Saying “Yes, And” to Life

I’m back from break and kicking off season three with some encouragement to embrace ambiguity and accept what life is throwing as us (even amidst the shit show) by saying “yes, and” to what’s on offer.

We usually don’t like to look at it this way, but the truth is that we’re all just making things up as we go along. Life isn’t scripted. And embracing the improv comedy concept of “yes, and” can help us move through the world with greater flexibility, less self-criticism, and an increased capacity to be truly present.

This episode is all about helping us learn to tolerate ambiguity, let go of perfectionism, and live from a place of expansion rather than shutting down.

My deep and sincere hope for all of us is that we can show up, do the best we can, treat ourselves kindly, and give ourselves credit for all the wonderful ways we do contribute to the world. And one of the ways to get there is through “yes, and.”

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Resources, References, and Links

Whose Line Is It Anyway. A show featuring improv short-form games that has been running for decades.

Hidden Brain – “Sitting with Uncertainty.” The excellent episode that inspired this one.

Merlin Works. The place I took my first improv classes, which I highly recommend if you’re in the Austin area.

Episode 19: “The Difference between Settling and Acceptance.”

Transcript

Note: this transcript was generated by AI. Please forgive any malapropisms and misspellings. It’s the robot’s fault!

In any given moment, we are improvising. We are all making it up as we go along. Some environments provide clearer structure. Sometimes there are rules to follow, procedures, you know, that it’s not as willy-nilly like let’s just go from nothing. 

But because we are moving through the world interacting with other humans who have different ways of understanding the world, different ways of seeing the world, different ways of responding to the world, it’s all fucking improv. 

And so what it means to yes and life is to be present with what is. It’s to treat everything that your life is throwing at you, even the shit you don’t like, as reality, as the offer that life, the universe, the people in your world is providing.

[episode intro]

Cate Blouke (01:28.792)

Hello, my dear. I am super stoked for today’s episode because we’re going to talk about one of my favorite things in the entire world, which is improv comedy, and how the principle of yes and can be incredibly helpful and apply to all of us in all areas of our lives. And as is the theme on this show, help us live more joyful and fulfilled and creative existences. So.

Just to give you the very brief rundown on what I mean by improv comedy, it is a form of performance that is made up on the spot. It’s unscripted, it’s unplanned, a group of people get together on stage, they get a suggestion from the audience, and then they just go. And it is so wonderful and amazing. If you ever watch the show Whose Line Is It Anyway, that’s improvised comedy. 

There’s a tremendous tradition and a whole bunch of different ways of doing it. That’s not the only format. And the really, really important thing about improv comedy is this core concept of yes and. The idea is that when you are improvising with a person, they’re going to make an offer and your job as an improviser is to listen to what they have to say and say yes and.

And while that sounds really simple, it’s actually pretty hard to put into practice. Most of us are not natural yes-anders. Much more often, we move around in the world saying yes-but, no-but, no, and untraining that particular tendency was transformational for me. 

And it’s a just really beautiful, very simple tool for moving through the world with greater fluidity, greater flexibility, and a greater sense of presence. And so that’s what I want to talk to you about today.

Cate Blouke (03:38.97)

Part of what inspired this episode was listening to an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast, which is wonderful. It’s an entire podcast put on by NPR that’s dedicated to neuroscience and psychology and just how our brains work the way they do. And the episode I was listening to was about sitting with uncertainty. And it felt very timely for these politically wackadoodle uncertain times that we are living in right now.

And the researcher that they were interviewing, her name is Dr. Dana Goldthwait Young, and she studies how people tolerate or don’t tolerate ambiguity and how they need or don’t need closure. And what that has to do with improv is that she took up improv in college and then in graduate school and so was talking about improv in the context of ambiguity and flexibility. 

And it really got me thinking about the ways in which that particular practice of improv comedy specifically, but the premise of yes-anding, has been so core to my own journey of letting go of perfectionism, of cultivating more joy in my life. I took my first improv class back in like 2008 in Austin, Texas when I was in graduate school getting my PhD.

And I took my first class with a company called Merlin Works run by Shana Merlin. She’s wonderful. And I took that class not because I had any interest in performing comedy in front of an audience. That was actually quite terrifying to me at the time. But because I wanted to get better at thinking on my feet. I was in my first couple of years of teaching and my students would ask me a question and I would freeze because I would have not anticipated what they were going to ask me.

And it was frustrating because I knew the answer was like somewhere in my brain. I just hadn’t trained the muscle of letting go of needing to get it perfectly. And what I love about Merlin works curriculum is that the very first class is just about the spirit of play. It’s about opening ourselves up to playfulness and listening and being present and letting go of needing to get it right. That’s one of the deeply beautiful things about improv comedy is that because it’s all fucking made up on the spot.

Cate Blouke (06:03.524)

there is no right way to do it. I mean, there’s wrong ways to do it. Like saying no is the wrong way to improv and there are, you know, guidelines and ways to do it better. But that like the general concept is that there’s, there’s no right answer. What there is to do is to be present in this moment and listen to what your partner has said and respond. And because this is all made up on the spot, like you don’t know what they’re going to say. You don’t know what they’re going to do. And so you have to be really present. 

