In the moment

I’m in London, and you have that experience where you’re rushing down the stairs trying to get to the train, and there are several trains that come through the same stop. You know that if you don’t rush, you’ll miss your one, and it’ll be ages until the next one.

So I ran down. There’s a train there but I don’t know if it’s the right one, so I jump on it, and then it goes. Well, there’s a 30% chance it’s the right one and then I think, no, you can’t take that risk Louise, get off the tube. So I jumped off the tube just before it took off, and then I realised that was the right one.

I could have stayed on it. I could have got off at the next stop, and then my right one, I would have worked it out, or my right one would have come. But you’re making decisions on the spot, travelling in a different city under stress, and you don’t always make the right decisions.

It’s the same on the stage, you’ll see who’s laughing, who’s not laughing, who’s concentrating, who’s interested and who’s not interested. You’re making decisions in the moment, and sometimes they’re the wrong decisions, and sometimes they’re the right decisions, but you have to be in the right state of awareness to be doing that. It’s so often we’re not and so often we’re blocked. I might not be so good at catching tube trains, but I’m really good at reading audiences, and this is the sort of thing that I love to bring to people’s awareness, how you read an audience in the moment.

Get out of your own way and read what’s going on.

Let me hear your thoughts.