The Best Improv Classes In Anaheim

An Anaheim call center worked with RA to build confidence over the phone. Given the sheer volume of phone calls made by professionals at this location you would think nerves over being on the phone wouldn't be an issue. But that's not the case. And I’ve actually found it to be quite common for professionals in any field to feel the most nervous about the thing they do most often.

Why is that?

Well, it can be due to a number of different factors, of course, but in working with people on improv exercises I've noticed that a lot of time the predominant cause of most of our stress is internal. That is to say that we create expectations that are unreasonable for ourselves and then stress out when we can not reach those same expectations.

Let me give you an example.

There's a very simple game that I play frequently at the beginning of improv classes to warm up the participants. The game is a simple one of sequential order. Everyone stands in a circle and whoever the improv class teacher picks to start points at someone in the circle. That person says yes.

When the pointer hears yes, and only then, they walk to where the person in the circle who said yes is. As they do that person to someone else in the circle, hears yes and moves to that person’s position. Ideally people can slip in and out of each other's positions in the circle, but if a player gets to another player’s position before they have heard yes, no big deal, they just wait until the person has heard yes and moved.

Simple right? It really is. But you wouldn’t know it watching seasoned executives try to follow this simple pattern.

They’ll leave their position without pointing or without hearing yes. Sometimes they say yes for the other person. Sometimes they hear yes and don’t move. Sometimes they say no because they want to stand out.

Why does this happen?

Almost always it is due to wanting to seem great at a simple cold’s game. No one asked them to be great at it, in fact I normally introduce it as a simple warm up game that no one is great at.

The players don’t listen to me. Instead they listen to a voice in their head telling them they need to be exceptional at everything they do.

Ironically this expectation causes stress and often makes people worse at simple tasks instead of elevating their performance. Improv teaches us that by releasing these expectations we can naturally perform that previously were impossible due to stress and overthinking.