And y’all… that’s how life works. We want it to be predictable and regular and steady and to know what to do. And we want to have structure. Well, some of us do actually. That’s what the hidden brain episode is all about is that like there are kind of categorically humans who are much more comfortable with ambiguity and categorically humans that really need that kind of structure and stability.

And for those of us recovering perfectionists, we are likely to be more in that desire for structure and routine and predictability and clear answers in right and wrong. And so for me, coming from that place, going into an environment that was deliberately pushing me to not be able to predict what the fuck was gonna happen was really hard.

But it was also a skill set I needed to cultivate. In the classroom, I could bring a lesson, I could have a plan, but I was navigating 20 or so undergraduate students who might or might not understand the material, might or might not sort of be willing to participate, quote unquote, appropriately in the exercises that I had designed. And for my own mental health and anxiety reduction and stress reduction, it

became clear to me that I needed to cultivate the capacity to have more flexibility and adaptability and willingness to go with the flow. And taking an improv class, even though it was kind of terrifying at the time, was so tremendous. And while I thoroughly encourage any of you listening to this to go take an improv class, even if you’re like, my god, I would be so bad at that, the point isn’t to be good at it.

Cate Blouke (08:23.6)

The point is to develop a skill set that will help you be more flexible and present and connected to what’s actually happening in this very moment. And so to bring it back to this idea of yes-ending life, all of that is to just set the context that in any given moment we are improvising. We are all making it up as we go along.

Some environments provide clearer structure. Sometimes there are rules to follow, procedures, you know, that it’s not as willy-nilly like let’s just go from nothing. But because we are moving through the world, interacting with other humans who have different ways of understanding the world, different ways of seeing the world, different ways of responding to the world, it’s all fucking improv. It’s all an opportunity to listen and be present and to respond instead of planning ahead. 

I mean, I know I’m certainly guilty of like thinking other people’s thoughts for them, thinking I know how they’re going to respond and planning my response based on that response and spinning out in that direction. But I will say I’ve gotten a lot better at not doing that – the more aware of it I am. 

And so what it means to yes and life is to be present with what is. It’s to treat everything that your life is throwing at you, even the shit you don’t like, as reality, as the offer that life, the universe, the people in your world is providing. Like, here’s the offer. 

And I hadn’t really put it together until I was thinking about what I wanted to say in this episode and reflecting on the podcast episode I listened to this morning, but there’s a really deep connection here between what I talked about in my episode on the difference between settling and acceptance, that saying yes is acceptance. 

And saying yes to life, to the things that are happening in our lives, doesn’t mean we have to like them. The and can be like, yes, the current political climate is a bunch of bullshit and I really don’t like it, but it is, I can’t change it. That’s the acceptance piece. Like, yes, this is the reality.

Cate Blouke (10:48.472)

in which I am working. This is the offer that has been made, that I cannot change. And what do I wanna do from here? And what can I add? What can I contribute? What can I do rather than, “yeah, that’s what’s happening, but it’s fucking shitty and I’m gonna give up and everything is terrible. And why bother?” 

That is a yeah, but. And that’s like the big sort of political atmosphere way of approaching it, but there’s so many small ways that we yeah, but at life
– that we might create something, cook a meal, host a party, do something for the people in our lives or with the people in our lives. And instead of saying like, yeah, and that was awesome. And I look forward to doing it again in the future. Instead we default to this like inner critic bullshit and say, yeah, but it wasn’t that good or here’s all the like criticisms of what could have been better. 

And what that does is it shuts things down. When we’re doing it to ourselves, it shuts us down. I know I’ve been guilty of this a lot. I am a baker, I love baking, I will bake things and I’ll share them with people and people will be like, oh my God, this is amazing. And I’m like, yeah, but I think this was the problem. I wish I’d took it out of the oven like 10 minutes sooner, blip, blip, blip. And I’m shitting on my own parade when I do that. And I don’t realize it.

I’m undermining the compliments that people are offering. And it’s a rejection of a heartfelt, beautiful, kind offer. And it makes me a little sad to say that out loud and notice it, but it’s true. This is a totally normal in human (and also often female) tendency is to downplay our contributions, to downplay our

value, our worth, our work. And it’s one of the like really subtle and insidious ways that we make ourselves small. 

And there’s the external ways that we do this too in our relationships when somebody’s like, here’s this thing. And we say, yeah, but here’s all the reasons that won’t work. Instead of really taking it in and listening and treating it like the offer that it is. And I mean, I say that and then like, you know, sometimes

Cate Blouke (13:10.644)

many well-meaning people in our lives try to problem solve when we just wanted to be heard. And that’s a different thing. 

But I want to invite you for like the next week or the next couple of days, just notice whether your initial response to life is yes and or yes but, or no. When life makes you offers, when people make you offers, whether it’s an invitation or a suggestion or a compliment, what’s your default response? 

Because the expansive, energetic, flexible, fluid, and I will say it, joyful mode of moving through the world is yes and. It’s an opportunity to treat life with curiosity, with a sense of adventure, with a bountiful, loving, energetically positive approach. 

