Minisode 14: Need a Positivity Boost at Work? Three Ways Improv Improves Your Mental Health
Do you need a positivity boost at work?
In today’s minisode, Erin brings on our very own improve it! Facilitator and hype man, Blake Edwards, to teach you the ways improv improves your mental health and can add positivity to even the most challenging work day.
Blake is a talented and award-winning Director, Writer, Actor (and one of those people who brightens a room by simply walking into it). Around here, we all believe he is the real life Ted Lasso. His in-depth knowledge of the multi-faceted world of entertainment, nurturing communication style and genuine positivity, brings out the very best in the people and projects he works on.
Blake is especially masterful at creating humorous and whimsical short-form video content for broadcast, web, and social platforms. His 10 years of live improvisational comedy performance, and appreciation of play both in front of and behind the camera, make him uniquely qualified for both the messaging and execution of commercial campaign that provide tons of laughs.
After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earning a Communications degree in Media Production, he had various stints abroad and in Los Angeles, before returning home to the South. Today, his comedic work as a Director and On-Screen Talent has been recognized by the Sundance Film Festival and featured on viewers screens regionally and nationally.
And Blake has had zero trouble finding humor in his own personal life! He is recently (and happily!) married to his wife Hilary, a visual artist, whom he met during a hurricane and married during a pandemic!
Enjoy this episode with the one, the only, Blake Edwards.
Links from show:
· Blake’s wife’s painting Instagram
· www.hblakeedwards.com
Connect with Erin Diehl:
Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award.
This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre.
When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl.
You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online!
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Minisode 14 Transcription
Erin (00:00):
Welcome to improve it! the podcast! Blake Edwards. Welcome to the improve it podcast.
Blake (00:18):
Hello hello. Thanks for having me.
Erin (00:21):
Oh my gosh. I'm well, I'm I told you this before we hit record. I'm like when I thought of the content needed for this episode, I thought who is one of the most positive peeps I know. And then I said, I got a, I got a guy, um, and so I'm, so happy to have you on the show, to introduce you to what we call the improve it family who, you know, and love when we get to do workshops together and Charlotte and the Southeast. So tell us a little bit about who you are and then what you do here at improve it!
Blake (00:55):
Well that's praise and I appreciate that very generous introduction. Thanks. And, uh, yeah, a little bit about me. I'm, uh, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, I, uh, live here with my wife. We are both in the arts, I'm in the entertainment industry. Uh, that could be anything from performing to directing, and then I've edited in television for a really long time. And then my wife is a visual artist. She's a, a painter, and she's been getting really prolific in the mural world. So making our outside world more beautiful. Yeah. Her name is Hillary Siber Edwards. You can follow her on the gram. See some beautiful pictures.
Erin (01:41):
Yes. Okay. Well, we will link to that and I love that. We're get, I love that she's making the outside beautiful. We're making the insides beautiful, you know? That's, that's what that's about. I love that. And we're so happy for you. And, um, I, I love as you know, the city of Charlotte really miss seeing you on the regular in person.
Blake (02:00):
Absolutely.
Erin (02:01):
But we've seen each other very regularly on zoom for the past two years.
Blake (02:06):
<laugh> for sure. For sure. Yeah. And it's been very, uh, very cool to be a co-facilitator with improve it. That's what I've had the opportunity to do. Yeah. For the last three years now with improve it.
Erin (02:21):
Yeah so fun.
Blake (02:23):
I feel like it's like, um, you know, that a lot of old, like dance hall groups are like sky groups. They always had a hype man. He didn't play an instrument, but he was like dancing from start to finish. And that's what I feel like as a co-facilitator like, I get to support what the facilitator is doing. Keep everybody going and throw in the like, oh, yes, and let's go. And we got this, that kinda stuff.
Erin (02:51):
Oh, that is, that is actually really interesting. I really love that analogy. You don't, but you are the hype man, and you're so good at it. You make the, the room feel like we are, you know, we are at a sports game and, and everybody's feeling that energy and you're just pumping positivity into it. And that's why I, first of all, I love that you love improv. I love that. You're love the arts and you have performed. How long have you form improv, would you say?
