Can A Creative Mindset Change Your Life? Yes, and applied improvisation points the way

Telling a new story about ourselves, according to research published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science has powerful impact on health, well-being and the ability to put in the effort to make a dream become reality. This study showed a significant physical and psychological shift in adolescents after a single well-designed experience demonstrating the concept that people can change. And in the article “The Mindset Successful People Have In Common” on Inc. com Jessica Stillman reports about more exciting research showing that “the fundamental difference between the wildly successful and the merely mediocre is not any inborn characteristic or individual learned behavior but how we think about skills and learning in general.” This is enormously validating and encouraging information, especially for those of us who work with human beings trying trying to better their lives or break through to the next level in some area of learning, self-care or achievement. The evidence shows that education about the far-ranging impact of mindset and how to produce a reliable and effective shift can change the trajectory of a person’s life.

The “growth mindset” is about a combination of skills and concepts that increases the capacity to learn and change. Studies show that it can be cultivated through creative experiences that take us out of our comfort zone, but not so far that they trigger a full-blown stress response that shuts down the capacity to reason and to learn. The key is to be challenged enough to be thoroughly attentive and engaged enough to tolerate the tension between action and what happens next — which is why games and improvisation are such effective strategies for entering into this mindset. Applied Improvisation provides this essential combination of fun and fascination through what are deceptively sophisticated games and exercises that in subtle but fundamental ways shift our perception of possible choices in the field of experience before us.

The emphasis in improvisation is positive, collaborative interaction that is unplanned but works within agreements made by the players, much like the structure and rules of any other game. The agreement might be simply to have a conversation one sentence at a time, always starting with the last word of the most recent sentence. This simple game compels players to attend to the present moment, make the best of what they must use to contribute their part, let go of anything pre-planned and also of the constant judging and evaluating most of us tend to do just as a mental habit. The creative mindset and the one that judges/evaluates cannot exist in the same frame at the same time. Games and exercises that focus thinking and relating in this way create a growth mindset, and this can translate into every other area of life.

“Creativity draws from many powers that we all have by virtue of being human,” writes Sir Ken Robinson in Creative Schools and excerpted on the website Mindshift. “Creativity is possible in all areas of human life, in science, the arts, mathematics, technology, cuisine, teaching, politics, business, you name it. And like many human capacities, our creative powers can be cultivated and refined. Doing that involves an increasing mastery of skills, knowledge, and ideas.” Applied improvisation provides real-time development of skills for digging into a creative exploration that has no predictable outcome — and the attendant uncertainty that comes with that kind of cognitive dislocation — combined with social interaction that produces a sense of belonging. Because improvisation is rewiring our brain, training us to think in new ways that make us more adaptive, agile and attentive to the possibilities of the moment, an environment of support and encouragement is vital so we keep going long enough for the new approach to take root. And through these experiences anyone can come to a life-changing shift in mindset about creativity itself — that it is not the province of only special, talented people but a resource within every person that becomes more available the more we tap into it.

Jude Treder-Wolff, LCSW, CGP, MT is a consultant/trainer and writer/performer. Her company Lifestage, Inc is an approved provider of continuing education for social workers in NYS. She is host and creator of (mostly) TRUE THINGS a storytelling show that features true stories, with a twist.