And I’m not saying we can live there all the time. Like there’s going to be shit that we’re like, no, hard no to that. But I think it’s a way of paying attention. It’s a noticing. It’s an opportunity to kind of shift the scales to get to a better place of balance of – am I saying yes, and to my life more often than I’m saying yes but? Am I saying yes, and more often than I’m saying no? 

Because there is a balance, you know? There is the importance of self-care, there is the importance of boundaries, right? And like, one of the ways of saying no is to say, you know, I’m so grateful for that offer or invitation. If circumstances were different, I would totally say yes. At this time though, I can’t make that work. 

But I really like the idea of sitting with and being present with the offers that life is making. The invitations, both kind of specifically to events and to opportunities, as well as just the ways in which life makes offers, right? It’s a red light. It’s a…

Cate Blouke (15:33.082)

traffic, it’s a whatever that we may not like, but that are opportunities to really think about like, okay, here’s what is and how do I want to respond? And a yes, and response is generative. It’s looking at possibility, it’s looking at opportunity, it’s looking at what can I make with this situation? Like, what can I make from here? Given this reality, what can I add? What can I bring? What can I do differently?

What do I want out of this situation or this reality that I’m operating in? And how can I live from a place of expansion rather than shutting down? That’s another big component of what yes, and means. Yes, but and no shut things down. Yes, and opens things up. 

And what I deeply believe to be true is that joy and creativity and play are the key components for living an expansive and abundant and joyful life. Yes, I just said that joy is a component of joy, but whatever, you get what I’m saying!

And you know what I love about showing up to this podcast and this microphone and talking to you and having those little moments that I just had, that instead of editing that out and being like, my God, I just said joy equals joy, what? Like I just said yes, okay, yes, I did that. And I’m gonna laugh about it, and I’m gonna move forward because I don’t have to be perfect. 

Yes, anding life is: yes, that happened and I get to choose how to respond. I can go into shame spirals, I can go into self-criticism, I can go into all of the ways that I historically used to be really mean to myself or I can say, yeah, and that was kind of funny and so I’m just gonna laugh about it and keep going. And that’s a practice.

In all things. I don’t do things perfectly, nobody does things perfectly, the whole point here is to say fuck off to perfection. But it’s a conscious choice to lean into that mode of being, that way of being, that opportunity to be more self-loving, be more self-compassionate, be more self-accepting by instead of yabbering ourselves, instead of saying like, I did this but here’s all the reasons it was bad.

Cate Blouke (18:00.57)

saying, yeah, I did that and I learned from it and I had fun doing it and I learned what I will do differently next time and it’s fine. I think improv, because I continued on and have done a number of curriculums, I’m a trained improviser, I’ve performed, even though my joy is really in the doing more than the audience being there. I think it really has taught me to loosen the fuck up.

to stop taking everything so seriously because life is improv. Like everything is made up on the spot. There is no absolute right way to do most things. And the point is to have fun, to enjoy myself, to treat myself well in the process. What I mean by that I enjoy doing improv more than having an audience present is that the point for me was never really in like making strangers laugh.

It was about the pure fucking joy of being ridiculous with other adults, in letting go of needing to get it right, and in just like being deeply present with what is. And what I recognize is that when the audience shows up, then I have to be good at it. I have to get it right. I have to like make people laugh and I get in my head about it. Like that’s when perfectionism can creep back in for me. Whereas when I’m just in a practice round with my teammates or

my classmates, like, we’re just fucking around and finding out what happens. And it’s beautiful. And so when I think about how all of this applies to this podcast, to the work that I do in the world, there are times when I need to be on, where it is important to be deliberate and intentional and mindful and to get things quote unquote as right as possible. But what has been tremendously liberating and freeing

and joy making in my life is recognizing that that is not all the time. 

When we try to move through the world being on all the time, we burn ourselves the fuck out. We have to be able to play, we have to be able to make mistakes, we have to be able to fuck around and just see what happens and not have to get it right. We can’t learn if we aren’t willing to NOT get it right the first time.

Cate Blouke (20:18.85)

And so as I wrap up this episode, I just want to invite you to say yes and to something this week. Whether it’s an invitation you would normally say no to, whether it’s showing up just a little bit differently, whether it’s noticing your inclination to say, yeah, but, and pausing and catching yourself and saying, yes, and here’s the boundary I need around that. Yes, I can come and I can only stay until this amount of time.

Yes, I can do that. And… here’s what will help me show up. Yes, I tried a new recipe and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted to but it was still yummy. Right? Next time I’ll do it differently. It’s to say… yes, I did the thing! And I did it imperfectly and I had fun.

Cate Blouke (21:15.15)

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me grow the podcast by subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with anyone you think would benefit from hearing it too. Your support means the world to me. If you’d like to get updates about new episodes, posts, and offerings, please visit settlingisbullshit.com to subscribe to my newsletter. You can also find information there about working with me one-on-one to build your most amazing life. Until next time, remember that I believe in you and that you are fucking awesome.