To launch our podcast Meaning Vs Merit, Dr. Maria-Christina interviews Dan Klein, faculty member in the Drama Department, Business School, and Design School at Stanford University, about living your legacy. Dan shares his journey into the world of improv and illuminates the transformative power of embracing uncertainty, following meaning, and celebrating failure.

Key Themes:

• Dan Klein's journey finding improv: Dan recounts his discovery of improv, highlighting the pivotal role it played in his personal and professional development. (03:09)
• Just Show Up. (09:01)
• Follow Your Inspiration. (09:25)
• Embracing the unpredictability of life's journey (09:45)
• The power of perspective: Dan Klein discusses the power of perspective, emphasizing the choice to view challenges through a positive lens. (13:34)
• The Power of Storytelling: Dan Klein delves into the profound human need for acknowledgment and the transformative impact of storytelling. (17:29, 19:06)
• Show-up while remaining open to the unexpected. (19:43)
• The power of saying yes: Dr. Maria-Christina and Dan Klein discuss the significance of saying "yes" and the role it plays in fostering creativity and collaboration. (21:58, 24:47)
• The power of "Yes, And" (24:45)
• Overcoming Self-Judgment: Dan Klein explores the detrimental effects of self-judgment and the importance of creating a supportive environment for idea generation. (26:04, 27:14)
• Failure and Imperfection: Celebrating Failure: Dan Klein advocates for embracing failure as an opportunity for growth and innovation, challenging societal norms surrounding success and failure. (28:03, 29:43) Reframing Failure: Dr. Maria-Christina and Dan Klein delve into the concept of reframing failure as an opportunity for creative exploration and self-discovery. (30:24) Embracing Imperfection: Dan Klein encourages individuals to embrace imperfection and adopt a mindset of exploration and curiosity. (31:35, 33:13)
• The audience is way more on your side: Dr. Maria-Christina and Dan Klein explore the profound impact of authenticity and vulnerability in connecting with an audience and fostering genuine human connection. (36:45, 38:52)

References made in this episode:

• wcnworkshops.com
• Keith Johnstone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz9mo4qW9bc
• Improv Wisdom, by Patricia Ryan Madson
• The Failure Bow: Matt Smith at TEDxBellevue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXuD2zHVeB0

Tune-in next month to Meaning Vs Merit for more insightful discussions on navigating the intersection of meaning and merit in today's complex world.

We're learning more profound levels here, which is, we learn to accept our own ideas. We learn to say yes and to ourselves. I'm Dr.

Maria Cristina, and this is Meaning vs. Merit, a podcast dedicated to helping you find and navigate the complex stance between meaning and merit. Have you ever found yourself wondering what kind of legacy you will leave, perhaps what impact you will have on your friends, family, or kids, or on the the society at large? A person's legacy is often filled with personal meaning, and it may also have required a lot of merit to build.

On today's show, we want to kick off our podcast by inviting you to not just think about the legacy you want to leave, but also the legacy you want to live, so that you're not just making an impact by which you will be remembered, but you are making an impact each day of your life.

Joining us in this conversation is an inspiring faculty member from Stanford University, Dan Klein. He immediately struck me when I met him as someone who had found a way to balance meaning and merit by not just working towards building a legacy, but by living the legacy by which he would want to be remembered. I am very excited to dive in and hear his story. tips and insights.

Before we get started, I want to remind you to subscribe to get notified when we release new episodes. And if you like this episode or think it would be helpful for someone else, please leave a review either on your listening app such as Apple Podcasts or on podchaser .com. Now, let's get started.

I'm so excited to have you, Dan Klein. who teaches improvisation full -time at Stanford University, where he's on the Faculty of the Drama Department, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and teaches at the D -School. And the reason I'm so excited, and I was just telling you this, is because when I met you, you excited and inspired me from the first second, and you had this spark and energy, and it seemed as if you were living your legacy. right? Like I didn't even need to explain what that meant. It just seemed like you exuded that. And so I wanted to have this podcast for a while. And when I met you, I thought, this is the person, right? This is the type of person I want to be asking. So we are just so excited to learn from you and both about you and the tips you have for having this spark and since you do improv, I'm guessing that you're integrating a lot of those skills and tools in your life. And so we'd love to learn about that. So maybe we can start off and just learn a little bit more about you. So I gave sort of the formal introduction, right? But how would you describe yourself?