Blake (03:20):
Wow. Uh, 2010. So I wasn't a math major. That's pretty easy. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so 12 years.
Erin (03:26):
Yeah, you did great. Yeah, you did great. You know what? Get a minor in it. Get a minor in mathematics. Okay. So why though, do you think when we're gonna talk about this in just a moment as it relates to mental health, which I think is a huge focus for so many people right now, myself included. So why do you think improv is not only a great art form, but it's a great teaching tool. What would you say to that?
Blake (03:55):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can speak from my own experience is that having the opportunity to be involved with improv it one, it helps you get practice thinking on your feet.
Erin (04:08):
Yeah.
Blake (04:09):
Right. So getting out of whatever maybe rut that you're in or thinking about things, the exact same ways, because when you're going into play with other people with something that is not written out or planned, then yeah. You're, you're thinking on your feet and that's using a different part of your brain. And I think that the more wrinkles we can get in our brain, the better.
Erin (04:33):
Oh, I like that. Yeah. You know, no Botox for the brain, keep the wrinkle that's right. Then keep the wrinkles then that's I love, love that. Okay. Yeah. So, and I, and I know, you know, you know, the premise of this show, the title of the show says it all for our audience, but you, when I think of Blake Edwards, I think of just this positive, awesome, kind compassionate person. So do you have any specific tools that you use just Blake himself? Not in, it could be improv. It could be whatever to put you in a positive head space.
Blake (05:11):
Absolutely. And I appreciate you giving me this question ahead of time. So I could think about it today. <laugh> and it was actually very encouraging to me to realize and remember that there's things that I feel like I have in my, in my life that I go back to that I don't necessarily think about every day. Um, but it's to be reminded that I've got these kind tools in my tool belt that I use, um, without thinking about it. So one of 'em is like, like a kind of big picture is to remember that life is a miracle. Mm. Like just Google. What is the probability of my existence? And the answer is one in 10 followed by almost 2.7 million zeros. Wow. That's the probability of any, one of us just getting to live and breathe and exist on the earth. Like the, the amount of whatever you wanna call it, miracle math, chaos, the, the amount of right. Things to happen, just so that we could be walking the earth is an absolute miracle. Yeah. I don't even know how long it would take to write out 2.7 million zeros. But I imagine it would take quite a while.
Erin (06:35):
I know that's that we gotta hand that one to the math major, that one's, that's the mathematics people
Blake (06:41):
Back to the math major.
Erin (06:42):
That is insane. I had and okay. Keep going, but I'm so I'm so interested to know like what else you do, because that, to me, that statistic alone just made me reap, prioritize, and re and look at my day with such a different perspective.
Blake (07:03):
Right. Yeah. You know, and I think one of the biggest things it can do is just help remind us that it's not all about us all the time and that, you know, life is big and the world is big. And to be able to zoom out like that I feel like is very important. I know it's important for me, cuz it's easy to get lost in the details. And, and when it comes to details, I'm, I'm a journaler. So I'm an on again, off again, journaler, but I'm, I love like I've gotten back into this. I love a daily brain dump. Mm. So in different periods of my life either been like three pages in a Mo skin, or I'll just set a timer on my laptop if I'm typing and just let whatever is happening in between my ears, just dump it onto the page. And that could be first thing in the morning that could be in the afternoon. It could be in the middle of feeling stuck in something, but that's something that really helps me loosen up and kinda get unstuck out of whatever it is that I'm thinking about. Or, you know, if I'm trying to focus on one thing and I've got 10 other things bouncing around upstairs, just dumping it, writing it down, helps gonna get it from one bucket to another.
Erin (08:23):
I love that. So, okay. Two thoughts on what you just said. One was the world is so big and, and you're so right. Cause I just was in an airport this weekend. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and I was, I, you know, normally, and now I'm working from home. I see the same people all the time. Um, well, in, in my real life, I see the same people. Zoom's a different story, but I, right.
Blake (08:44):
You see a lot of yourself.
