Our culture inculcates several behaviors that harm creative, entrepreneurial people: we're taught to avoid conflict and real, open honesty with one another, and we're taught to fear failure. This may work for creating a polite, civil society, but it doesn't serve the individual who is trying to make a difference. But there's hope! Improv theater actors have devised many techniques for overcoming these tendencies which enables them to create inventive stories extemporaneously. I share ways to combat creative inhibitions gleaned from six years of teaching and performing improv theater.

1. Improv is a process

2. Creativity can
be cultivated

3. Get out of
your own way

4. Leap and the net
will appear

5. Bring a brick,
not a cathedral

6. Abandon perfection

7. Embrace conflict

8. Say Yes, And...

9. Accept your lack of
control

10. Let your idea change

11. Embrace your
constraints

12. Exceed your
comfort zone

13. Cultivate playfulness

14. Value intuition

15. Cultivate the habit
of having ideas

16. Invite yourself
to be silly

17. Trust your process

18. Trust you will
survive failure

19. Take an improv class

20. @subelsky
Trust and
have faith
mike@subelsky.com