Treat People Like Superheros and They Could Become Superstars!

One of the first things we facilitate in Improv 101 at Carolina Improv Company is an exercise called "Superheros" in which the students come up with their own superhero names that personify them and for the other students to call them by (thank you Zach Ward and DSI Comedy Theater for this exercise). I l LOVE this exercise because I still see students who still call me by my name and referred to others by their names. Pretty cool! Treating each other like superheros and rockstarts is a major philosophy to be successful in improv when performing together but also when working together with others in general. If we treat others like they're awesome, there's a chance they'll start behaving awesome. I obviously know this since I teach it, but sometimes I forget to apply this fundamental in the rest of my life. I recently became frustrated when hearing "through the grapevine" about others talking negatively about me both behind my back and to my face in public forum. The public forum stuff is what really frustrates me. I'm human. My natural reaction is "Why me? What did I do to deserve this?" Of course this often leads to thoughts like, "Oh, just wait. They'll get theirs one day."

But I was snapped back into place this past Sunday when our pastor's sermon was "Evil For Evil". In summary, it's not our jobs to rectify or even worry about the "evil" that has been done to us by others. Just because someone does something wrong to us doesn't mean we can justify doing something wrong to them. Nothing positive comes from that. Common sense right? Instead if we do something positive to someone being negative, something positive just might come from it ... EVENTUALLY. My friend Radha tried to explain this me scientifically over martinis (imagine that conversation) ... it's about protons and neutrons and both needing each other for balance ... something like that. Or you can also look at that concept of "Law of Attraction" - what you put out, you attract back. So, if you want to attract good, be good.

And then I received an email from my friend Eileen (who was also present for the proton/neutron/martini conversation) and she followed up with this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Treat a man as he is, as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be."

It all comes back to being Superheros & Rockstars!