Oh, gosh. Well, first of all, thank you for inviting me and thank you for that introduction. And that means a lot to me that you're a sheer that that's how I'm coming across. That's something that is important to me and is meaningful. So thank you for that. Yeah, that's it. I mean, I teach improvisation. I found improvisation when I was in undergrad and it meant a lot to me because it was a lot of fun but I realized that it went much deeper than just being playful, just being an opportunity to get people to laugh, just being a place where we could be. silly or uninhibited and that there were a lot of life lessons that were embedded in the teaching and the learnings and improv. And I ended up realizing at some level, like I was, I think I was a little bit stressed out that I didn't quite have my life mission, but I realized that once I found improv, I could say, well, my goal is to become as good at this as I can, and that as an overall goal will lead to a really interesting life. life. I was kind of shy. I was definitely an extrovert. I've always been an extrovert, so I'm not claiming to be an introvert,

but I was a shy extrovert. And improv gave me an opportunity to step out, to give me more courage and tools to connect with people in more interesting and dynamic ways. And then that life mission of get as good at improv as I can gave me an excuse to take more more social risks. You know, if I'm going to be a good improviser, I'm going to have to do more interesting scenes on stage. I need to have had a more interesting life. I need to fall in love and I get my heart broken and I need to be involved in more interesting life stories so that I can,

and in a rehab hospital for a month, and I missed a whole year of school, and that was the inflection point in my life in many ways. What happened was I came back to Stanford after missing a year of school, doing my best to imagine to, I was trying to uncover what had happened. What were the deficits, what were the effects on my cognition, on my focus? on attention, even just on my sleep and dreaming? What was the impact on my brain from this event? And after I'd taken all of the old classes that I'd done before, the science classes or the reading classes, and I had at least some assurance that my thinking was, if it wasn't back to where it was before it was close, once I'd sort of established that, I thought to myself, boy, that impact that was different from everything else. I bet it would be interesting to do that again and see where I stand compared to where I was before. So I tried to sneak into the class 'cause you're only allowed to take it once. I was sitting in the classroom as quietly as I could, didn't say hello to Patricia. As she started the class, she said, "Dan, would you be my teaching assistant?" And I thought, I can't, how about that? that? This is incredible." Before I could say anything, a law student named Dan stood up and said, "Sure." And he walked across the room and he took the gradebook from her. Never mind, I guess that wasn't me. On the second class period, he wasn't there. He dropped the class. And Patricia said, "Dan, would you be my TA?" That's what I'd love to.

And honestly, that really was the the, I mean, taking the class the first time was exciting, but it was taking it the second time as the teaching assistant. Seeing how Patricia approaches the class, learning the lessons, the beginning lessons over again, and TA'd it multiple times. We started that year, that my extra year in college, we started a new improv group on campus, the Stanford improvisers. We just held our, what would it be? Our 30th reunion. just this past year. As I say, the rest is history. That was how it happened. That was when I got into doing it very seriously. I started studying in San Francisco. I eventually was the joined BATS improv. I was the dean of the School of Improv in San Francisco. Now, my entire career is essentially variations on the theme of improvisation. improvisation. I get to teach it at Stanford and I get to, but I get to teach it in organizations all over the world and for all different types of populations. And I love it. I'm still learning about it every day.

- Yeah. I already, I have two lessons that we are learning from you. Right? One is just show up.

- Yeah. - Imagine how different your life would have been if you would follow-- - Oh, man. - Yeah. the rules that you thought were in place and wanting to avoid the conflict that might arise if you didn't follow that, right? You just showed up. And then the other one was that you followed your inspiration to do that. You didn't return to school and think,

"Oh, these are the classes that I should be taking so that I can get this job, so that I can get this GPA." It was wow. wow, I wonder how this would be different.

