There are plenty of good reasons to learn improv. For example, the below list details some parts of our personality and constitution that are strengthened and enhanced by the practice of improvisational thinking.
11 things that can be improved by improv
Adaptation – What do you do when you don’t have a plan? How do you respond when something unexpected happens? How do you do when your plan becomes obsolete?
Awareness – What’s really going on? Are you truly seeing and hearing or are you merely caught up in nonstop subjective interpretation? How does that relate to problem-solving?
Confidence – How can we become more confident? Or barring that, how do we pretend to be more confident, which, oddly enough, leads to more confidence?
Creativity – We’re all creative. Years of teaching hundreds and hundreds of students have done nothing but make me believe that more firmly. But people often think that they’re not creative because they haven’t written a symphony or sold a painting. How do we recognize and respond to the creative impulse? How do we bring these impulses to fruition?
Expression – It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it. What are you saying? How can you make your communication more vivid, personal, meaningful, and persuasive?
Fun – It’s fun, and this isn’t to be underestimated or undervalued.
Intuition – How do we know what our gut is telling us? Why should we listen to it?
Physicality – What messages are you sending with your body, your facial expressions, your voice, and even your breathing? What do you perceive in others?
Risk – Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? How do we become comfortable with vulnerability? Why is control an illusion? How do we recognize the difference between our own fears and what’s actually at stake? In what unconscious ways do we interpret commitment as risk?
Teamwork – How can you create a team? What role does your ego play in achieving the goals of the team and how do you get others to do the same? How do you get everyone trusting each other and working and adapting together? How do you weed out resistance to growth and change?
Thinking efficiently – You don’t need to think fast, you need to think well. How do you pick one idea from the stream of thought in your mind? How do you learn to slow down and trust process instead of worrying about outcome?
