How incorporating regular improv comedy practice can turn negative experiences into positive life events

There are no mistakes, only gifts

In improv, there are no accidents.

Your scene partner heard you mention your career changing promotion at work. Corner office, massive pay raise, your name on the side of the building! But their response was timid, unimpressed.

Maybe they weren’t fully listening. Maybe they were thinking of what they were going to say and missed what you said. Maybe they made a “mistake.”

You could call them out on this. You could fight back, confronting them on their lack of enthusiasm. You could chalk it up to a mistake your scene partner made, that they were supposed to be more excited for you, and move on to something else.

Or you could weave this “mistake” into the scene, commit to your original idea, and proceed to add more perks to the promotion.

Oh, they weren’t impressed that you have a corner office? Well, you only have to work 2 hours a day.

They didn’t react to your massive pay raise? Well, you get to wear a crown at the office and whenever you walk by cubicles, employees are required to bow down.

When we truly commit to the idea of “no mistakes only gifts” you are suddenly able to deal with curveballs. Now, when things don’t go your way (whatever that means) you don’t spend valuable time wondering why. You just go with it.

In the above example, we took the scene partner’s lack of enthusiasm and turned that into comedy. A co-worker who’s not impressed by a corner office may be a mistake. But that same co-worker who’s even more unimpressed by your crown, is comedy.

In real life, this plays out in examples small and large.

Traffic has you late for an appointment. Potentially frustrating, but can you find the “gift” in this?

Breaking up can be tough, can be heartbreaking. But can you try, as hard as it might be at first, to find the “gift” in that?

It won’t always work. It definitely won’t be easy. But this simple shift in thinking that greatly benefits us on stage during comedy shows, can also be life altering.

Life doesn’t happen to us, it happens for us. Improv can help strengthen this mindset.

Chris Trew is a comedy person based in New Orleans. He books Comedy House, runs the New Orleans School of Comedy Arts, and has written several books on comedy. He teaches improv in person and online all over the world.