Let's explore the curiosity. There's a fascinating lesson in improv, so you're making up stories, essentially, that's a big theme of it, especially the kind of improv that I do,

which is inspired by, among other teachers, Keith Johnstone. And Keith Johnstone really has, he says improvisers should be one third comedian, one third actor,

and one third. third storyteller. Crafting a story is a really engaging human pursuit. Like what is it that forms a story? And Johnstone's method for organic storytelling is you don't know where you're going,

but you know where you've been and everything counts. Everything that you've experienced is part of the story. You don't change it, you don't try to undo it or-- ignore it or skip over it,

use it, feed it back in. That was really exciting to me too, as in terms of starting the course of my life, I knew that I could use anything that had happened.

It wasn't like there was a wrong path. I was pretty stressed out about the fact that a lot of my colleagues, my classmates, had plans for their life and how they were gonna do it.

I didn't have that. Well, improv gave me this lesson that's... that said, it's not that you just go wherever, pay attention, take advantage of the opportunities, but you don't necessarily have to be shooting for a particular goal.

Pay attention to where you've been, make sure you use it, make sure it makes sense that you can feed it back into the story. - That's so powerful. One of the things that another passion of mine is life stories and understanding that.

our life stories, which perhaps makes sense why I think about living and leaving a legacy. And there's a field of psychology called narrative psychology, where they study and analyze people's life stories.

And this is something, you know, I've also taught classes on this and before that, of course, studied it. And I think for a lot of people, it is important to do, it can be cathartic,

it can be very difficult because there are some parts of our story. but we don't know how to make sense of them. We do want to erase them, right? Traumas. And to somehow figure out how that's woven into the story,

what it reminds me of is the D -School with Start Where You Are, right? To be able to weave all of that together, to figure out where are you and then figure out which pieces of it can guide you.

can help you in figuring out a direction forward is powerful. - Right, I have so many, I have several things and I wanna ask you about this stuff too, because over the years, one of the variations of improvisation that I've been involved in is for about seven years at Stanford,

along with my wife and partner, Michelle Darby, I co -taught a class called StoryCraft. And StoryCraft is not about making up stories. It was about telling a true, personal story. story on stage in front of a live audience.

And Michelle is brilliant at coaxing out the story from the students. A story will occur to someone who says, "I'll try and tell this story." And she would listen to them tell the story and find where was the juice,

where was the part of it that had meaning and allow them to get out of their way and let the story be told. Like while we, and I still play with this, I still do a lot of work on it. I get to work with businesses and professionals,

leaders who use storytelling to drive a point, connect to their audience in a way. I love taking the events of our life and figuring out what is that story. This is my experience.

I think this fits under narrative psychology, but there was a moment after the car accident. This was a pretty grueling thing to go through. It was very hard for my family. family. I would never wish it on any of them again,

because there's a lot of fear and doubt and uncertainty and turmoil in the lives of my whole family. But there was a point where I realized I get to choose how I look at this.

I'd say this is a terrible injustice. This is not fair. I would have been if this hadn't happened. Or I could say, well, what was great about this? Like, is there anything positive here?

And once I started to realize I could do that I realized that I could consider it Genuinely to be the most positive thing that it ever happened to me like how lucky I was There was a police car chasing the driver at the time He had an ambulance on the way before he'd even arrived at the scene And I'm just a couple miles from the Stanford hospital,

which is a regional trauma center They would have had to flown me in by helicopter anywhere else in in Northern California Well, it's damp was on the cutting edge of dealing with this kind of traumatic brain injury and managing pressure in the skull.

And so I had a brilliant surgeon who treated me as fast as possible with cutting edge techniques. I had a loving family that support me. The moment I woke up, my friends and my family surrounded me and then I had a home I could go to instead of living in a transitional group house and all of these things,

I couldn't have been luckier. from the moment it happened pure luck and I realized I can look at every phase of my life that way. Like I could say this is unlucky but it's just as easy to say this is lucky and it's also it's not untrue like it's really like it's actually is it's really lucky like I'm having an incredible life and it's almost like I don't know what it would have been if this didn't happen but

wouldn't give. given me the perspective It wouldn't give me the chance to go back and do improv again do something that I really I really enjoyed But honestly when I went back to do it again, I think the first time I took improv.

