Let's Make Mistakes!

There’s a special move improvisers use when working together during rehearsal, and that is:?the circus bow.?It comes in many shapes and sizes, but in general it’s an over-exaggerated, ridiculously theatrical bow that sometimes comes with a loud and boisterous, “TA DAAAAH!”??

To do this, some improvisers cross their feet and bend low at the hip, sweeping their arms dramatically back and upward behind them.?Others stand upright, heels touching and hands outstretched into the sky.?

However its manifested, the circus bow symbolizes a very important performance skill:?celebrating mistakes.

Because despite what fear tells us in her tantalizing language of?shoulds, mistakes are magic.?We learn and grow and expand from them.?Some of the most revolutionary mistakes that inspire our aliveness ask that we make mistakes.?Then get back up, loosen our grip on the stories we tell and live a little more improvised.?Unscripted.

Things will go wrong, for sure.?We’ll bumble and trip and say the wrong things at the wrong times.?We’ll expose what we’ve been hiding; shine a spotlight on our faults.?Others around us may peek above their own manuscripts long enough to wonder and judge.?

There might be embarrassment and, in some cases, a sense of full-frontal failure.

But we’ll be alive, with skin in the life-game.?Growth-minded and ready to see differences in opinion, perspectives, worldviews.

Brene Brown, in her book?Daring Greatly?talks about being in the arena.?She writes, “Get in the arena, show up, do your thing, and don’t be afraid to get your ass kicked a little bit.”

Hallelujah, sister!?

And when those outside the arena -- who aren’t ready to scrape and bruise and bleed yet; who aren’t prepared to make mistakes for the sake of bigger, better, brighter outcomes -- look at us dumbfounded when we go off script...

We take our bow.??

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