"Do not fear mistakes. There are none."  – Jazz legend Miles Davis

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Tonight marks graduation for me: Graduation from an eight-week improvisational comedy class that’s challenged me, panicked me and ultimately liberated me--at least a little--from many of the fears and hang-ups that can block my ability to get things done.

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I hardly took the class out of any interest in becoming a professional comedian. I just wanted to personally dive in, head first, into some of the processes that I know are crucial to peak performance and to overall success in work and life. Most of my improv classmates turned out to be there for similar, "professional growth" reasons.

It helped having an extraordinarily gifted teacher, Keith Saltojanes, who very much took the point of view of a Miles Davis.

Keith didn't dwell on any mistakes by me or my classmates, instead seeing every clumsy moment as a springboard to wonderful and funny new possibilities. He had an almost preternatural ability to not be disappointed in us and to instead encourage us to keep taking bigger chances. (He also found the time to break a Guinness world record last week for the longest improv show ever, an impossible 150 hours).

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I’ve written before about how successful athletes and artists reach “the zone” in peak performance. It generally involves “getting out of their head”--by building up their skills in shutting off that active, rational part of their brains and learning to operate on instinct. Honing those skills requires several things:

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Focusing on the process, not on the outcome.

Allowing stress and butterflies to be fuel for performance, not an obstacle.

And practice, practice and more practice, till their brain and body know from memory how

to respond with confidence when something new is thrown at them.

Improv classes are available everywhere around in a town like Los Angeles, where I live, and are common in most other large cities. They’re phenomenal resources for professionals of every type. And even if you can’t find a class that’s right for you, you can consider creating your own group of supportive friends and colleagues who will give each other permission to practice improv skills.

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There are a few practical reasons why improv can help you.

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First of all, we need antidotes to the new, “asynchronous” world that we all live in. We’re used to getting text messages and social-media posts, and then responding on our own time. This artificiality damages our ability to relate to real human beings in the moment. Improv drags you out of that asynchronous, virtual-reality world, and drops you into that wondrous world of high-energy, immediate, person-to-person interaction.

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Second, improv teaches us to soften our focus and heighten our awareness, so that we can respond well to surprises. If you’re in a circle of people playing a word association game, one person may say “spoon,” the next may say “fork,” and the next may say “knife.” At this point, you may be thinking that the word association game is going to be all about dining or food, and you may begin thinking of related words. But if the next person says “gun” in response to “knife,” you have to be able to immediately go with a gun association rather than a dining association. You realize that the thinking and analyzing that you did before was a waste of time--and that's a good way to learn how to get out of your head and just be in the moment.

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Think about that at a practical level: Most of the time, we go into meetings and conversations assuming that they need to go in one direction; when someone begins to take it in another direction, we completely miss what’s happening, and we miss a true opportunity to connect with the other person.

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Third, improv teaches us to listen more patiently and to respond more slowly than we may be accustomed. That allows us to be present to colleagues and friends in ways that we may never before have been. Do you jump in to respond to people before they’re done talking? Stop doing that. One of the most powerful lessons I learned from Saltojanes’ class is that you have to let the other person finish his her or her sentence, because it may end with a surprise that takes everything in a new direction. At the very least, others will notice and appreciate how you really listen to them.

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Fourth and finally, an improv class is one of the few places in life where you have permission to genuinely “fail” without fear. By definition, you’re experimenting and trying things on without judgment. For those of us uptight people who feel the need to say or do the perfect thing, we too often freeze up in the clutch and say or do nothing. That’s not exactly peak performance. Working at building up our improv muscles is a powerful counterforce that can help in every kind of professional situation.

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Improv takes courage--but not as much courage as you might imagine, especially when you realize how much everyone around you is in the same boat.