Erin (08:45):
I see a lot of myself, I try to, I try to not look here <laugh> um, but it's like, I feel like a lot of the times we get so consumed in that we consume ourselves with just what we can see right in front of us. And when you put yourself in scenarios where you see just people from all over the world and you've you walk in that I was, there's just so many people. I was like, wow, I haven't been around this many people in a long time. Yeah. And I just felt really grateful in that moment. And I felt, wow, it's nice to feel like such a small little dot mm-hmm <affirmative> in the middle of all of these people whose, whose lives are just as important and who it, it was. That was a really neat perspective. And then two, I love the, the journaling. So I want, have you ever read the book? Um, the artist way by Julia Cameron?
Blake (09:34):
Yeah. So morning page that's that's like the three pages that's part of yeah.
Erin (09:39):
Yes.
Blake (09:40):
A couple of my resurgence and journaling have come from,
Erin (09:43):
I love it. And I'm actually, she has a new book, very similar, but it's like a six week version. We'll link to that in the show notes too. And now I'm blanking on the name, but I just started that. So I started my morning pages back up like last week. So very
Blake (09:58):
Cool. How's that been?
Erin (09:59):
It's amazing. To be honest. And I, I love that you do it and I, of course you do, because it just, it puts everything in perspective. It makes us feel like the thoughts have a purpose. Do you know what I mean? They're not just there. They have a purpose.
Blake (10:16):
Yep.
Erin (10:17):
Yeah. So we're talking like this leads us into mental health, right? Like we, there's such a, a focus right now and there should have always been a focus, but just given the past two years of everyone's existence, what we've gone through, just life happens. Things have happened, circumstances, all of it, the pandemic what's going on in our world right now. So I wanna talk about what you and I both know to be true is that improv can be medicine. It can improve your mental health. So if you could give the improve, it fam three ways that improv improves your mental health, what would those three things be?
Blake (11:01):
That's that spoon full of sugar?
Erin (11:02):
That's it helps it go down.
Blake (11:04):
Yeah. Helps it out. Yeah. One of the things that, uh, I feel like has been beneficial for me and my mental health with improv is that it is a, uh, cooperative art form. So it, it takes the focus off of self and helps establish, uh, the collective. Right. So you're, you're building off each other's ideas. Right. And that's, that's kind of like my second thing is that it's, it's very freeing, right? So I think we can be very judgmental of our own thoughts or our own ideas, or it's very easy to be judgmental of other people's thoughts or other people's ideas, whether that's in <laugh>, especially on the internet quietly to ourselves. Um, but even like in the workplace, in whatever field that you're in, it's, it's easy to quietly be judgemental of your own ideas or other people's ideas. But when you're in an environment where the, the ethos is, yes.
Blake (12:10):
And it's like, so to know that where whatever you throw out on the table, it's gonna get picked up and you've got people who have your back and that are going to all be building on one another's ideas. And I think that's really incredible. And that leads into like my third point, which I like how you phrased it before we started recording, it was, it's like a experiential therapy, you know, again, it's, it's getting out from between my own years. It's boosting endorphins, it's playing. Right. So once upon a time we all had recess. We had a recess period where, what was our only assignment. It was to go outside or to go in the gym on rainy days and play. So
Erin (13:03):
<laugh> love the gym. Rainy days. Love the gym. Still love them. Still love them. Like Dodge ball automatically like Dodge ball. Yeah, yeah.
Blake (13:11):
Dodge ball or those little like four wheeled scooter. Yeah.
Erin (13:15):
Like the turtles, I think. But no, this is okay. Can I read to,
Blake (13:20):
To go and and play with, with other adults in a safe space and a creative space and where you know that your ideas are gonna get picked up and just to go be silly. Yes. That's always been a big joy of it for me is just to go and be
Erin (13:35):
Silly. Yes. I love that.
Blake (13:38):
Cause it feels good.
Erin (13:39):
Feels so like, and always whenever I talk to you or anybody on the improvement team, it's just like, cause we're all right there. <laugh> we just wanna laugh. We just wanna have fun and we wanna connect with each other. Yeah.
Blake (13:52):
We're ready for
Erin (13:53):
It. And I knew today, like, I'm honest with you. So today I was just kind of having a blog day, you know, like I was going from saying to thing and I said, oh, mm-hmm I get to talk to Blake today and I'm not gonna lie my afternoon. I smiled. And I literally, my you've changed my perspective on this call and you've changed my two today. Cheers.
