the time you WILL receive abundantly in return – people are appreciative, grateful, and will want to do connect with you or return the favor. People want to connect with genuinely generous people.
Table stakes – you must be proactive, action oriented, and creative to identify opportunities.
HBR with a piece this week arguing for talking more and typing less
This one made me think about how much more it does mean to me when someone calls vs. an email or a text. That being said, the key is just to reach out and to remember to catch up with people.
No matter how long it has been, it always feels good after the fact.
These concerns, however, were unwarranted. We know because we then randomly assigned these people to reconnect with their old friend either by typing (over email) or by talking (over the phone). As these people expected, they did feel more connected to their old friend after talking than after typing. Contrary to expectations, however, there was no difference in how awkward they felt after talking rather than typing. Misplaced fears of an awkward interaction, it appears, can lead to a mistaken preference for typing rather than talking.
Productivity Chart
🎙️ Listen / Watch 📺
RZA talking with Rick Rubin on the Broken Record Podcast (Spotify)
RZA is finding the COVID situation a perfect time to just to create. He sits in his house doing work and lifting creativity weights and getting creative muscles
Commuting hours morphed into play hours for RZA (Link)
He makes beats for fun to entertain himself vs. a purpose (record / money / being the best). His beat machine is like playing a video game now (Link)
Wu Tang Clan isn’t like any other group, it is more of a kung fu clan
He made music sober (36 Chambers) and high. His creative energy is from a self generating desire to create. (Link)
Monks at the Wu Tang work on their inner before their external
Rick got bored with hip-hop until he heard NWA and Wu Tang
Keith Johnstone, the author of Impro, visited the Stoa this week (Youtube)
Pair this YouTube session with reading is book Impro.
That was where he introduced me to the power of play, masks, and status. Once the concept of status pops up you find yourself noticing when you play high status or low status and tracking people around you. It is one of those seminal learnings and once you learn it, you can’t unlearn it.
Key ideas from Keith:
Learning for just pleasure is now an alien concept
To relax people need light entertainment which teaches nothing. --> it is organized boredom
Children learn through play... what is the connection between learning and playing?
How would you like to see your work used?
It is like a wheel with spokes and some spokes you know. You want to get to the center of the wheel. You will try anything to get to that center
When you make it a system you get stuck following the same thing
Improvisation is part of the process always not a couple months or weeks.
Can't have a syllabus for improvisation ... it is not the nature of the beast. You learn about it and keep working on it.
you can make anything into a game and you can always be playful
DRAMA - is one person alters another --> why he doesn't like improv anymore because nothing ever happens
Re status, in police literature there is something cool called alpha/beta commands: “Alpha Commands Commands that are clear, assume authority, and expect instant compliance. e.g. “get down”, “drop your weapon”, “stay in the vehicle.” Beta Commands Commands that are not clear, does not assume authority, and does not except instant compliance. e.g. “don’t move me shoot you”, “don’t be stupid.”
Exercise --> put silver bullet in your chest and feel it pumping out energy and watch what happens --> do it in a bar and see if you get served faster
Exercise --> wake up and try not to move a muscle
Exercise --> asked actor to find the smallest possible behavior to relate to another person --> sometimes asked people to act smaller and sometimes bigger
Friends play status shifts for fun...acquaintances can't ... by making people play status games you get to more friendliness
“Theater is, in a sense, the true laboratory for the humanities and social sciences.” - Venkatesh Rao
We should know what we don’t know!
Break eye contact and look back with children and animals ... no adults do that.
Go to the zoo and break eye contact and look back at the animals to see what happens
Consciousness is so weird and it has evolved
Consciousness was the universe
Matching status best default approach because it disarms
Can be hard to do with higher status people
Status is a seesaw
📚 Books to Read or Listen to📚
Recursion by Blake Crouch (Goodreads)
TLDR: Just read it and get your mind blown about the memory and to think about what is being human.
💣Words of Wisdom💣
And that I did not give to anyone the responsibility for my life. It is mine. And can do what I want to with it. Give it back, someday, without bitterness, to the wild and weedy dunes.
But perhaps the most important element in successful improvising is simply this: being willing to take risks and to let go.
I can hardly believe it. I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over.
People at work are thirsting for context, yearning to know that what they do contributes to a larger whole. And a powerful way to provide that context is to spend a little less time telling how and a little more time showing why.
🙏Thanks for reading🙏
How do we show up with our A game? How do we live in the uncertainty as our best selves?
Any thoughts or comments, please share!
If you know anyone that would enjoy The Middle Way, please send it their way.
Namaste,
Christian