I was kind of faking it I would you know I would I would think of what I was gonna say and then I would pretend I would open my mouth and I would pretend that I was Surprising myself with what I would just said because I knew that people would You know that was what we were was appreciated is that genuine actors by maybe but I was still like thinking ahead and rehearsing it And after my car accident I just had

a different sense of what I was actually afraid of like fear of making a fool of myself I was still scared to make a fool of myself But not as scared as I was to be in the hospital with you know,

a septic meningitis and fevers of a hundred Like, it wasn't painful, painful. And it gave me just a little bit more courage. And also it helped that I'd done it once before and doing the beginning improv over and over again is awesome.

You can't pick it all up in one time. Like you just can't, these are deep life lessons. Anyway, so my sense about this idea of narrative psychology is we have certain, we can make choices.

about how we see the events of our life and how we interpret them and how we give them meaning. And that has an impact on how you see yourself and how you function in the world.

Is that true? Like that's my... I think that's what they find in research as well, that making sense of that does help you well psychologically in terms of your own mental health,

right? right? Being able to have a cohesive story and that helps with the sense of self, right? And then that's all in turn going to help you in moving forward.

And that's one of the reasons why the extent to which it's integrated in therapy, I think it kind of varies maybe depending on the culture and so forth. But even outside of the therapy room,

it's something that's studied just in larger communities of, and, and... a large extent, in some communities around the world, storytelling is a very big thing and incorporated in that are life stories.

And so it can be very healing and cathartic. And there's also this term of bearing witness, right? So it's part of it is to have that story. And the other is to have somebody hear that story.

It's so incredible. You know, there's this thing that we do, and I do it every time I lead a workshop. workshop on storytelling. Michelle and I, before our story, before our class, it was a 10 -week class,

and it would culminate in a story night where people would perform on stage. On the first day of class, and also right before the final performance, we would say, we would say this, it's a little bit sort of formal,

we would say, to stand alone, unguarded, on an empty stage and tell a true story, was an act of courage to sit in an audience open -hearted and listen to that story is an act of generosity and then we would say acts of courage and generosity will be rewarded there's a piece to this which is I think it oftentimes I try to be sort of casual when I'm with people I try to be kind of low -key I know it sort of

allows softens up it can lower the stakes when people are very nervous or scared But sometimes we like to elevate the feeling in the room and sort of honor what's really going on.

And I really think that that storytelling is two -way. It's the telling and the listening, and that both of those acts need to be celebrated and honored, that it's a sacred exchange.

And I usually share that with groups now right before I ask them to thank each other after every story. Every time you do a story. story exchange, say thank you and thank them for two things.

Thank them for telling you their story and thank them for listening to your story. People need to be witnessed. That's the other thing that I've also realized in the work that I do around communication. A lot of it is inspired from the theater and from performance,

but really it's just a core fundamental human need to be seen and to be heard. Right. So there's just so much. here for us as to learn from you. So I'm jotting down notes as you're talking,

right? So we've already talked about just show up and follow your inspiration. And thank you for sharing. I have to say, too, if we don't talk about it, my, so Patricia Ryan -Matson, my brilliant first teacher and mentor and career guide,

after she retired from Stanford, she wrote a book called Improv Wisdom. Don't prepare, just show up. And she actually just this week, she was saying, yeah, don't prepare is not quite,

that's not really what she means, you know, prepare, but don't get attached to your preparation. The key is the just show up. Prepare by all means. It's one of the things I learned most from her is prepare your improv class,

but the more prepared you are, you should be more free to abandon your preparation and do what's needed in the moment. Well, and that right there,

don't get attached. Right? That's key. So I was going to ask you a difficult question. Great. Oh, boy. How do you balance moving towards a goal or in a direction while staying in the moment,

building on it, seeing where it takes you? And I think that's exactly what you're talking about. To prepare with everything. attachment, which is amazingly like the whole mindfulness world.

