Jeff Katzman > Quotes

“This is a book about using the skills of improvisation to help you live a more present, engaged, and meaningful life. You improvise every day of your life. Learning how to roll with and grow from life’s challenges becomes easier when you understand the basic rules of improvisation.”
― Jeff Katzman, Life Unscripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life

“There is a movement afoot using improvisational theatre to help people and improve lives in a wide variety of contexts. Therapists with a background in improvisational theatre have begun to incorporate it into their work, and they’re seeing positive results, particularly in the treatment of anxiety.
Improvisation is also correlated with improved academic performance in the classroom, and for decades improvisers have worked with patients with serious mental illness. Preliminary studies have shown enhanced daily functioning in patients with Parkinson’s disease who practice improvisational techniques. Improvisation has also been shown to increase well-being in patients with dementia.”
― Jeff Katzman, Life Unscripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life

“We must realize that no one benefits when we respond to our mistakes in self-punishing, self-deprecating ways.”
― Jeff Katzman, Life Unscripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life

“We met in an improv class. Jeff was training in psychiatry, and Dan was building a theater company.”
― Jeff Katzman, Life Unscripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life

“We all improvise every day, from one moment to the next. Even when we’ve thought out an action and planned it to a T, there are moments that require adjustment, adaptation, and spontaneity—a moment of improvisation. We all come across moments of unexpected opportunities and potential adventure”
― Jeff Katzman, Life Unscripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life

“The amygdala or fear center in our brain has a tough time distinguishing major problems from minor ones; it only alerts us with signals that something is wrong. There is danger afoot. The amygdala fires, causing the rest of the brain to further activate a fear response. So turn the amygdala down for a moment. When making a mistake, tell the amygdala, Hey, amygdala. [...] We can deal with this.”
― Jeff Katzman, Life Unscripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life

“Improvisation, innovation, and life all require us to deal with failure and risk.”
― Jeff Katzman, Life Unscripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life

“Reacting [to small mistakes] by punishing yourself is ultimately self-involved, and others can experience it that way. They really don’t want to hear about how bad you are or what an idiot you are or how terribly sorry you are, over and over and over again. Psychologically leaving a group of students you’re teaching or your family at the dinner table so you can persecute yourself for a name mix-up doesn’t help anyone. It’s actually a narcissistic moment because it takes us away from the experience of connection with others and into our own preoccupied, self-obsessed world.”
― Jeff Katzman, Life Unscripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life

“We believe improvisational theatre has the capacity to help us experience the world in a more authentic, spirited, and playful way.”
― Jeff Katzman, Life Unscripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life

“We become involved in our to-do lists, and we forget about the relationships that surround us all day. We work so hard on what we need to do next that we forget to pay attention to what we’re doing now and who the people are all around us.”
― Jeff Katzman, Life Unscripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life