Blake (14:12):
It goes
Erin (14:13):
Cheers. But I will say so I love it's. It goes, the first thing you mentioned is it's about the collective. I love that. Cuz it kind of goes back to feeling like there's more than just you, it's not just all about you. There's this effort that goes into improv that makes us realize it's the world is bigger than just ourselves. Right. And then that second piece too, with postponing judgment, that is so freeing. It's so freeing. And if we can even allow ourselves, if we've never taken an improv class, if we can just allow ourselves to let go of all of the horrible things that we say to ourselves, I
Blake (14:51):
Mean, we would never say out loud to anybody else.
Erin (14:53):
No. And I've had people correct me. They're like, would you say that to one of your clients? Or, and I'm like, no, I would not. But I say it to me. Right, right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and then that third piece of just exposure, experiential play. I mean, I love it Blake so much. I, you know, I have, yeah. Last time I think we saw each other, I might have been pregnant.
Blake (15:15):
You were pregnant.
Erin (15:16):
Yes. Yeah. I was very pregnant, quite, quite pregnant. And now that, that thing exists that miracle, that 0.0, zero, whatever. That's right. Truly a miracle. And, and he exists on the outside and when I watch him play, I'll just like keep probing him. Cause I'm like keep asking him questions. Cause I'm like, what's in that mind. Cause now he is shocking to everybody, very verbal. But like he it's just like that. When does that get lost? When do we lose that? Mm-hmm <affirmative> because we could correct it with, so it all kind of leads into this whole notion of just play postponing that judgment and really just allowing ourselves to, to realize that the world is bigger than us, but that the voice that we have within that world can carry a great message. Yes. And so if you can do all that, take this lesson of how improv can help your mental health and run it through the through line of how can I take this, these ideas and put it into motion today? Mm-hmm <affirmative> mm-hmm <affirmative> it's just that we use this art form to help people. There's all of it is this through line of just, just helping yourself live a better and more meaningful life. And I I'm so grateful that you're in mind.
Blake (16:34):
Oh, well I'm grateful that you're in mind too. Aaron.
Erin (16:37):
Oh, you're just a gem of a human <laugh>. So
Blake (16:41):
Takes one to know one
Erin (16:42):
Stop. Keep going now I'm just kidding. Um, so tell arm for that fam if they wanna to find Blake, if they wanna, if they want Blake merch, cuz I've been lucky enough to get some Blake mech.
Blake (16:55):
Oh snap. Yes. Exclusive,
Erin (16:57):
Exclusive. Where can they get it?
Blake (16:59):
Yep. So, um, I've got a website. It is www.hblakeedwards.com and then I'm on the Twitter and the Graham at H so H B E D w a R D. That was my ID that they gave me my freshman year at, uh, the university of North Carolina. And I just never looked back
Erin (17:22):
And it stuck. And the H stands for Harrison. Am I correct? It's true. Yes. It does
Blake (17:27):
Little known
Erin (17:27):
Fact, little known fact. Well, I'm so grateful that you came on the show. Thanks for just being you.
Blake (17:34):
Well, thanks for having me. This has been fun
Erin (17:36):
And we'll link to all those things. So if you wanna talk to Blake and reach out to him, you can too. All
Blake (17:41):
Right. Yes. Please. Come on down,
Erin (17:42):
Giving you a virtual hug, right? You bingo. Big. All right, bye I, your back. Got your back. Bye.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Peace.
Erin (17:53):
Hey friends. Thanks for tuning in to improve it. I am so happy you were along for the ride. If you enjoyed this show, head on over to iTunes to leave us a five star review and subscribe to this show. So you never miss an episode. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Now, if you're really feeling today's show and you've improved it even just a little bit, please take a screenshot and tag me at keeping it real deal on Instagram and share it in your stories. I'll see you next week, but I wanna leave you with this thought, what did you improve today and how will that help your future successful self? Think about it. I am rooting for you and the world needs that special. It that only you can bring see you next time.