I almost feel like we're having a conversation right about mindfulness and meditation, non -attachment. Yeah, part of why I'm excited to have this conversation is to discover like,

well, what is it? What's going on here? I think that there is a piece, you know, I'm in the, I'm a half -time lecturer in the business school right now and a lot of people are saying, "Oh, I'm in the business school right now." of that is about making a business plan,

examining the market conditions, what is the customer market fit, how do you evaluate what are the measurable successes, and how do you evaluate the gap between where you're going and where you want to be. All of that is all valuable,

but one of the things we know too, especially in the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial startup world, is we have to be able to adapt, we have to be agile. If we want to create something that's disruptive,

we have to be responsive to what happens and sometimes pivot and change direction. So that's part of it, right? Is to have, like go ahead and make a plan. Some people enjoy that part more than others.

It's sort of like people who enjoy decorating for the party, sometimes even more than having the party itself. I think that that should be part of the process. I think it's valuable.

I mean, it's not. that I don't think to myself, I wonder what I want to do, like what should I do? I make plans. Hopefully, I'm not that attached to whether it works or doesn't work in a sense or which way it goes.

I'm more likely to say yes than no, so if someone invites me to do a talk somewhere or be part of a program or to design something, I'm more likely to say yes than no.

So that's just part of the process. of the improv training is saying yes. I think that there's a really valuable thing. I recognize that you can't say yes to everything. It's not fair to you and it's not fair to other people.

If I say yes to every opportunity, there are some things that really matter that it'll get shortchanged. And so part of the training is also learning how to say no. It's just that more people are already saying no that I encounter than are already saying yes.

And so I end up spending more of my energy for focusing on how to say yes. But there's no doubt that we have to be able to say no in a way that's productive, that's supportive, that can build the relationship rather than undermine it,

and can also help protect your goals. Well, okay, here's something. I wonder if this helps. We can generate a lot of energy to do stuff for ourselves.

But it seems to be a more productive way to generate energy is to do something for someone or something else. I'm not saying be selfless,

but the idea is like if I'm getting up in front of an audience and I want to look good, like I think, oh, I've got a great, there's a big opportunity here. I hope I look good. Or, oh, they're gonna be really judging me.

And if this goes badly, it's gonna lose a bunch of opportunities. I'll be really self -conscious. -conscious. And then the audience will be able to tell that I'm self -conscious and they will judge me and I might succeed and I might fail.

But if I show up in that situation and instead I reframe it and I think, who am I standing up for right now or what are the ideas that it's my job to champion?

And in many cases, like many, many cases, it's been my opportunity to champion Patricia Ryan Manning. Madsen and the ideas that she shared with us 30 years ago. This improv wisdom,

the value and benefit of these ideas gives me enough courage to stand in a way that's grounded and connected and I can be more proactive.

And if I do it in a way that's sloppy or that undermines the work, I'm not hurting myself, I'm hurting these ideas. So that gives me the energy to show up in a certain way,

but it's also, it turns out the audience is way more on your side if they sense that you're not in it for yourself. I feel like that's kind of tangentially related to the question that you're asking,

which is how, if I'm remembering it, how do you balance the idea of like, you know, how do you coordinate almost having goals, but then also, not having not being attached to the outcome.

Right. Right. These are powerful and beautiful. And it makes me also think of the yes and an improv. Yeah. That maybe I don't know if you want to expand on that. I know it's a theme that comes up in everything that I learn about improv and also from the design school.

There is this idea of if you're brainstorming things and certainly I know executive teams, they'll pull people together and know it. Don't say no. And I think about that in our own lives,

if we can do that with ourselves, as opposed to, "Oh, that's a good idea," but yes. That's right. I think that's a big part. And actually, I think that we train supervisors to say yes and by having them say yes and to other people.

