Just show up

“The world is run by the people that show up” has a lot of truth to it.

It’s not possible to influence or change anything if you’re not involved, and yet many of us struggle to show up consistently in life for things that matter most.

So I thought I’d share a few insights and ideas to do with showing up, drawn from an improv teacher, a Buddhist abbot and a poet. And yes, that does sound like the start of a bad joke.

#1 Don’t prepare, just show up

Patricia Ryan Maddison did such an amazing job of teaching improv classes at Stanford that it’s been on the curriculum there ever since, and her book ‘Improv Wisdom’ has made it into the small canon of improv books in hardback.

The subtitle of her book Improv Wisdom is ‘Don’t prepare, just show up’ and she says this: “Give up planning. Clear your mind instead of filling it. Don’t spend your energy in preparing for the future. Redirect it to the present moment.”

Wise words indeed. But there’s also a paradox here: improvisers are always well prepared. And the best improvisers clock up 1,000’s of hours of practicing so they can show up feeling calm, connected, curious and creative in almost any situation.

So if you want to lean in to the things that matter in life, it helps to recognise that you can be prepared in terms of skills and attitude, while recognising that you can’t plan for every eventuality or control everything. That’s why showing up makes you feel alive: it’s a scary step of faith.

# Showing up with hope

I was reading an article by Joan Halifax on the Buddhist website Lion’s Roar and was surprised to read this quote: “I often say that there should be just two words over the door of our temple in Santa Fe: Show up!” I didn’t expect that as a pithy summary of her take on things!

The article was about the need for hope to help us be agents of change in today’s world. She says, “Wise hope is not seeing things unrealistically but rather seeing things as they are. It’s when we realise we don’t know what will happen that this kind of hope comes alive; in that spaciousness of uncertainty is the very space we need to act. So why not just show up?”

I think this ties in with improv because we must have the hope and expectation that our scene partners will show up to support us, and that good things will happen. Without that – all is lost. Added to that is the hope that we can grow, and learn, and change to move past the habits that trap us into recreating the same characters and scenarios, and into the wider freedom of stepping boldly into the unexpected.

With hope we can trust ourselves to the water and swim in the currents of life. 

https://www.lionsroar.com/yes-we-can-have-hope

#3 Showing up in the conversation with life

David Whyte says, “It’s my job to get it” in his role as a poet. That is, it’s his job to get what life is about and what it means to be fully alive. And he does that with great gentleness and unflinching honesty.

One of the bigger themes of David’s work is finding language large enough to let us to show up fully in the conversation with life.

I recommend listening to his lovely lyrical voice. So here he is in conversation with Krista Tippet on a podcast. I find that just listening to him opens up a spacious-yet-grounded sense that helps me step into the flow.

I love the invitation he makes to fully show up and live at the meeting points, the confluences of life. As he puts it (my paraphrase): we are a moving edge between what we know about ourselves and what we are about to become – a dynamic movement between inner shoreline and the unknown horizon of an individual life.”

From his chapter on Self-Knowledge in the book Consolations: the solace, nourishment and meaning of everyday words.

Photo by Jennifer Griffin on Unsplash

A few more ideas

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Our monthly newsletter is all about a joyful and mindful way of improvising.

Each month has a few ideas and details of what’s on.