Improvisation & How to Quiet Your "Loop of Doom"

Ever been caught in a "Loop of Doom" constantly spinning through what-if scenarios...

...but then something wacky or random happens and the looping immediately stops? YEP, me too.

This month in The School of Bravery we're focusing on that exact bravery ingredient: Improvisation. The strong skill of improvisation can help soothe Loops of Doom and possibly quiet them altogether! 

The stronger our improvisation skills are, the more confident we can feel while doing something brave. Your improvisation muscles can provide you with a bedrock of cat-like confidence: "Even if I teeter or fall, I know I'll still land on my feet."  

Most specifically, if your Loop of Doom regularly spins around your productivity levels and sounds kinda like...

• What if I won't make it through it all today?
  
• What would happen if I set fire to my entire calendar and to-do list?
• What if this break-neck speed *actually* breaks my neck?
  
• What if I feel so boxed in and trapped that I punch a hole in the wall?
  

If ^all that^ sounds familiar, then you're invited to practice courageous *improvisation* by joining our Anti-Hustle Book Club for some weekly group coaching! Starting Wednesday, March 17th, and for every Wednesday thereafter, a small handful of brave community members, clients, colleagues, and friends will circle up at 7 pm Central to discuss Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.

The book is a New York Times bestseller. (yay!) The author is an art professor at Stanford. (double yay!) And our group is chill, empathetic, and all-around lovely! (triple yay!)

Speaking of, here's what the NYT said about the book: "An eloquent argument against the cult of efficiency... a complex, smart, and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto." More book info is below my signature.

Please consider joining us on March 17th and take a look at the other happenings this month in The School of Bravery! I hope to see you there or elsewhere very soon!

Your comrade in courage,

~ Emily Ann Peterson

This Month's Live Group Classes

Bravery doesn't have to be a lonely spectator sport! These classes at The School of Bravery are for career & business folx. They're typically 60-90 minutes long, recorded live, and come with lots of participatory group coaching!

Creating Systems of Improvisation for Easy Self-Promotion — Tuesday, March 9th @ 11 am Central — Calling all those who hate tooting their own horns! This class is for you! Self-promotion (for your career or business) can be an absolute beast. It has the potential to feel like that one recurring dream about forgetting to wear your clothes. Uh, stressful much?! No need!

In this class, you'll learn a bevy of self-promotion systems that will channel the strengths of your improvisation skills. The goal is to give you tools that help you to confidently "do the thing" and do it like the badass that you and I already know that you are. 

How to Be Ready for Impostor Syndrome as It Shows Up - Monday, March 22nd @ 11 am Central — At The School of Bravery, we believe that fear is a good thing. As a result, we're not the type who try to squash, minimize, or excommunicate our fears. The same goes for impostor syndrome. In this class, we'll explore the ways that impostor syndrome can show up during or after a feat of bravery.

The goal is to turn you into an over-eager Girl Scout for the next time self-sabotage tries to rain on your parade. You'll also learn how to sink down to the root source of your impostor syndrome, so you can channel all that creative energy into the places that really need it!

This Month's Archived Replay Releases

Currently enrolled students and clients can access archived replays here!

• Courageous Productivity: How to Improvise Efficiently
• Look Before You Launch: Bravery Checklists
• Listening to Your Gut & Improvising with Your Voice
• How to Roll with the Punches
• Using Current Events to Improvise with Your Marketing/Publicity/Social Media
  

More About Our Classes

Featured in Our Book Clubs This Month

Book clubs are for digging deep to supplement your courage with extra connection and group coaching. Book club membership is included in monthly tuition or available a la carte. Reading the books or chapters is not a pre-requisite for attendance, your presence is more valuable than your productivity!

Anti-Hustle Book Club

Wednesdays @ 7 pm Central, starting March 17th!

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell - In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives. Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. And we must actively and continuously choose how we use it. We might not spend it on things that capitalism has deemed important … but once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress.

If you or a friend might be interested in joining us, click here to learn more and sign up!

Anti-Racism Book Club*

3rd Thursdays @ 10 am Central

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin Diangelo - In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

*Note: This book club's monthly membership is available on a sliding scale. All membership dues are donated to a charity that provides mental health services to the black community in the US. Please click here to read about our group and reply to this email if you're interested in joining us or have questions.

Want a Bravery Boost?

If you're new to our brave little community, please take a minute to schedule a welcome chat! It's a super chill Zoom meet-n-greet with our founder, Emily Ann Peterson. There are no strings attached, truly. We just wanna get to know you!

Bravery boosts are for everyone—email subscribers, bashfully brave folx, (not-yet-)enrolled students, curious cats, and business/marketing clients - if you're still reading this email, then that means YOU! ;-)

If you haven't booked your bravery boost yet, here's the link for that.