So, one person will say an idea, and then I'll accept it. That's the key. Johnstone term. I accept their offer and then I add to it. And so that's the yes being. And if I do anything else,

it's a version of a block. If I say, if I shoot down their idea, then if I say no to their idea, that might be a block. Or if I could say yes to their idea, but then just switch to a different idea,

that's also a block. I could ignore their idea. They could make an offer and I don't pick it. up. I don't shoot it down, but I also don't pick it up. That's blocking. The only thing that isn't blocking is to wholeheartedly accept their idea and then add to it.

But when we're in that mode, one of the things we have to do is we have to get out of the mode of judging and critiquing and evaluating, right? And it's easier to do that when we think about, your job is to make your partner look good.

Your job is to stand up for them, give them a good time, inspire them, make them look good. them look good. Don't worry about being clever, interesting, or creative, or funny yourself. Take that pressure off. Make your partner look good. Your partner is a genius,

and enjoy and delight in what's happening from them. And then you don't have to spend any energy saying, "Is this a good idea or is this a bad idea, or what can I do with it?" You just say, "Yes," and go with it.

Assume they're brilliant and they've got it. And when we're in that mode, things go really fast. And we can train easier. We train people to do it by bouncing off of other people. But actually, we're learning more profound levels here,

which is we learn to accept our own ideas. We learn to say yes and to ourselves. We are short circuiting our own ideas. We're judging and critiquing and evaluating. We're locking up.

And we see it in when people are unsure. We see it when people are perfectionists. They have a really high standard. And so they shut down. their ideas because they're critiquing them before they can even develop them.

Right. And one of the things that I think makes it easier to do this is, and I remember, I think you spoke about this in one of your talks, to make it safe to take risks,

to create an environment where it is safe. That's right. And I think that's the great gift that Patricia gave us. [BLANK _AUDIO] She created a space where it was safe enough for us to take risks.

I remember standing outside the classroom on the very first day, the first time I took it, and there was another student there. He said, "You need to have any experience. What are the requirements? Should you be an experienced improviser to sign up for this class?" She said,

"You do not need any experience at all. Please." It was that message of, "Just show up. Your whole self is enough. Let's bring your whole self here. And that, and she did that constantly.

She would constantly give us that sense that we were enough. We just needed to show up and be present. We needed to pay attention and listen and add the very next thing and see what comes next.

We don't need to know the whole story, just what comes next. What's needed, how can I help? And all of those things made the room safe. And then when I came back and was her teaching assistant,

I got to see her preparation for that. And the and the coaching that she gave me was essentially she articulated it. And she said, your job, if you're going to do this, you're going to step in here.

This is scary stuff. This is really risky. We're almost everybody. It is your duty to make the space safe so that they could take risks.

And it's not make it safe so that they can feel safe. Thank you. It's make it safe so that they can try stuff and experiment and make that okay. Part of it is about celebrating failure. - You took it out of my mouth.

That was the next thing I was gonna do. - Yeah, and that's one of the first things that we do is we do a high pressure low stakes game where people are definitely gonna mess up and then they notice,

what do they do when they mess up? They usually clinch or winch or cringe or tighten up or sometimes punish themselves. themselves. Come on. Oh, I got to do better. They do this weird tightening. We point that out and we go,

"Isn't that interesting? Like, why are we tensing up? What are we guarding or protecting ourselves from?" Like, as if we're about to be punished and we laugh about the fact that it's not, your partner's probably not going to hit you for making a mistake right now.

They're probably just relieved that you messed up before they did because they're feeling the pressure, too. How interesting that we're tensing up. we're probably tensing up because what we think is about that come at us,

the punishment in modern day is judgment, it's criticism, and so we're gearing up for that, which is, you know, and then I like to say that's healthy in a way,

it's safe and guarded and protective, it makes sense, this is not an aberrant response, this is absolutely normal, it's just not productive. And so we do the opposite.

What happens if you mess up and instead you throw your arms in the air and you say, "Ta -da !" or "Woo -hoo !" or "I failed !" And you make it into a playful, triumphant thing. There's a really nice YouTube video from friend and colleague Matt Smith who does a TED Talk in Bellevue,

Washington on the, I think he calls it either the Failure Bow or the Circus Bow. And this is really where I get these ideas. And we do it out loud and with our whole body to play with it and to practice it.

Once we get it, once we incorporate this, we don't have to throw our hands in the air. You know, there's a lot of situations where it would be really inappropriate to make a mistake and say,

"Woo -hoo !" But we can learn to do it internally. Yes. Because there's also inappropriate response to flinch in a lot of situations. to beat yourself up or to hide or retreat or to blame someone else.

Improvisers learn that the moment there's a mistake, that's the good stuff. The audience is paying attention. There's a new possibility of where the story could go on stage.

This is not what traditional theater has. This is the moment when we're all alive and present. And so improvisers get excited. Their eyes light up. as soon as there's a mistake they say oh good and they see what they can do with it what can happen now what needs to happen now and I think that training is valuable in almost every situation I remember one of the things that you said in a talk was one of the reasons

to celebrate failures is because their opportunities that now it's a sign that you're in a new creative area it's an opportunity to discover something new that no one was planning.

And it is a very big reframe from what society teaches us. And I love that you're talking about how we can teach it within ourselves, and I think about all the parents that want to teach this to their kids,

and especially when they didn't learn it necessarily from their parents, right? And it's so common that you're out, your kid does something, it's not socially acceptable, it's not socially acceptable.

[BLANK _AUDIO] you flinch, and there's this automatic, say something, make sure everybody knows that you know it's not okay and you're not telling to get right, and then there's just this message that quickly gets ingrained of,

ooh, don't mess up, in public especially, not socially acceptable, and to re -frain ourselves into a different way of thinking that this is brave that I'm going into this.

new world to see what's there and a mistake is an opportunity. That's how so many things were created with mistakes, right? So it truly is an opportunity.

It really is. There's so many inventions and discoveries and new moments and one of the things that I say on the first day of class, I get to co -teach with the brilliant Lisa Rowland,

also studied under Patricia Ryan Madsen. Madsen about it a little more than a decade after me. And she and I both now teach, we teach the same beginning improv classes and now we teach them all together.

We just thought, well, let's just combine, combine our classes and teach them together. One of the things that we say on the first day of our class is we say, your job in this room is to shoot for average and fail cheerfully.

And they can't believe it. I mean, these are Stanford students, and that's not how they got into this room. They got into this room with a drive, and with a drive for excellence,

and dedication and hard work, and they focused in a way that maybe their classmates didn't focus. They were able to put other things aside, and to get there, and that is not sustainable.

There's a real sense, I've been teaching at Stanford now for... almost 20 years and it really does feel like there's a mental health crisis of sorts that I can, that I don't know where it comes from exactly.

Does it come from social media? Does it come from the pressure that these students put on themselves? But the idea of student for average and failing truthfully gets such a strange laugh on the first day of class.

It's such a weird nervous laugh. People say, "I wonder what..." like, is that for real? Like, what does that mean, ha ha? And then, but over the course of 10 weeks,

we just keep putting them in situations. I like the high pressure, low stake situation, where they make a mistake and we celebrate, and everyone cheers and they feel what it's like to have people celebrate failure and mistakes.

And then we have some successes as well, and they balance back and forth. And when we have successes that turn into, or mistakes that turn into... successes and vice versa and we do it all in a way that's playful and lighthearted and by the end of 10 weeks or towards the end of the 10 weeks I actually feel like I can see the armor cracking the guard the defenses that they put up start to break free and they

emerge as themselves in a different way that's my take on what's happening I don't have like I don't have resources data to indicate to what extent or how much that's actually true.

But anecdotally, in the room and with the students who I've stayed in touch with and the things that they say afterwards, I think that at some level, I think that's a really important lesson to be getting,

especially at this stage in their lives. Sooth for average and fail cheerfully. And I think in a lot of the therapy that's done nowadays. nowadays, a lot of it's practical and what behavioral changes can you make.

And a lot of what we talk about is exposure, exposing yourself to things that are challenging. And it seems if it's actually safe to do that,

right? It doesn't feel safe, but don't touch the hot stove, right? Yes. Yes. Don't touch the other things. And it sounds like improv. improv. It basically sounds like I wish we were all taking a class,

right? Because it is a stage where not literally stage a room with a stage like this, where we can expose ourselves to all of these things that shouldn't feel safe to try on.

And with that, we see a different sort of that light within come out as opposed to what you're talking about being unsustainable. the drive, the perfectionism,

the shoulds, the rigidity, and instead, what's there? Let's be in the moment and explore, and incredible things come out from that. Yeah,

yeah. Absolutely. This is amazing. So I'm so grateful to be able to have spoken to you and gotten all of this knowledge. And I mean, I've written a whole list of the things that you're you taught us.

And I just want to say one thing that really stood out, and I wanted to be sure to highlight it, was the audience is way more on your side if you're not in it for yourself. You're much champion of message.

And I wonder if the audience is also way more on your side if you're in the moment and not in your head, and being authentic. And I don't think we think the audience is on our side.

We have this idea that they're not. It's combative, they're judgmental, they're looking for something wrong, but it's remarkable to me. One of the things that Michelle and I would do in our storytelling classes,

we would invite people to tell stories on the almost the most mundane prompts. What's the story of your name? How'd you get your name? Why do people call you what they call you? Really simple stuff.

How did you get here? And people would tell these stories and think, well, I don't have a very good story." But we'd say, "Pretend it's a good story." And then we'd ask the listeners and everyone would say, "That was riveting. That was fascinating." When it's a true story that's shared in an unguarded way,

it's compelling. It's absolutely compelling. And then we find out, like, "Okay, what is it? What does the audience really want to see?" We don't want to see someone put something on. If you're putting something on,

you better be good at it. it. But if it's just you, the ability to just let it be you, it's so compelling, it's so fascinating. - I love this because we think we have to be someone,

right? To put on an image, to put on a face, a version of ourselves when in fact, who we are is what's compelling. - It's exactly it. - It's exactly it.

it This is beautiful. I just so enjoyed speaking with you. Thank you also for sharing your story with us You went through some difficult stories and they kind of led to other things and we started talking about them And I just wanted to go back to say thank you for sharing that part.

Well, my pleasure I mean like I said, it's one of the luckiest things that I could ever have had happen to me It's one of the things I realized too. It's part of this thing about narrative narrative, maybe this is related to narrative psychology.

Anytime a bad thing happens now, anytime I find myself in a situation where I was like, ah, this is what bad luck or how I think, oh, this is not the end of the story. We get to pick where the story ends.

I'm in the middle of a great story that has a hard part in it. And that changes everything. Oh good, I can't wait to see how this one turns out. Yeah, wow. Wow. This is not the end of the story.

Very powerful. I've written out all of these golden nuggets, and I'm going to have to post them with this because if I were to recount it now, it would just take up so much of our time as well.

I don't know if you knew from the get -go of this conversation that there were going to be so many, but it's clear to me that when you embody these things, all of these things,

you're... your life changes. - Your life changes. - And it sounds like for the better, for the more meaning. Not that there's good or bad, but for a more meaningful and inspired life.

- Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for-- - Thank you. - And talking to me. I love getting to do it. And I really appreciated the way we were able to bounce these thoughts and ideas off of each other.

Thank you. - Me too. - Thank you very much for listening. to this episode of Meaning vs. Merit. If you liked the episode or think it would be helpful for someone else, please leave a review of it on your podcast listening app such as Apple Podcasts.

You can scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to the rating and reviews section and leave a review there or you can review it at podchaser.com. If you have any questions that you want me to discuss on this show, let me know in the comments below. know on Instagram at Dr. Maria Cristina. Until next time, I'm going to encourage you to think about our two M&Ms, meaning and merit, and see what happens when we embrace meaning first and allow merit to follow.

See you next time.